CSICOP / Skeptical Inquirer / September 1996 / Conspiracy Theories and
Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference
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Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference
Evan Harrington
The debate over "recovered" and "false" memories continues to be one of the
most contentious issues in the field of psychology today. The debate is
extremely polarized with very little amicable communication among members of
the opposing camps. While such a dispute may eventually be beneficial to
science, in that both sides are clearly being spurred on to produce original
research at a frenetic pace, at the moment the clearest manifestation of
this dichotomy is miscommunication and friction between factions. Such
miscommunication has been exacerbated by a tendency of some theorists on
both sides to make sweeping generalizations and use vague terminology. An
example of such miscommunication is the use of the term recovered memory
therapy, used frequently in books such as Making Monsters by Richard Ofshe
and Ethan Watters (1994). The term as they used it is not without its
critics (e.g., Dalenberg 1995) who complain that the term is
overgeneralized. Conversely, in a televised debate, Charles Whitfield, a
trauma therapist, stated that there is no such thing as recovered memory
therapy. The true state of affairs likely rests somewhere in between.
While some misunderstandings may be rooted in semantics, others are more
difficult to trace and harder still to describe adequately. It is very
difficult to get quantitative data in the area of the beliefs held by
therapists regarding topics that may manifest in the form of false memories
in their patients. And although some surveys have attempted to obtain
quantitative measures of therapists' beliefs, practices, and experiences
regarding traumatic memory recovery and therapy (e.g., Poole, et. al. 1995),
such surveys fail to fully inform the reader of the quality of those
beliefs. In an attempt to obtain a qualitative analysis of the beliefs of
therapists with regard to recovered memories of traumatic events, I have
frequently attended sexual- and ritual-abuse conferences. Some of these
conferences ##have afforded me valuable insight into the dynamics of a
scientifically informed trauma therapy. At other times I have gained
valuable insight into the beliefs of some "fringe" therapists who believe in
vast and nefarious conspiracies organized to harm children. My purpose here
is not to argue whether such beliefs are accurate or not; rather, I simply
wish to outline what some of those beliefs are. The following is not meant
to be representative of all therapists in this field. I offer only a
description of what some therapists believe. The reader will please keep in
mind that any qualitative description, such as this one, may not be used to
infer anything about the population as a whole, but it may be illuminating
in that there is a certain subpopulation that clearly is represented.
This article describes my experiences at a conference held in Dallas, Texas,
March 23-26, 1995, by a group calling itself the "Society for the
Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse" (SITPRCA).
SITPRCA may be reached at P.O. Box 835564, Richardson, Texas 75083-5564.
The 1995 SITPRCA conference was titled "Cult and Ritual Abuse, Mind Control,
and Dissociation: A Multidisciplinary Dialogue." The word dialogue is
misleading because there were no skeptics or critics among the speakers and,
as will be demonstrated, any dissension from the audience was strongly
discouraged -- it was essentially a monologue. The 1995 conference offered
continuing education credit available through the Texas State Board of
Examiners of Licensed Professional Counselors.
The conference was attended by 150 to 200 people. A significant minority of
the audience consisted of patients who claimed to have had recovered
memories of ritual abuse (several of whom I spoke with) and who were allowed
access to even the most advanced professional training sessions, sometimes
at the recommendations of their therapists.
The SITPRCA organization was created by Dallas therapist James Randall
"Randy" Noblitt, currently the president of the group, and Pamela Perskin,
its executive director. Noblitt lectures widely on the existence of ritual
cults and mind-control techniques, and has served as an expert witness in a
number of child-abuse cases. In the 1992 Austin, Texas, day care case of
Fran and Dan Keller, he helped obtain a conviction by informing the jury
that cults across America regularly ritually abuse children through torture
and sexual abuse and that the cults make child pornography with these
victims. Noblitt stated that these children will often not be able to recall
the events because they are so highly traumatized, and that the severity of
the abuse causes the amnesia. This testimony, combined with Noblitt's
statement that he was "convinced" that the child in this case had
experienced extreme trauma, apparently helped convince the jury that the
Kellers operated a ritual-abuse cult in their day care center. At the time
of that trial, Noblitt testified that in addition to supervising his own
clinical employees he had been sought to consult in 15 similar cases and
that he provides supervision for therapists individually and in groups.
