From Skeptic vol. 3, no. 4, 1995, pp. 36-41.
The following article is copyright © 1995 by the Skeptics Society,
P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission
has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of this
article in its entirety, including this notice.
"First of All, Do No Harm"
A Recovered Memory Therapist Recants
An Interview With Robin Newsome
By Mark Pendergrast
In my book, Victims of Memory, I included four chapters
of verbatim interviews with recovered memory therapists,
self-described incest survivors who retrieved memories, accused
parents, and retractors who once believed they had recovered memories
and have now taken back the allegations. In the final chapter, I
offered advice to therapists who specialize in unearthing incest
memories: "It will take enormous courage for you to admit what you
have done to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of clients, validating their
belief in horrible events that never took place." I called for such
therapists to develop a new specialty-helping to reunite the families
torn asunder by these false incest charges. "After all," I wrote, "who
better understands the Survivor Syndrome than you?"
Recently, I met just such a "retractor therapist," a woman who
once conducted guided imagery to help clients unlock the horrible
secrets from their subconscious and who now realizes that rather than
contributing to healing,she was causing untold harm. A Christian
therapist who is active in her evangelical church, Robin Newsome (not
her real name), 49, is particularly concerned that so much evil has
been done in the name of God, she is doing everything in her power to
stop this form of therapy from ruining more lives. One by one, she is
finding former clients, seeking to undo the damage.
The following interview follows the same format as those in
Victims
of Memory and can be considered that book's "missing interview."
Texan Robin Newsome is a soft-spoken, gentle woman. In her junior
year in college, she became a devout Christian and joined a Christian
campus organization. After graduating with a degree in early childhood
education, she married and had two children. In 1982, she returned to
school to obtain a masters in counseling, where she embraced Gestalt
therapy and encountered her first case of recovered memory.
One of my first courses was called "Anger Therapy." It met every
day for three weeks. After a short lecture, we'd meet in small groups
with a therapist. This was a very intense, emotional experience. After
a round of checking in, each group member was asked whether they
wanted to "work" or not on any particular day. That meant doing a
two-chair visualization, where you imagined the person you were angry
at to be in the chair across from you, and you vented your anger,
using a bataaka [foam filled] bat to hit a foam pad. This was supposed
to get out your unresolved anger. This was a whole new world to me. I
felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole with this stuff. Here I
was in my placid little world, and this was like entering a
subterranean world I never knew existed. It turned me sideways and
upside down. I had always been the nice Christian girl, and I wasn't
aware of my great storehouse of anger.
(Newsome explained that she was angry at her husband, who was
having an affair. When she figuratively put her husband in the chair,
"I nearly took the head of the instructor off using the bataaka bat.")
One Friday, a woman in the group told us she had had an image of
herself being sexually abused when she was two years old. She said, "I
know I was abused by someone, but I can't see who it is." On Monday,
she told us with tremendous sorrow that she had realized that it was
her older brother. The therapist had her "put him in the chair," but
instead of using the bat, she said she wanted to rip his head off. The
therapist handed her some magazines and told her to have at it. She
started screaming at the top of her lungs at her brother, crying and
ripping magazines. Everything was going well until she grabbed one of
the therapist's favorite Smithsonians, and the therapist
yelled for her to stop and not rip that one. This woman completely
shifted gears. She very politely said, "Oh, I'm sorry," and put it
down. Then, with a vengeance, she grabbed another magazine and went
back to ripping and tearing.
At the time, I interpreted this to mean that she had control over
her anger. I had wondered if people would get so angry during these
exercises that they might just lose it completely. This woman's
ability to stop herself so quickly showed me that people weren't
really losing total control. In fact, this incident made the therapy
feel more like a play with a therapist/director who had just yelled,
"Cut!"
