Psychotherapy; the Next Great Expose

For decades, society has taken the pronouncements of psycho-therapists, be they medical doctors or sociologists, as absolute truth.

The Public has come to embrace whatever diagnosis is presented and alter their behavior, outlook, direction because of what they were told. They will jettison what they 'know' as fact, what they can prove, in deference to the therapist's decree.

The therapist is often imbued with power. Treated as if owning a window, which sees into the patient's soul and imbued with an understanding of 'what really happened', contra facts, the therapist rules.

There are numerous cases in which therapists have been successful sued. Many, for creating false memories. These false memories cause the destruction of people's lives.

Instead of front page, these events are hidden in the bowels of law books.

Sudden adult memories of childhood abuse, which are unsubstantiated destroy people's lives..

After nearly a hundred years of slavishly believing everything wrapped in psycho-babble, the public is becoming aware that Psycho-Therapists should be more carefully scrutinized by the wider medical community.

At the age of 31 Harriet* (this is a true story only the name is changed) attended a therapist.

Harriet was an extremely confused woman with a sense of inferiority and insecurity who had difficulty seeing the 'other' side.

Although she had been involved in lesbian relationships for nearly ten years, she claimed she was sexually uncertain.

The therapist decided Harriet had been sexually abused as a child which caused her sexual confusion.

After hypnotism and psycho-tropic drugs, Harriet embraced her 'sexual abuse'.

The father was rarely home so was excluded from the list of perpetrators. The mother more a definition than an actual participant. The older sister, who had left home eleven years before and who had virtually raised Harriet, was designated the culprit.

As a lay person the first thing that might go through your mind is what took Harriet Eleven Years?

The second question you might be provoked to ask; how does a person reach Thirty One unaware that she was sexually abused?

Despite reality, Harriet accepted the findings of the therapist as absolutely true and the complete answer to all her problems.

Harriet did not ponder how the therapist, who never saw her mother, father, sister,
a therapist who had no idea where Harriet had grown, could come forward with
this diagnosis without blink.

Harriet, giving complete obeisance to this finding, immediately confronted her parents and wrote a vicious letter to her sister.

Up until this denouement, Harriet had a good relationship with her parents and her sister.

In fact, for two years after her sister left home, (before she moved a thousand miles away), Harriet had visited every week. She and her sister were close, exchanged gifts, phone calls, simply, there was nothing in the relationship which suggested that there was any dark corner.

After the visit to the therapist the parents were charged as enablers of the physical/ sexual abuse. The sister was the devil of the piece, and Harriet's life proceeded on the basis that she had been abused as a child.

At the age of 56 Harriet maintains this 'memory' of abuse.

Out of the ether, Harriet's sister, whom she had not heard from for nearly twenty five years began to email.

Harriet attacked her sister with all her 'abuse'.

The sister was able to push some daylight into the darkness of Harriet's mind. Able to prove, beyond a doubt that one slap given to her when she five and her sister was eight years old was not beating the crap out her.

So here it was; truth. Unvarnished clear truth. Truth that took in the actual living room, the people who were present.

There was no way around the fact that it was one slap, and that the sister was given a beating by the father for hitting Harriet.

It was clear, it was accepted.

And because it conflicted with her fantasy world, Harriet blocked her sister's email account, never spoke or wrote to her again.

And reverted to the 'beat the crap out of me when I was a child' fantasy.

When Harriet's sister was able to prove that the infamous 'beating the crap out of me' was one slap given by an 8 year old to a 5 year old, all her mental constructs were in danger of collapse.

The identity of Harriet as an abused child, the identity which defined her from the age of 31 to 56 was about to be exploded.

Hence, Harriet cut off communication, gripped her previous memories as a life preserver.

To recognise that everything she believed and remembered for the past quarter century were untrue would have destroyed her identity, hence it was far easier to delete what didn't conform and go on as if 'that part didn't happen'

Harriet's story is not uncommon.

There are thousands of cases in which a False Memory has been introduced and so imprisoned the patient that they ruin the rest of their lives defending it.

There are cases in which daughters have come to believe their fathers sexually abused them, only coming to the knowledge that this memory was induced by the therapist after the death of their father.

There are those who who have translated an accident into a suicide attempt, those who have so believed that the 'problem' found by the therapist is the 'problem' that they resist all evidence that it is not.

Successful lawsuits have proven that many therapists rely on hypnotism, psychotropic drugs and sheer authority to convince a patient that their diagnosis is correct, without a shred of proof.

It is only in Court that evidence, cogent evidence, can be presented, proving that the findings of the therapist are false.

Evidence was always there...whether it was the death of a 'abuser' a year before the abuse, whether there was no suicide attempt based on medical, police and psychological evidence taken at the time, or whether one slap has been translated into a savage beating.

The Therapist who has made no attempt to confirm the diagnosis, despite the fact it will have serious consequences on the subsequent life of the patent, is held culpable, insurance pays out another huge sum, but the patient can never be remunerated for the losses suffered.

If you are attending a therapist, or know someone who is, be very chary when it comes to accepting 'sudden' memories of events that you or your friend have never considered.

Simply put, the abused child shows signs of abuse as a child.