Noblitt and Perskin (1995) recently released a book outlining their beliefs
about ritual abuse. While some mainstream therapists may conclude that those
associated with SITPRCA represent a fringe element, I would point out that
such organizations are able to have a dramatic influence on society.
Opening Remarks
The conference opened with a panel consisting of Walter Bowart (author of
Operation Mind Control, Dell, 1978), Mark Phillips (who claimed to have
inside information on government mind-control techniques), and Alan
Scheflin. Scheflin is a lawyer who has for years documented the Central
Intelligence Agency experiments with "brainwashing" in the 1950s and 1960s
and who spoke on a panel at the 1993 American Psychological Association
(APA) meeting with memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus and again at the 1995
annual meeting along with Richard Kluft and several others. Bowart opened
the conference with a direct appeal to the therapists. Bowart claimed that
"the False Memory Spindrome [sic] Foundation . . . is a Central Intelligence
Agency action. It is an action aimed at the psychological and psychiatric
mental health community to discredit you, to keep you in fear and terror."
Bowart stated that everyone connected with the False Memory Syndrome
Foundation (FMSF) will be shown to be "spooks or dupes." According to
Bowart, the CIA is currently conducting a campaign of mind control against
the American public and wants to discredit victims of these experiments so
that their stories will be seen as false memories. Phillips spoke for a
while about how he would reveal the trade secrets of mind control.
Scheflin gave a lengthy talk about how therapists can protect themselves
against the lawsuits brought by former patients who retract memories of
childhood abuse. These lectures were warmly received, especially Scheflin's.
Perhaps because several speakers at the conference had been successfully
sued by former clients, the therapists in attendance seemed quite fearful
that their clients would retract their memories of abuse and sue them for
instilling false memories. I felt that the opening remarks were overtly
political for what was purported to be a scientific gathering.
Racist Conspiracy Theories and the Militias
Doc Marqui, a self-described former "school teacher and witch," lectured
about the satanic "Illuminati" conspiracy, which he alleged President Bill
Clinton was part of, serving as the "anti-Christ." Marqui assured the
audience that this theory is not racist; but the fact is the Illuminati
theory is the same one advocated by most members of the American militia
movement, and it was utilized by the Nazis in their effort to justify their
campaign of genocide against the Jews of Europe (Cohn 1966). The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic document (based on the Illuminati
conspiracy theory) that purports to document plans for Jewish world
domination and which first appeared in Russia in 1903 in a newspaper edited
by a "noted and militant anti-Semite" (Cohn 1966, p. 65). The book was
instituted as mandatory reading in German schools by the Nazis in 1933 (Cohn
1966). Marqui touted the overall validity of the Protocols while replacing
the word Jews with the word satanists. The Illuminati conspiracy holds, in
part, that large Jewish banking families have been orchestrating various
political revolutions and machinations throughout Europe and America since
the late eighteenth century, with the ultimate aim of bringing about a
satanic New World Order. Members of the militia movement have said they
believe that the United Nations has been infiltrated by these "demonic
forces" and is poised for a violent overthrow of the American government,
after which American rights to own firearms will be removed and American
citizens will be enslaved by the introduction of a cashless society, as
foretold in the Bible's book of Revelation (see, e.g., Constantine 1995;
Kelly 1995; Springmeier 1995; Stern 1996). Marqui stated that the Illuminati
is essentially a shadow government that has controlled the United States
since its inception, controls the Masonic order, and commits all manner of
occult crime culminating in human sacrifices on eight days of each year.
Much of this paranoia was chronicled more than 30 years ago by Richard
Hofstadter (1965).
While the Illuminati conspiracy theory is widely endorsed by militia
members, it is also embraced by reactionary groups such as: the Lyndon
LaRouche organization (political analyst Chip Berlet [1994] stated that in
the early 1970s, Lyndon LaRouche "took his followers . . . and guided them
into fascist politics"); the John Birch Society (which Berlet [1994] said
believes "Insiders" have for years controlled the U.S. and former Soviet
Union governments); and the Liberty Lobby. The Liberty Lobby, with its
newspaper Spotlight, was created by Willis Carto, who also founded the
Institute for Historical Review, which asserts that the Holocaust was a hoax
(Berlet 1994).