Still, I had no reason to doubt that she had been abused-her tears,
her sorrow, her anguish, her rage, her sense of betrayal were painful
to witness. I remember being so angry at the thought that anyone could
do such a thing to a small, helpless child. The fact that she had
remembered her relationship with her brother as being happy prior to
this memory seemed irrelevant. Obviously, her mind had shielded her
from the awful truth. No one even remotely thought to question the
memory of a two-year-old. Also, the idea was that young children had
trouble giving words to their abuse, because they were in a preverbal
state. So there was just this nameless rage buried there all these
years.
Throughout my courses, there was a lot of talk about "body
memories." We were taught that anger was stored in the body. During
times of anger or stress, you could identify your "stress organ." Mine
was in my neck muscles. The magazine-ripper woman stored her anger in
her jaw. I found this concept very useful. During guided imagery, I
would ask clients to recall a specific memory and ask them where they
felt it, in what part of the body. When they finished their anger
work, the tension would usually be gone, which I took as an indication
that they had worked through that emotion.
Another woman in our group had come from an unhappy, dysfunctional
home. Our instructor led her in a guided visualization and helped her
create a new family for herself. At the therapist's suggestion, she
re-invented her childhood, which included growing up in a different
state, in a new house with a new, improved family. It seemed to be
helpful to her, and everyone in the group praised her. I wondered at
the time what she planned to do with her real family-the one she still
had to deal with. But then, I was just a student and the therapist was
the expert.
I also remember one woman who had polio when she was young. The
therapist asked her what the purpose of the polio was. The idea was
that your body and mind collaborate, and that nothing that happens is
simply circumstantial. Initially, this feels like an insight and
explanation for something that seems so unfair and irrational. In this
case, the implication was that she was being sexually abused by her
father, so she developed polio in order to escape to the hospital.
At the time, I really admired the therapist who led my group. She
was bold, outspoken, and fearless-a really good role model for mousy
little me. She seemed invincible and infallible. She was very much in
control of the group, always starting and ending on time. She had
people sharing their deepest secrets and unleashing their rage from
day one. I'd never seen anything like it. Then, after people had bared
their souls, she would be very tender and caring, like the Mom we had
always wanted. But at precisely twelve noon, the warmth would end. I
always had the feeling that if I saw her in the grocery store, she
wouldn't give me the time of day. She was someone I both admired and
feared.
Probably because I had not been very open with my true feelings
before, I really took to Gestalt therapy. It was very freeing for
me. I saw it work, and I still believe it can be very helpful to
people. One of my first attempts at Gestalt therapy was a piece of
work I did with a woman at my church who was still grieving over a
miscarriage. She did a beautiful piece of grief work over the loss of
her unborn child. That was one of the most amazing things I have
witnessed. I saw her almost transform in my presence. She was able to
find peace in her miscarriage and let go of some aspects of it.
Once I graduated with my masters in 1986, I began to counsel people
on a variety of issues, but I also developed a sub-specialty in sexual
abuse. In 1990, I ran a sexual abuse group that lasted nine
months. While most of the women in the group had always remembered
their abuse, there were a few who had vague images or just a gut
feeling that they had been abused. I remember conducting a guided
imagery session with one such woman. I had her close her eyes, get
comfortable, and find the tension in her body. I said to her, "How old
are you in this memory?" She said she was about four. I would ask
other questions, like, "Do you know where you are? Do you feel like
you're inside or out-of-doors?" In my own mind, I did not see this as
leading at all. They seemed like innocuous questions. Later, I
realized that this was almost like playing scrabble with someone and
putting in a little word that suddenly opens up a whole new section of
the board. I was helping her to take that little image and let it flow
into a specific place. I was actually helping her fill in the details.
She said, "I feel like I'm being smothered. Something's in my face,
and I don't know what." I took a pillow and gently put it on her face
to simulate the experience. She sat with it for a while, then suddenly
she started crying. She said, "I see it now." It was her babysitter
abusing her. She remembered a nude woman forcing her to have oral
sex. At that point, she sort of emotionally closed down and couldn't
go any further with it. I said, "When you're ready, you can open your
eyes. How is your stomach now?" It felt a little better, she
said. Then I told her, "I'm really proud of you-you worked really
hard." Others in the group also gave her feedback, such as, "What you
remembered was really helpful to me, because it helped me be in touch
with what it was like to be little and to remember what happened to
me."
