1288) [T]he practice of uncovering repressed memories, along with the attendant theories of multiple personality disorder and satanic-cult abuse, are fads as widespread and as damaging as any the mental-health field has produced in this century. [...] [R]ecovered memory therapists are not, as they portray themselves, brave healers but professionals who have built a pseudoscience out of an unfounded consensus about how the mind reacts to sexual trauma. In the process they have slipped the ties that bind their professions to scientific method and sound research. Free from any burden of proof, these therapists have created an Alice-in-Wonderland world in which opinion, metaphor, and ideological preference substitute for objective evidence. While claiming to uncover the truth of their clients' past, these therapists have pursued a treatment regime that persuades clients to accept hypnotically generated images, gut feelings, dreams, and imaginings as valid memories. Without an understanding of the damage they have already caused, these therapists have employed methods that blur the already perilously thin line that separates memory from imagination and have unwittingly coerced their patients to mold their beliefs and behaviors to the expectations of their therapy.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1289) The human mind sees patterns. We tell ourselves stories about why one event might have been the cause of a second event and might therefore be a predictor of a third. In many areas, say religion or economics, we often offer such post hoc reasoning without requiring that the validity of those connections be demonstrated. Astrology, for another example, is an elaborate apparatus for creating the appearance of meaningful connections where none exist. All of us are experts at making such cause-and-effect conclusions within our lives.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1290) We tell ourselves stories in order to live [...] We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely [...] by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
Joan Didion The White Album (1979) quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1291) Recovered memory therapists pursue hidden memories for years like archaeologists using dynamite. For months or years they blast away at what they believe are the barriers to memory, unaware that their process destroys the fragile treasure they claim to seek. While this mistake is not new to the field of psychotherapy, recovered memory therapists make it in the most egregious fashion.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1292) Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the public should not be frightened into believing that babies are bred and eaten, that 50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that Satanists are taking over America's day care centers or institutions. [...] While no one can prove with absolute certainty that such activity has not occurred, the burden of proof is on those who claim that it has occurred. [...] [It is now] up to the mental health professionals, not law enforcement, to explain why victims are alleging things that don't seem to have happened.
Ken Lanning (FBI Special Agent) Investigator's Guide to Allegations of Ritual Child Abuse (1989) quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1293) Each [account of plausible Devil worship cited] is accompanied by statements which are anything but plausible [...] To understand why the stereotype of Devil-worshiping sects emerged at all, one must look not at the beliefs or behavior of heretics [...] but into the minds of the orthodox themselves. Many people, and particularly many priests and monks, were becoming more and more obsessed by the overwhelming power of the Devil and his demons. That is why their idea of the absolutely evil and anti-human came to include Devil-worship, alongside incest, infanticide and cannibalism. [...] Stories which contain manifestly impossible elements ought not to be accepted as evidence for physical events.
Norman Cohn Europe's Inner Demons (1975) quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1294) [T]o believe the satanic-cult theories [...] requires that you give up the assumption your neighbor (or your doctor or the teacher who watches over your child) will act decently. If these theories are not true, recovered memory therapists can count themselves responsible for damaging not only individual lives and families but for tearing apart whole communities by eroding the trust the binds people together.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1295) Reasoned dialogue has a limited ability to withstand an assault by the mythic power of falsehood, especially when that falsehood is rooted in an age-old social and cultural phenomenon [...] Mythical thinking and the force of the irrational have a strange and compelling allure for the educated and uneducated alike. [...] Reasoned dialogue, particularly as it applies to the understanding of history, is rooted in the notion that there exists a historical reality that - though it may be subjected by the historian to a multiplicity of interpretations - is ultimately found and not made. [...] Even a historian with a particular bias is dramatically different from the proponents of these pseudoreasoned ideologies. The latter freely shape or create information to buttress their convictions and reject as implausible any evidence that counters them. They use the language of scientific inquiry, but theirs is purely an ideological enterprise.
Deborah Lipstadt Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1993) quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1296) Our growing willingness as a culture to throw history up for grabs - to believe anything is possible and therefore anything might be true - is the cornerstone from which the satanic-cult story is built. We are asked to deny reason in favor of belief.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
1297) While Freud's notions functioned something like a paradigm, his theories were prescientific and based on no empirical evidence. As in prescientific eras of other disciplines, his theories were accepted by consensus - not because of anything resembling empirical proof but because of his magnetism and the seductively broad nature of the ideas. No doubt it was the very arrogance and grandiose application of his theories that was appealing to intellectuals and mental-health practitioners who were happy to claim an understanding of what motivated people - even if they could not actually explain the working of these theories, much less prove their truth or value. Those who adopted his theories and defended his assertions gained by association something of Freud's status, at least vis-a-vis the untutored. Recovered memory therapists in many respects have operated within Freud's pseudoscientific paradigm. In doing so they have become to the study of the mind and behavior what astrologers are to the scientific study of the stars and planets. They have engaged in an enterprise based not on science but on impressionistic insight, myth, metaphor, and the powerful persuasive nature of the therapy setting.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria (1994)
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 487 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.