Author Linda Blood, who spoke later in the day, protested that she was
"unhappy to be following someone [Marqui] who is pushing the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion," which she said was anti-Semitic trash. Blood's protest
deeply angered some and bewildered others, while about four of Blood's
friends clapped in support. Perskin, who moderated the session, announced
that although she is Jewish she found nothing offensive in Marqui's lecture.
Marqui appeared to me to be connecting existing racist conspiracy theories
with the therapists' theories about satanic cults.
Marqui was followed by former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Ted
Gunderson, who highly praised Marqui's lecture. Gunderson is well known for
his claims that an archaeological dig under the McMartin preschool showed
evidence of tunnels, through which the children were allegedly spirited to
other buildings to be prostituted in the community (Summit 1994). The
results of this dig have for years gone unpublished while calls for funds to
self-publish the results have been issued in newsletters such as the
Survivor Activist (1994). Meanwhile, the integrity of the dig has been
strongly disputed (Earl 1995). Gunderson presented what he called "new
evidence" in the 1984 McMartin preschool sex-abuse case in Manhattan Beach,
California. He produced a number of photographs of the foundation of a house
in the hills above San Bernadino, California, that had burned down, he
claimed, the night the charges were filed in the McMartin case. He alleged
that the McMartin children were flown to this house and ritually abused, and
that the house was torched to destroy evidence. The sum total of the
evidence he presented to support this allegation was the existence of
spray-painted satanic graffiti on the foundation stones and on boulders on
the property. Apparently, several years had gone by between the time of the
alleged fire and the time Gunderson snapped the photos. Yet Gunderson was
dismissive of the idea that the house foundation on the lot, with its
hillside vista of San Bernadino, had been used by teenagers who might have
painted the graffiti after the fire. The therapists were enraptured and
later asked if Gunderson was planning to publish his photos or if there was
any chance of using this evidence in a new trial. The McMartin preschool
case resulted in the longest criminal proceeding in American history and
failed to produce any convictions (see e.g., Nathan and Snedecker 1995).
Gunderson then described a conversation he had with a witness, Paul Bonacci,
from an alleged satanic-ritual abuse case in Nebraska that was detailed by
former Nebraska state Sen. John DeCamp (1992), who was also a speaker at
this conference. The grand jury of Lincoln described this case as an attack
by DeCamp "for personal political gain and possible revenge" (Dorr 1991, p.
1), a "smear campaign," and a "carefully crafted hoax" (United Press
International, September 18, 1990). The grand jury jailed one and indicted
two others (including Bonacci) for perjury, and was so critical of DeCamp
that he sued the grand jury for ridicule, though he quickly lost (Dorr
1991). A church in the area, the Nebraska Leadership Conference, responded
by publishing a tract (no date) named The Mystery of the Carefully Crafted
Hoax, with a foreword by Gunderson, in which he continued the allegations of
satanic-ritual crime. At the conference Gunderson related Bonacci's
description of a slave auction in Las Vegas in which 25 to 30 vans pulled
up, airplanes landed, and foreign men with turbans bought children and took
them away. According to Gunderson: "Nobody knows what happened to those
kids. They use them for several things: body parts, they use them for
sacrificing, for sex slaves. But this is a big market. Does anybody have any
idea what a blue-eyed, blond-haired eleven- or twelve-year girl would sell
for? Fifty thousand dollars."
Gunderson claimed that there are currently 500 satanic cults in New York
City alone, each averaging eight sacrificial murders a year, for a total of
4,000 human sacrifices every year. Gunderson did not explain how the cults
remove bodies in the asphalt jungle of New York.
Gunderson believes in the threat posed by the New World Order, as do Marqui
and militia members. Gunderson has appeared on Dateline NBC, at militia
conferences (Witt 1995), on Michigan Militia member Mark Koernke's shortwave
radio program, and on the cover of Spotlight (May 13, 1995), stating that
the U.S. government intentionally bombed the Oklahoma City federal building
in April 1995, in order to remove our rights through anti-terrorism bills.
Gunderson informed the audience that Spotlight "tells it like it is," and
urged audience members to call the subscription number, which he read aloud.