I wouldn't have said I was doing hypnosis at all. I tended to
think of hypnosis as induced by a swinging watch chain. This was just
guided imagery. I thought I was getting into the subconscious. We had
been taught in our anger therapy class that you stored memories in
your body. No one explained exactly how that was done. I just took it
for granted. Another thing we learned was that claustrophobia often
indicated a person had had oral sex forced on them. It made a certain
amount of sense.
Unfortunately, this client with the babysitter memory never really
got better. Few of my recovered memory clients ever improved. This
person was always terrifically angry, and the work we did never seemed
to help her. In fact, I would say that the sexual abuse group made her
worse, and it just distracted her from real issues-her daughter, her
troubled marriage, and a stressful job.
Still, I completely believed in the memories I was hearing in my
therapy sessions. My first doubts began with Sally, whose story
continues to haunt me, especially because it is on-going. Sally is in
her mid-30s, and she came to see me almost four years ago, wanting
help with her compulsive eating. Later, she told me that her father
had been an alcoholic, and we began to focus on her dysfunctional
family. One day, Sally came to see me after getting the image of a
little girl sitting in a pool of blood. All the details of when,
where, and who were unclear. I had her close her eyes and led her
through guided imagery, asking my typical questions: "How old are you?
What are you wearing? What time of year is it? What happens next?"
With my prompting, she began to retrieve little bits of memory. In the
end, she saw her father penetrating her when she was three.
At the end of the session, Sally asked, "Can this possibly be
true?" She had always felt so close to her Dad. His drinking had
always made him a happy drunk, and she was actually closer to him than
her Mom. She had no memory of him sexually abusing her before this
image. I gave her the classic line: "Sally, there would be no way for
you to have invented this much detail unless it really happened."
After that first memory, she started having others. They would come
to her during the week, and she would come to each session more and
more depressed. She also had terrible insomnia and pelvic pain, which
I explained to her as body memories. They were further proof that her
memories were true. By this time, I had witnessed many clients
recovering repressed memories, and I totally believed them. If you saw
the emotion, you too would have no reason to doubt. The images were
punctuated over and over again by the anguish, tears, contorted face,
clenched fists, and rage that was expressed in hitting and kicking and
ripping and gnashing of teeth. And there was always the pleading
question, "How could he do this to me?" It would have been
incomprehensible to think that the person just came up with it to play
act. They weren't play acting. We honestly believed the images that
came into their heads were the horrifying records of real events.
When Sally first came to see me, she was a relatively functional
person. Home schooling is very popular here, and she had been home
schooling her two boys for a couple of years. But after she started to
get the abuse memories, she became so emotionally fragile that she
decided to put her sons in public school. Sally would have horrible
nightmares and days of sitting in a dark room just staring at the
wall. She couldn't do her housework, so her husband had to do his work
and then come home and do hers.
Sally's husband was very supportive of her, yet there were times he
would get really frustrated, watching his wife slip away before his
eyes. They had no sex life because she wouldn't let him touch her. He
would vacillate between being understanding and being really angry.
Meanwhile, Sally decided to confront her Dad. I would say to
clients, "One of the issues facing you is whether to confront the
perpetrator or not." If a person decided to confront, we talked about
how to do it, how to craft a letter, or, if they were going to
confront in person, we would role-play. We always planned how they
would react if the perpetrator denied what happened, what boundaries
should be set. Sally wrote her father a letter. He called her and
completely denied everything, but we took that as evidence that he was
in denial.
After confronting her Dad, Sally seemed to get a little better, but
it wasn't long before she started having more images, and another
round of memories would begin. Just when we would start to work on
current issues, like her troubled marriage or the problem she was
having with her youngest son, boom! there would be another image.
