The X Spot

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: The Price of Tea

2012-01-16T18:23:00.000-08:00

In Recovered Memories of Abuse, Drs. Kenneth Pope and Laura Brown listed four major concerns about the Lost in the Mall Study that could just as well apply to all of the research conducted by proponents of the FMS hypothesis:

1. Does the trauma specified in the lost-in-the-mall experiment seem comparable to the trauma forming the basis of FMS?

2. What is the impact of the potentially confounding variables in claiming the shopping mall experiment to be a convincing analogue of therapy?

3. Has this line of research assumed that verbal reports provided to researchers are the equivalent of actual memories. Spanos suggested that changes in report in suggestibility research may represent compliance with social demand conditions of the research design rather than actual changes in what is recalled.*

4. If the experiment is assumed for heuristic reasons to demonstrate that an older family member can extensively rewrite a younger relative’s memory in regard to a trauma at which the older relative was present, why have FMS proponents presented this research as applying to the dynamics of therapy…but not to the dynamics of families, particularly those in which parents or other relatives may be exerting pressure on an adult to retract reports of delayed recall?

In a previously mentioned study cited by Drs. Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna, where volunteers kept a journal for 147 days and deliberately included false information in them, and afterwards were asked to pick out which items were false, most of what turned out to be inaccurate in the subjects’ recall were not particularly traumatic. This goes to the heart of one problematic area of the Lost in the Mall study. As Brainerd and Reyna’s Fuzzy Trace Theory would indicate, we tend to forget, or distort memories of the mundane. They all fall into a kind of soup. The false items included in the diary study had to have been sufficiently mundane to escape detection. If, for example, the volunteers had made up a story about a severely burned finger, or falsely noted the death of a loved one, they would have had little problem recognizing such an event as a falsity.

Part of the FMS hypothesis rests on the notion of autosuggestion–a tendency to interpolate memories in lines with biases or presuppositions. The problem here is we can see that autosuggestion to the point of overwriting one’s personal experience would be considerably difficult if the memory were truly traumatic. External suggestion of a fictional trauma would also be. If someone, even an authority figure, were to casually suggest that something devastating happened to us in our distant past (e.g., witnessing the murder of a parent), then we might dismiss the thought outright (especially if the parent in question is still living) and wonder why this person is trying to get us to believe that. If the authority did more than simply suggest, if they badgered us, cajoled, tortured us with sleep, food or water depravation, or manipulated us into accepting the false belief, we could eventually break down, and go along with whatever they said. We might even believe them, as in the case of false confessions. But what we would have at this point is a belief, not an actual experiencing of a fictional event as the term false memory would describe. Moreover, successful implantation of a traumatic belief would require far more effort than casual suggestion, another tenet of the FMS hypothesis.

Getting separated from a parent in a large crowd is fairly common, or at least it was when I was growing up. Many shopping areas and amusement parks have designated areas for children to wait while their parents come to get them (a local amusement park here calls it the “Lost Parents” shelter). While certainly stressful for the child at the time, it is nevertheless something that could have plausibly happened to any of us or to someone we know. When weighed against a lifetime of stresses, it could even seem insignificant to the point where memory distortion could occur in the same manner as the journals study. Maybe the subject wasn’t lost in a shopping mall, for example, but rather in a restaurant, or a bowling alley. He or she could still recall the emotions that they experienced, the anxiety of not being with one’s protector, and so on. But here, they could have transposed a real (but incomplete) memory onto someone else’s framework believing that they were mistaken. Thus the salient part of the gist memory (being lost) would have been quite accurate, although most of the other details would have been in error. To dub something like this a false memory would be, as Drs. Pope and Brown describe it, “naive.” It would probably be more helpful if we concede that normal memory is made up of accurate and inaccurate details.