On top of this, Gunderson gave an interview to Lyndon LaRouche's Executive
Intelligence Review (May 25, 1990), in which he described FBI special agent
Ken Lanning as "probably the most effective and foremost speaker for the
satanic movement in this country, today or at any time in the past."
Gunderson and Marqui seem to me to be attempting to introduce therapists to
racist conspiracy theories and reactionary propaganda, while at the same
time groups such as the LaRouche organization endorse satanic conspiracy
theories to draw in new members.
Political analyst Chip Berlet's argument that radical right elements are
seducing the left should be taken seriously. In his monograph Right Woos
Left (Berlet 1994), he describes, among other examples, how the LaRouche
organization has persistently destabilized legitimate leftist activist
organizations by infiltrating these groups and then claiming that these
groups endorse LaRouche. The LaRouchians also gain credibility through their
association with legitimate political activists, which enables them to draw
new converts. The cult-ritual abuse field is a prime example of such
infiltration. Many therapists who specialize in treating ritual or other
forms of abuse identify to some degree with feminism and other liberal
ideals. When radical right conspiracists get such liberals to believe in the
New World Order or "Operation Monarch" (a similar movement, described later)
they gain a boost in credibility far beyond what they could expect by
printing their stories in Spotlight or the Executive Intelligence Review.
Former Nebraska state Sen. John DeCamp, mentioned earlier, has been on the
ritual-abuse circuit for some time now, talking about his 1992 book The
Franklin Cover-Up, which purports to document a satanic organization in
Nebraska that abused children and prostituted them within the White House.
DeCamp gives a favorable mention to a fact-finding mission sponsored by
LaRouche (DeCamp 1992, p. 241). The editors of the Executive Intelligence
Review repeat DeCamp's claims and praise his book as "important" in their
virulently anti-Semitic party tract titled The Ugly Truth About the ADL
(Anti-Defamation League) (Editors of the Executive Ingelligence Review
1992). The July 27, 1990, issue of the Executive Intelligence Review stated
that the FBI in Nebraska covered up child abuse and murder.
On June 15, 1995, DeCamp appeared before a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing
on domestic terrorism chaired by Arlen Spector. DeCamp appeared as a lawyer
representing the American militia movement and the four militia leaders
testifying that day. At a Washington, D.C., news conference, DeCamp
glowingly described the militia movement as "a political movement in the
birthing . . . painful, joyous, confusing, and exciting" (Janofsky 1995, p.
10). DeCamp also has clear ties with the Nebraska Leadership Conference. A
call to the church office confirmed that the Nebraska Leadership Conference
had "contributed significantly" to DeCamp's book.
DeCamp delighted the therapists at this conference during a luncheon session
in which he described the allegations put forth in his book.
Conspiracy Theories in Action
I struck up a conversation with a woman and her son and learned that the
woman claimed to have recovered memories of being abused in a satanic cult.
She drove across two states to attend the conference, she said, in the hope
that she could learn about Nazi scientists being brought to the United
States after World War II. She knew nothing about this topic but seemed to
suspect that it had something to do with her. The conversation drifted to
the topic of treatment for sex offenders while they are incarcerated. At
this point we were joined by a man, whom I'll call Felix, and his companion,
who said that treatment for sex offenders is unnecessary because when the
New World Order takes control of the country, members are going to shoot all
prisoners and also eliminate three-quarters of the world's population. Felix
described to us how the New World Order operated, manufacturing multiple
personality disorder through torture and creating sex slaves and drug mules
under the mind control of the CIA (this is the basis for the alleged
"Operation Monarch"). Felix also described how the black helicopters of the
New World Order landed in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, and black-suited
storm troopers illegally searched all the homes in the neighborhood. There
was a total news blackout of this because, Felix said, the media are part of
the conspiracy. Later, Felix confided to me that his companion was wrong:
the New World Order would not kill all the prisoners, but would use them as
slave labor. Felix said he did not like to disagree with her because she was
a former "Monarch" mind-control slave.