Then one day, she came to me and said, "I had this image that
involved my mother." She closed her eyes, and we went back to a time
when she was a little girl living in Iowa, in this sleepy little
midwestern town. She remembered that her mother had a
miscarriage. Sally was seven years old; she found her mother in the
kitchen dismembering the baby with a knife on a chopping block. When
her mother saw her, she made her help. Sally remembered severing a
tiny leg, and then she had to fry it and eat it.
I was horrified. During the week after this session, I began to
realize I was having a hard time believing this memory. I told myself
that it was so horrible that I probably just didn't want to believe
it. That year, I had attended a presentation at a local Baptist
church, where a patient described her experience in a
multi-generational satanic ritual abuse [SRA] cult, so I was somewhat
familiar with this type of story. She had been locked in a rat
infested basement with other children. They had been drugged and
programmed to cut themselves if they ever told. She described how she
had repressed all of this and recalled it in therapy. Her therapist, a
counselor at the church, was a man who seemed very caring, very
professional. I bought this presentation hook, line, and sinker.
So now, when I was having troubled believing the memory, I put the blame on
myself. I realized that I had to tell Sally and, even worse, I realized that
I could no longer do therapy with her. We had built up such trust, and I was
really worried about Sally's reaction. She had begun cutting herself by that
point. I had been taught that it would mean a thousand years in purgatory to
doubt the memory of a client. Nonetheless, I knew that I could not be
effective in Sally's recovery as long as I harbored doubts. Furthermore, we
had crossed into the uncharted territory of SRA, and I felt that I was no
longer qualified to treat Sally. I referred her to an expert, the counselor
at the Baptist church.
I later learned that after the first week or two of her new
therapy, her counselor suggested that she might have multiple
personality disorder [MPD]. By her fourth session, she had discovered
three personalities. From that point on, she developed more and
more. I understand that she now has 35 or so. She has been
hospitalized at least five times. She has overdosed and cut herself
again and again. After three years of weekly and sometimes twice
weekly therapy with a counselor and a psychiatrist, she shows no sign
of improvement. Her marriage is now on the brink of divorce, and her
two sons are tired of their Mom being so crazy. They are frightened of
her and for her. I get the feeling that they feel responsible for
keeping her alive. Her new counselor told Sally that things would have
to get worse before they got better. He sure was right about that!
A couple of months later, a woman named Rebecca came to see me. She
was having images of ceremonial-type murders. In this case, there was
a corroborating witness who had instigated an investigation against
her parents. This involved a real unsolved murder from many years ago,
and the police were called in. I thought, "Here's an example of SRA
really happening." Before, I had queasy feelings, but here were the
police giving credence to it. Again, I referred this client to the
so-called experts, this time to a residential treatment center in New
Mexico called Cottonwood, where they specialized in the treatment of
SRA victims. The main focus was on recovering repressed memories. In
group, they would share any thoughts or dreams, and if a person had a
memory, they were highly praised for it. The worst thing you could say
was, "I don't know if this is true or not."
Rebecca got much worse instead of better. She told me later that
the images never felt quite like her other memories, and she continued
to question their validity. She also found out that the corroborating
"evidence" of her friend consisted of recovered memories she had
retrieved in therapy. After the police investigation failed to turn up
any physical evidence to support the accusations, she decided to take
a break from all the stress of therapy and make an attempt to get back
to some kind of normal life with her husband and young children. As
time passed, she noticed that she felt better. The nightmares stopped,
her symptoms abated, and her thoughts cleared. In fact, she began to
seriously question whether any of her repressed memories were
true. She missed her family but was uncertain how to reconcile with
them, particularly with her father. Finally, when Rebecca became
seriously ill herself, she called on her mother for help.
By this time, Rebecca's parents had discovered the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation and had tried to get some FMS literature to me
through my pastor. He gave it to me to read. I took one look at it,
and the tone seemed very anti-therapist. I said, "This sounds like
nonsense, like perpetrators trying to invent a safe haven." I didn't
pay much attention to it.