Another problem along these lines is that in the Lost in the Mall study, the researcher is basing her assumption of false memory on what the parent or sibling has told them. Why would we assume that the relative’s memory is more accurate than that of the subject? Then too, a parent might not be so quick to acknowledge getting separated from a child because he or she had a fixation on some bargain or another. They could understandably fear that other people would regard such an admission as an example of bad parenting.

Although it’s stressful, one has to question if we can fairly call such a common event traumatic. Certainly, it is not traumatic to the degree that childhood sexual abuse would be. Thus, in answer to the first issue raised by Drs. Pope and Brown, we can clearly say that getting lost in a shopping mall is nothing comparable to the trauma that the FMS hypothesis says is so easily implanted. Even Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, the author of the Lost-in-the-Mall study, conceded this point in the Scientific American article cited previously.**

Of course, if the objective of the Lost-in-the-Mall study were to actually induce a fictional trauma, then it would have severely crossed the line of research ethics. Characterizing the experience as “mildly traumatic,” in some ways serves to minimize the ethical concerns of the study, while at the same time being able to latch it onto the arguments made by supporters of the FMSF, specifically with respect to autobiographical accuracy and external suggestion.

As for the second issue, whether or not the Lost-in-the-Mall study is a “convincing analogue” of the therapeutic process, one would have to weigh the similarities and the differences. In both cases, someone would have been in charge, would have interacted with the subject one-on-one, and would have perhaps offered advice or opinions. If Dr. Loftus, or similarly credential professional were the interviewer, then perhaps it would be a suitable comparison to therapy in that respect. But in some of the more high profile examples, the authority conducting the study was an undergraduate student learning how to be a credentialed professional.

The dynamics of both situations would grant a substantial degree of authority to the professional, in which the subject would have placed his trust. However, the goals of the study differ from that of psychotherapy. The first is concerned with gathering data; the second is centered around the well-being of the subject. While I could imagine that a therapist might be deceptive with certain patients (especially in a crisis situation where restoring order becomes paramount), that isn’t his or her primary goal. The study, on the other hand, had acceptance of the supposed lie as its main objective.

The settings would be different, of course, leading to other “confounding variables.” But the role of family in alliance with the psychologist in opposition to the subject, is a critical difference here. Even though the family might not be witting participants in the experimenter’s deception, their authority is marshaled by the researcher for the sole purpose of coercing the subject to confess a belief in something that allegedly didn’t occur.

So, in order for someone to say that the LITM study is a convincing analogue of therapy, they would have to show specific cases of actual therapy where the shrink’s sole purpose was to persistently manipulate, coerce, and deceive the patient in order to get them to accept a falsehood.

Okay, maybe that’s happened. Still, that kind of thing would seem to be exceedingly rare. A mad psychiatrist manipulating his or her patients for the sheer pleasure of having an army of psycho zombies (who pay him or her $200 an hour) to control sounds like the stuff of grindhouse movies. Of course, if you look hard enough, and long enough, then you’ll eventually find just about anything. But this would lead many a rational person to think that such wouldn’t really be the norm. Therefore, the sweeping generalizations abounding in the FMS hypothesis–implantation is easy, it just takes mild suggestion, even by accident by competent and expert shrinks alike–don’t seem to hold water.

In reference to Drs Pope and Brown’s second issue, one has to question the LITM study’s relevance to the therapeutic process, and any of the studies offered by Dr.s Brainerd and Reyna. It would therefore seem that none of these studies offer a "convincing analogue" of therapy, and are thus making apples-to-oranges types of arguments.

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* The authors are specifically referring to a 1994 paper written by Dr. Nicholas Spanos titled “Multiple identity Enactments and Multiple Personality Disorder: A Sociocognitive Perspective” which appeared in Psychological Bulletin, v. 116.