Felix sold me his newsletter, as big as a book, in which he makes some very
strange claims: Charles Manson was programmed by the Illuminati, the
Anti-Defamation League is controlled by Jewish satanists, and Marilyn Monroe
was a mind-control slave. According to Felix, virtually anyone who disagrees
with Felix is a Monarch slave, including prominent militia leader Bo Gritz,
who talked Randy Weaver into surrendering at the 1992 incident at Ruby
Ridge, Idaho. Most disturbingly, Felix told me that he works as a counselor
and has helped "a lot" of people suffering from multiple personality
disorder. Felix apparently has no mental-health counseling credentials, and
his name badge identified him as "clergy." Nevertheless, he said he counsels
dissociative clients and guides them through the intricacies of
international cabals.
By this time a crowd had gathered around Felix and me. After Felix's
monologue, a social worker from North Carolina informed the group that in
the day care sex-abuse case she was investigating, she thought she
remembered the kids talking about black helicopters. She said she would look
into it.
Secrets of Mind Control Revealed
Felix's claims paled in comparison to what came next. Mark Phillips claimed
to be a former government agent involved in mind-control experiments. He was
always vague, never giving any information that could be checked. His
companion, Cathy O'Brian, claimed to have survived years of torture and
abuse at the hands of her CIA handlers in Operation Monarch (these two seem
to be the source of most of the Monarch material). O'Brian maintained she
had been tortured in unimaginable ways since the time she was a child, and
that her cult handlers successfully created dissociative identity disorder
in her, which was cured by Phillips, who also managed to hide her from the
CIA. She was so savagely tortured, she said, that her back was a complete
mass of scar tissue. Phillips added that he had once tried to count the
scars but lost count somewhere in the hundreds. We never saw the scars,
photos of the scars, or doctors' reports about the scars.
O'Brian stated that she was forced to have sex with a plethora of political
figures including George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford
(whom she said she knew as "the neighborhood porn king"). She also said she
was abused by Hillary Clinton (but not by Bill). Politicians were not the
only ones involved -- O'Brian stated that a number of baseball figures were
in this satanic/CIA mind-control plot. She told me personally that virtually
the entire country music industry is set up by the New World Order to make
money. According to O'Brian, most popular country singers are Monarch slaves
who had alter-personalities created with good voices for singing. Phillips
and O'Brian, along with Bowart and others, claimed that the CIA is currently
abusing people through Operation Monarch. Phillips claimed 20 years of
experience in genetics and said that the cults would breed slaves
selectively to create musical geniuses. To test his vast experience with
genetics, I asked him what he thought of the Human Genome Sequencing
Project. He had never heard of it. It seems impossible for anyone with even
a rudimentary knowledge of genetics to be unaware of the biggest project
ever in that field. Nevertheless, one author claims that Phillips is
"currently deprogramming at least six Monarch slaves" (Springmeier 1995, p.
243).
It seems that a number of people in the audience were accepting of
Phillips's and O'Brian's claims, although Perskin (of SITPRCA) informed me
that this duo will not be asked back in the future because they failed to
produce evidence of Operation Monarch. In a personal conversation with me
(July 12, 1995), Scheflin stated that he had been able to obtain internal
CIA documents corroborating the existence of mind-control experiments in the
1950s and 1960s. (The documents demonstrate that the CIA conducted unethical
experiments to try to create multiple personalities in people for the
purpose of creating a super spy who could keep vital information submerged
in an alter personality [Thomas 1990].) But, he said, the paper trail
completely died out by 1976. According to Scheflin, there are no credible
reports of mind-control experiments after 1976 and no credible reports of
any nature on Operation Monarch.
Catherine Gould gave an advanced workshop in which she described the
mechanics of cult mind-control, extensively utilizing the mind-as-computer
model. At one point she puzzled over the idea of cult members catching AIDS.
She said that no one can figure out why the offenders are not "dropping like
flies, because we know they don't practice safe cult sex." With all the
blood, cannibalism, and unprotected sex, they ought to be catching a lot of
sexually transmitted diseases. Therapist Jerry Mungadze offered a unique
explanation. He suggested that mind-control programming boosts the immune
system, making the victim resistant to the HIV virus, and that is why
children in day care satanic-ritual abuse cases do not have elevated levels
of sexually transmitted diseases.