Rebecca went through her surgery, and her parents were very loving
and supportive-pretty amazing, since she had accused her Dad of
murder. She finally allowed them to see her children, whom they had
not seen in over a year. In the past few months, I have met her
parents and tried to make amends for the damage I caused their
family. They have been incredibly kind and forgiving.
After her surgery, Rebecca started reading the FMS material and
realized that she fit the pattern of the repressed memory victim to a
T. Instead of merely doubting her abuse memories, she began to
denounce them. In early 1993, she came to me with the article about
Paul Ingram from The New Yorker. That article was a turning
point for me. As I read it, I kept thinking of my experience with
Sally and how she had not gotten better, but worse. She had gone from
mere hell to sheer hell.
I began to think maybe there was such a thing as false memory. I
wondered why the Vietnam vet doesn't forget being in Vietnam, or the
Chowchilla children being buried in a bus, or the Holocaust
survivors. Why don't flood victims forget? The problem with real
victims of trauma seems just the reverse-they can't forget about those
experiences. Does the mind work like a movie camera, recording every
detail of an event? How early can memories be retrieved? How can
people remember back to six months old? One of my clients had recalled
being sexually abused in her crib by her grandfather. Where is the
science to give credence to a belief like that? Or for that matter, do
women in their teens forget incidents of repeated abuse? One incident
might be forgotten, but repeated acts of torture, how do they get
repressed? And why was it only sexual abuse that was blocked from
memory? Why not physical abuse?
I had just re-read The Crucible about the Salem witch
trials, and I began to see parallels. The same flimsy "evidence" that
condemned innocent people to die in Salem was now being used to accuse
and sometimes even charge parents of crimes, the only evidence being a
repressed memory. I realized that I had never once questioned the idea
of repressed memory. It was a presupposition that had been laid down
in my profession as a foundation, and I had just stepped out onto it
without questioning whether it was a solid foundation on which to
build beliefs. I began to read snippets of the FMSF literature, which
was based on scientific research in the field of memory and
hypnosis. I realized that I needed to rethink many of my fundamental
assumptions.
In the fall of 1993, I attended my first local FMSF meeting. I
wasn't sure what to expect. These were the accused, after all. I
remembered all that I had learned about how all perpetrators are in
denial. I expected a room full of defensive parents. What I found
instead was a group of sad and shocked parents who asked the same
question their daughters asked: "How could she do this to me?" I had
been so supportive of women and their repressed memories, but I had
never once considered what that experience was like for the
parents. Now I heard how absolutely ludicrous it sounded. One elderly
couple introduced themselves, and the wife told me that their daughter
had accused her husband of murdering three people. Another woman had
been accused of being in a Satanic cult that had used babies for
sacrifices. This woman in a pink polyester suit was supposed to be a
high priestess. The pain in these parents' faces was so obvious. And
the unique thread was that their daughters had gone to therapy. I
didn't feel very proud of myself or my profession that day.
I think that if I had been counseling only sex abuse cases, or if I
had pressed my clients further when they denied being sexually abused,
or if I had used "symptom lists" on clients, I probably would never
had gone to that FMSF meeting. I think that there is a point of no
return with repressed memory therapy, where admitting what you have
done to clients would be too terrible to ever face. Fortunately, I had
not yet reached that point. Still, I left that meeting with a
tremendous discomfort, realizing that I had clients who had cut off
all relationship with parents who would have looked exactly like these
people and would be in as much shock and disbelief. I felt like the
sorcerer's apprentice.
After that FMSF meeting, I would frequently wake up in the middle
of the night in terror and anguish, thinking about clients who fit the
pattern for False Memory Syndrome. Sometimes I worried about being
sued. A number of the parents I had met were eager to sue their
child's therapist. Most of the time, though, I just thought about
those mothers and fathers who wanted their children back. Most of them
hadn't talked to their children in at least two years, often longer.
