The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [76]
A cautious 1993 statement by the American Psychiatric Association accepts the possibility that some of us forget childhood abuse as a means of coping, but warns,
It is not known how to distinguish, with complete accuracy, memories based on true events from those derived from other sources... Repeated questioning may lead individuals to report ‘memories’ of events that never occurred. It is not known what proportion of adults who report memories of sexual abuse were actually abused ... A strong prior belief by the psychiatrist that sexual abuse, or other factors, are or are not the cause of the patient’s problems is likely to interfere with appropriate assessment and treatment.
On the one hand, callously to dismiss charges of horrifying sexual abuse can be heartless injustice. On the other hand, to tamper with people’s memories, to infuse false stories of childhood abuse, to break up intact families, and even to send innocent parents to prison is also heartless injustice. Scepticism is essential on both sides. Picking our way between these two extremes can be very tricky.
Early editions of the influential book by Ellen Bass and Laura David (The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, 1988) give illuminating advice to therapists:
Believe the survivor. You must believe your client was sexually abused, even if she doubts it herself... Your client needs you to stay steady in the belief that she was abused. Joining a client in doubt would be like joining a suicidal client in her belief that suicide is the best way out. If a client is unsure that she was abused but thinks she might have been, work as though she was. So far, among the hundreds of women we’ve talked to and the hundreds more we’ve heard about, not one has suspected that she might have been abused, explored it, and determined that she wasn’t.
But Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Science Instruction and Research Unit of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, a leading expert on the sexual victimization of children, wonders: ‘Are we making up for centuries of denial by now blindly accepting any allegation of child abuse, no matter how absurd or unlikely?’ ‘I don’t care if it’s true,’ replies one California therapist reported by The Washington Post. ‘What actually happened is irrelevant to me ... We all live in a delusion.’
The existence of any false accusation of childhood sexual abuse - especially those created under the ministrations of an authority figure - has, it seems to me, relevance to the alien abduction issue. If some people can with great passion and conviction be led to falsely remember being abused by their own parents, might not others, with comparable passion and conviction, be led to falsely remember being abused by aliens?
The more I look into claims of alien abduction, the more similar they seem to reports of ‘recovered memories’ of childhood sexual abuse. And there’s a third class of related claims, repressed ‘memories’ of satanic ritual cults - in which sexual torture, coprophilia, infanticide and cannibalism are said to be prominently featured. In a survey of 2,700 members of the American Psychological Association, 12 per cent replied that they had treated cases of satanic ritual abuse (while 30 per cent reported cases of abuse done in the name of religion). Something like 10,000 cases are reported annually in the United States in recent years. A significant number of those touting the peril of rampant satanism in America, including law enforcement officers who organize seminars on the subject, turn out to be Christian fundamentalists;