**Last post.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: Political Science

2011-12-31T18:39:00.000-08:00

Former American Psychological Association Ethics Chair Dr. Kenneth Pope and forensic psychologist Dr. Laura Brown co-wrote a response to the ongoing False Memory Syndrome (FMS) controversy in their 1996 book Recovered Memories of Abuse. In it they chronicled the rise of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and noted the impact it had on the general public (and in some cases, on mainstream psychology). Most important, they examined the context in which the FMS movement arose, and called into question the methodology and conclusions of the research that supports the FMSF’s major claims.

One of the key observations made by Drs. Pope and Brown is that the emergence of FMS did not occur in a scientific or therapeutic context. Citing Judith Herman’s 1992 book Trauma and Memory, the authors note, “…that the study of trauma is inherently political, given that any discussion of trauma requires the uncovering of abhorrent social realities that a society may wish to minimize or deny.”

The political nature of the FMS debate originates in cultural values. The authors note that our society considers sexual offenses especially heinous. In most states, for example, parents have a legal right to exact physical violence in the form of corporal punishment, or yell at kids, or otherwise act in a threatening manner. Sexual contact between children and adults--even if not overtly violent--is illegal across the nation. This results in an extraordinary tension between the drive to protect childhood and our firm beliefs in parenting freedom. Worse, this tension rests upon an understanding that is murky, often clouded by intricate circumstances involving emotional needs and financial dependency. To compound it all, the question of childhood sexual abuse often finds reduction in two mutually incompatible narratives: “You did this to me,” as opposed to “No I didn’t.”

Under these circumstances, the public often values bottom-line answers over empirical accuracy. The tendency is to believe either that all claims of recovered memory of abuse have to be true, or that all claims of recovered memory are inherently false. As Drs. Pope and Brown wrote:

Sexual abuse of children is a highly charged topic seeming to create impatient social demands for instant clarity that may be superficial, misleading, or downright wrong, rather than patient tolerance needed until ambiguities can be carefully, adequately explored….The pull to arrive at this sort of pseudo certainty is strong when the issue is childhood sexual abuse.

Here, the authors point out that sweeping generalization in any direction could lead to severe problems for the therapist, the patient, and the accused. It is in this regard that Drs. Pope and Brown had serious reservations about the claims made by each side of this debate regarding the scope of this problem. On the one hand, some believe that as many as 38% of the population has experienced some sort of childhood sexual abuse, while some FMS advocates put the figure at 3.3 per million, or .003%. Although the authors point out that some of this disparity can be explained by differing definitions of sexual abuse (e.g., some only count heterosexual vaginal intercourse, while others include oral and anal sex, mutual masturbation, erotic kissing, or lewd behavior without physical contact), some of the disparity also originates in methodological error. In one instance, they cite FMSF co-founder Hollida Wakefield’s assertion that nine out of every ten accusations of sexual abuse by children are false They questioned how Wakefield could be so sure that was the case, since she didn’t offer any empirical studies to support the contention.

While both sides might have reached questionable conclusions, the authors note that the claims made by those supporting the FMS hypothesis were especially egregious. After all, the opponents of the FMS hypothesis had at least some empirical basis for the 38% figure.* Proponents of the FMS could not really offer anything other than the Lost in the Mall study to support a claim of false memory implantation, and even then the figures it reached would not account for the numbers cited by proponents.

In fact, Drs. Pope and Brown seemed especially dismayed by the lack of methodological rigor in the pro-FMS camp. For starters, how does one actually determine if a memory is accurate or not? In this regard, the authors cited a number of considerable number of pro-FMS sources. In this literature, they observed:

