Harvard president calls planned Black Mass 'abhorrent'

[AtheistCrusader]

59. I want to know why you keep pulling this 'ridiculed victims of sexual abuse card' as if

it is relevant to THIS issue, and as if it was proven they were any such thing.

Please address the points I raised upthread about 'suppressed memories' not being a DSM-recognized condition, and the massive jury awards to people misled by 'memory recovery therapists' in the 90's from the 'therapists' to both the victims sent to jail, and victims that were convinced they were sexually abused, when they were in fact, not.

This was a REALLY big issue in the 90's, and Harvard has, to the best of my knowledge, lead the field in determining there was actually no cause to think this issue existed, and led to people literally being released from jail for bogus, yet convincing accusations.

There IS no 'approved' memory recovery therapy for this sort of supposed 'suppressed memory', and every major western medicine psychological society, from Australia, to the EU, has cautioned that it is apparently useless, and prone to fabricating false memories entirely out of whole cloth.


I'm sure it must be fun to think you have a TOTALLY UNRELATED trump card that no one will touch, but you see, some people are actually interested in how the human mind stores and retrieves memories, and have been following these studies and the core science of it, right through it's heyday in the 90's, to today.

You have raised an ENTIRELY unrelated social stigma to smear the guy, and whether he's an asshole or whatever, it's not related to the actual proposed event he was trying to organize.


Edit: If you want to see how ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIC and nearly indefensible the 'recovered memory' claims were in the 90's, check out Ramona v. Isabella. (1994)

The guy lost his wife, and his job, because the claims were something that just couldn't be defended against. Not until he counter-sued and essentially put the entire practice of 'memory recovery therapy' on trial, was he able to prove the whole 'science' was total horseshit, that memories can be constructed out of nothing during guided therapy, and the memories seem totally real. He was eventually awarded a half million in damages from the 'therapist'.

Isabella should have sued the therapist too, because as a result she developed 'memories' complete with trauma, out of an event that never occurred.

This whole avenue of 'psychological science' is utterly tragic, and has gone totally awry, and that is why you won't find it in the DSM-V. That's why you hear stuff like this:

"In 2004, the government of the Health Council of the Netherlands issued a report in response to inquiries from professionals regarding RMT and memories of traumatic child sexual abuse.[11] The Health Council stated that while traumatic childhood experiences were major risk factors for psychological problems in adulthood, most traumatic memories are well remembered but can be forgotten or become inaccessible though the influence of specific circumstances precludes a simple description of the relationship between memory and trauma. The report also notes that memories can be confabulated, re-interpreted and even apparently vivid or dramatic memories can be false, a risk that is increased when therapists use suggestive techniques, attempt to link symptoms to past trauma, with certain patients and through the use of methods to stimulate memories."

If I were you, I'd withdraw that claim. What he said would be what you claimed, if in fact there were repressed memories to ridicule at all.