Well, if they've found a cure for AIDS, why do they bother making money with
pornography? Such a cure must be worth several billion dollars! In the grand
tradition of conspiracy theories, discrepant information is explained away
or, as in this case, incorporated into the scheme. Amazingly, this solution
to the AIDS conundrum appeared to be taken seriously by most in the room.
Alternate Views Not Welcome
Chrystine Oksana lectured on her experiences of recovering memories of
ritual abuse and her subsequent search for corroboration (see Oksana 1994).
Oksana stated that she had read some 500 books on the topic of trauma and
child abuse. For this reason I asked what she thought of the recent study by
Linda Meyer Williams (1994). Oksana said she had not heard of it. The report
by Williams is a pivotal study that demonstrated that a substantial minority
of adults failed to disclose their documented emergency room visits when
they were children, which ostensibly occurred because they had been sexually
abused. The study demonstrated that some people may forget such events.
There is a mistake in the text of the paper that states the existence of a
nonsignificant trend such that, as the amount of force used in the
commission of the abuse increases, recall decreases. The trend in the data
actually shows that as the amount of force used in the commission of the
abuse increases recall increases, which is opposite from, and fails to
support, the theory of repression of traumatic memory (Harrington 1995). My
description of this data set visibly angered several in the audience. One
woman voiced disbelief of what I had said (preferring to believe that
greater trauma typically was related to nonrecall), while a second woman
shouted at me twice to read Lenore Terr's Unchained Memories. After a couple
more rebuffs, the session ended in a stony silence. Yet another woman
approached me and bluntly stated that she did not believe what I had said. I
told her that I had a signed letter from Williams affirming my observations.
This woman shrugged her shoulders and walked away smiling, as if to say that
she still did not believe me. This appears to be an example of the resistant
nature of strong beliefs toward discrepant information.
In the final analysis of the Williams data, the nonsignificant trend of
force being associated with greater recall is probably a confound wherein
both greater force and greater recall are associated with older age at time
of abuse. Nevertheless, mine was a legitimate question to raise during a
session on traumatic memory where it was stated that events that are more
traumatic are more likely to be dissociated from consciousness. The scalding
reaction I received from the audience supports the view that group social
representations are not amenable to contradiction (Guerin, in press), and
indicates that these are not issues open for discussion.
Skepticism and Satanism
The next session featured lawyer John Kiker and therapists Noblitt, Michael
Moore, and Jan Maclean on the topic of the travails of being sued. Moore
described in detail how violated he felt by being sued by former patients.
Maclean stated you can always believe the stories children tell of being
abused -- children might make up other things, but they never make up
traumatic events. I asked the panel what they thought of Steve Ceci's work.
There was a moment of dead silence. None of the four panelists had ever
heard of Ceci, who is one of the top developmental psychologists in the
country and is well known for his recent experiments demonstrating the
suggestibility of children. Ceci's "mousetrap" experiments (Ceci 1993; Ceci
and Bruck 1995) demonstrated that repeated interviews regarding a false
traumatic event (getting a finger caught in a mousetrap and being taken to
the hospital) can result in a portion of children saying (and apparently
believing) that the fictional traumatic event occurred. After I described
this experiment, the panelists concluded (without reading Ceci's papers)
that "these analogue studies" cannot be generalized to the real world.
It seems incredible that a psychological conference could be constructed
with a seminar focusing on legal issues and the testimony of children in
court, without a single person involved ever having heard of Ceci, who has
contributed so much in this area. Indeed, this was the third day of the
conference and there had been much talk of children's accusations of abuse,
but not one mention of Ceci's research, which was why I felt obliged to pose
the question. Often when I attend lectures I ask the speakers what they
think of criticisms against them.
Immediately after the session a man connected with the conference demanded
to know who I was, where I was from, and why I had asked the question. He
was not satisfied with my answers and became visibly agitated when I tried
to describe Ceci's experiments in greater detail. He soon gave up and
informed me in a brusque tone that "everyone here thinks you are a plant."
Perturbed, I entered the main hallway where I was confronted by Perskin, who
asked if I had set out any literature in the bathroom. Apparently, someone
had set out flyers from the Temple of Set, a satanic church, in the men's
room!