There was one client who kept coming to mind. She had occasionally
voiced doubts about her memories-they had always been very vague, and
I had secretly wondered if she hadn't jumped to a false conclusion
when she accused her Dad. The next time she came in, I asked if she
would like me to attempt mediation with her father, and she was open
to the idea. He must have been stunned when I identified myself as his
daughter's therapist. He told me that he was so hurt that he never
wanted to speak to her again. But he also told me, "You know, my
daughter really was sexually abused by a babysitter when she was
five," which coincided with the age she had memories of being
abused. I told him a little bit about FMS and that his daughter had
not maliciously accused him. I gently pressed the issue and found that
he really did want to reunite with his daughter. Finally, after a good
deal of trepidation, she called him. Now they are on the path to
making peace with one another.
Since then, I have been going back to former clients, one by one,
trying to undo the damage. I will meet with them and ask them to read
over some FMSF material. "Even if it turns out that your repressed
memories are true," I say, "you should know that information
questioning them is out there. I want you to read it, and then we'll
talk." Some clients, like the woman who thought her grandfather had
abused her in the crib, have retracted with evident relief. Others
have re-established some sort of relationship with their parents, but
they haven't taken back the allegations. One just shrugged and told
me, "I guess we'll never know whether these memories are true or
false." That attitude really disturbs me. And Sally won't hear what I
have to say yet, but some day, I hope she will retract.
I have also changed the way I practice sex abuse therapy. I only
work with clients who have long-standing memories. Now I never ask if
a client has been sexually abused. I leave it up to clients to present
their own issues. And I no longer refer anyone to experts on Satanic
Ritual Abuse, since there are no real experts. There may really be
groups of people dabbling in ritual abuse, but I do not believe in
multi-generational everyone-in-town-is-involved SRA cults. The FBI and
police forces around the country have found no evidence to support
their existence.
It is very disturbing to me that many who consider themselves
Christian counselors are among those searching for repressed memories,
particularly of SRA. Christians believe in the concept of an evil
force called Satan. Ritual abuse gives credence to that kind of evil,
a personal Satan with attendant spirits. It gives that spiritual
dimension to the counseling. One counselor I know tells clients to ask
God to tell them if they were sexually abused. God is supposed to
reveal their abuse in response to their prayers. This makes God
Himself an accessory to this dubious practice of retrieving
memories. In the name of God, thousands of families are being split
apart.
I believe that therapists constitute a new priesthood. I think we
all have been sold a bill of goods that human misery can be attributed
solely to traumatic childhood events. I'm often struck by people who
have relatively normal lives who experience the same kind of misery. I
am not minimizing the effects of trauma, but as Jesus said, "In this
life, you will have tribulation."
Another saying of Jesus also has great resonance for me now. He
said, "Perfect love casts out all fear." That's true, but I think the
reverse is also true, that perfect fear casts out all love. That is
what happens in recovered memory therapy.
I recently got a call from an elderly gentleman who had heard about
my efforts to reconcile families. He wanted to talk to someone who
would understand his story. He's 84 years old and had just lost his
wife of 56 years. Five years ago, their only daughter had written them
a letter accusing him of sexually abusing her and vowing never to
speak to them again unless he confessed. He denied the charge and
hasn't heard from her since. Other family members have told him that
she now believes she has multiple personalities.
When I told him that there was a support organization for accused
parents, he was really surprised. He and his wife had thought they
were the only ones. But he saw no point in attending an FMSF
meeting. At his advanced age, he didn't expect ever to see his
daughter again. Before he left, I said, "I have a prayer for these
lost daughters. Can I share it with you?" He agreed, and I began
quoting from Luke 15, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. "I will arise
and go to my father and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned
against heaven and before thee." Obviously recognizing the story, he
stood and continued: "But when he was yet a great way off, his father
saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed
him." We finished together. "For this my son was dead and is alive
again. He was lost and is found." Together, we found a small glimmer
of hope in that moment, enveloped in an awful lot of charity. We both
cried. I wished him Godspeed, and then he left.