Conclusion
Conspiracy theories have operated in many societies at many times and may be
seen from a social-psychological perspective as serving certain functions
within society. Conspiracy theories may of course represent real
conspiracies, but they may also act in a manner similar to racist
stereotyping in which the targeted group is seen as deviant and deeply
immoral (Moscovici 1987). Conspiracy scholarship is on the one hand
irrational, while on the other "far more coherent than the real world, since
it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities. It is, if not
wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic" (Hofstadter 1965, p. 36).
Conspiracy theories offer individuals well-organized enemies against whom
the self is defined; this offers them a guiding structure and purpose (Farr
1987).
I frequently observed a categorical rejection of the possibility that there
could be "false" memories of traumatic events, and that anyone who made such
claims must be "dirty" or a part of the "backlash," and that such claims
could be dismissed without serious consideration. There was clearly an
assumptive worldview or social representation that unified the audience and
speakers, deviation from which would brand one as a spy. Actual debate was
an anathema. The assumptions that united the group often veered toward
conspiracism, though the particular elements of the conspiratorial plots
could change from person to person (satanic cults, New World Order, etc.).
Most, though by no means all, of the therapists appeared to be previously
unaware of New World Order conspiracy, though some appeared receptive to
such ideas. Many seemed to be familiar with and believe in the Operation
Monarch conspiracy, despite the lack of credible evidence for this. Of
course, belief in conspiracies does not necessarily indicate therapeutic
incompetence. However, I would be worried if those therapists interviewing
children who are suspected of being victims of sexual abuse believed that
the biblical revelation was coming in the form of satanic U.N. troops
sweeping up children in black helicopters.
We cannot know what effect these therapists' conspiratorial beliefs may have
on their clients. What we can see from these anecdotes is that strong
beliefs are highly resistant to discrepant input and they do have a certain
persuasive power. An indication of the influence of this conference can be
seen in a quote from Jerry Leonard, a physicist who attended and wrote a
review of the conference (Leonard 1995), in which he stated:#### I came away
with the opinion that cults are far more prevalent, well connected,
sophisticated and dangerous than I had ever dreamed . . . apparently, this
type of cult activity is fairly widespread. Police departments have stumbled
on well organized nationwide child kidnapping rings. Ted Gunderson . . .
described one case in which he personally uncovered an elementary school
which had been built on a system of tunnels through which children were
taken into neighboring houses . . . to participate in Satanic ritual abuse.
. . . It is my personal view that the larger satanic cults are being
manipulated by the federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies from
behind the scenes. Leonard informed me that this was his introduction to
claims of cult child abuse. This testimonial demonstrates the persuasive
power of the rumors that were put forth at this conference, at least to
someone who was receptive to hearing them.
We have no way of knowing the percentage of practicing therapists who are
represented by this style of thinking. Even if only a very small minority of
the therapeutic community is represented, it is troubling to think of the
effect these therapists may have on their colleagues, to say nothing of
their clients. The theories presented at this conference may at times find
wider appeal among more traditional therapists who are searching for
evidence of cults, and it appears that such theories have enjoyed fairly
wide popular circulation in the recent past (Victor 1993). Sherrill Mulhern
(1991, 1994) has outlined the role played by conspiracy theories both
historically, and at prestigious gatherings of psychologists. While the
majority of psychological trauma specialists are not "conspiracists," they
may at times be influenced by conspiracy claims, such as the claim that
tunnels existed under the McMartin preschool, because such claims resemble
or circumstantially support in some way the memories reported by clients.
The possibility of right-wing racist organizations using the present
mental-health dilemma for their political gain is something therapists
working in this area should be aware of. Therapists who only seek what is
best for their clients may at times be vulnerable to propaganda put out by
such groups. In the end it is the client, along with the client's family,
who suffers. Whether motivated by such groups, claims that critics are
active CIA agents who are engaged in a secret war against the American
public, or that they are part of a nationwide backlash against belief in
child abuse, only serve to make some therapists antagonistic to all forms of
criticism, regardless of the motives of the critic. This is unfortunate
because, as trauma therapist and researcher John Briere stated at the 1995
APA meeting, many of the criticisms have merit, and the field will be made
better, not worse, because of them.
Note
I would like to thank Sherrill Mulhern for comments.
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About the Author
Evan Harrington is a graduate student in social psychology at Temple
University, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (comments), [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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