It continues to be unclear if the protocol of any research purporting to validate the FMS diagnosis in large numbers of persons used any criterion other than the decision-rule that all recovered memories of abuse are inherently false. Statements by some FMSF proponents have seemed to characterize recovered memories of trauma as objectively false per se. FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board member Harrison Pope and his colleague James Hudson….emphasized that ’[t]raumatic experiences are memorable’…; asserted that there has never been a confirmed case of ’noncontrived amnesia among neurologically intact individuals over the age of 6 who experienced events sufficiently traumatic that no one would be expected to simply forget them’…; and asserted that trauma survivors in scientifically valid studies unanimously remembered the events….’: Founding FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board members Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager…wrote, “People who undergo severe trauma remember it….” Martin Gardner…asserted that ’[b]etter-trained, older psychiatrists do not believe that childhood memories of trauma can be repressed for any length of time, except in rare cases of actual brain damage….And there is abundant evidence that totally false memories are easily aroused in the mind of a suggestible patient….’ FMSF…itself published the claim: ‘Psychiatrists advising the Foundation members seem to be unanimous in the belief that memories of such atrocities cannot be repressed. Horrible incidents of childhood are remembered…..’**

Drs. Pope and Brown also take to task other claims made by the FMSF and supporters, among them the contention that sexuality between adults and children is usually either benign or beneficial to the child. In that regard, they cited a 1994 paper written by Stephen Ceci, Mary Lyndia Crotteau Huffman, Elliot Smith and Elizabeth Loftus titled “Repeatedly Thinking about a Non-Event: Source Misattributions among Preschoolers” (Consciousness and Cognition, v.3):

It is not clear that fondling or even fellatio are experienced by infants and young children as assault; they may at times be pleasurable or neutral, thus not carrying the psychic trauma needed for repression.

The authors also quoted a NY Times article about Rev. Dr. Ralph Underwager where the minister/shrink asserted “….‘scientific evidence’ showed 60% of women sexually abused as children reported that the experience had been good for them.” Underwager further contented that the same could be true for boys too.

Once again, we have a figure (60% of women), an invocation to “scientific evidence,” with no empirical studies offered to substantiate that claim. As to the claim made by Loftus et al that young children undergoing rape not involving penetration might not carry sufficient enough trauma for repression, that could very well be true. Such children could even recall the experience as neutral or pleasurable. But as was the case with Children of God founder David Berg, even if remembered fondly, the molestation can harm the child. And in Berg’s case, the negative consequences of his nostalgic memories of abuse damaged the lives of literally thousands of people.

Perhaps the most serious question raised by Recovered Memories of Abuse is the relevance of prior (and future) research of false memory to the issue so central to the FMSF. The most glaring fallacy in the FMS hypothesis is the conflation of two distinct issues: “false” memory, and memory distortion. Psychologists, by and large, have understood for many years that distortion in memory takes place. Many a layperson could tell you the same thing. It’s commonsense, really. But does forgetting specific details in a story such as “The War of the Ghost,” a story that the subject has read twice, in a non-stressful situation, that is also outside his conceptual framework, constitute a “false memory”? As Drs. Pope and Brown wrote:

The use of the terms ‘false memory’ and ‘true memory’ are problematic in light of research and theory about memory. Most paradigms seem to suggest that ‘true’ and ‘false’ are naive or misleading labels when applied to memory, which tends toward a mixture of the accurate and inaccurate. Additionally, a review of the research on this topic finds a confusion of meanings; a ‘false memory’ in one study refers to the inclusion of the wrong word in a list…., while in another it might describe a complex series of interactions that have been deceptively suggested to a research participant by a family or friend…., or by a researcher who represents the information as coming from the research participant’s parent…. In the popular literature, such terminology often reflects the standpoint of the writer, and the writer’s assumptions about whether a reported memory is valid or not. In such instances, the label ‘true’ or ‘false’ may have little or nothing to do with the validity or invalidity of the reported memory and reflect instead the writer’s response to the political pressures in this area.

Moreover, the authors raised questions about the application of research done on memory distortion to the issue central to the FMSF’s core reason for existing: namely, the defense against untrue allegation of childhood sexual abuse made by adults who recovered memories of the crime during therapy. They levy four major criticisms of the research cited in the last five posts as it specifically applies to recovered memory of childhood sexual abuse. In the next few posts, I will revisit the research, the examples and conclusions presented in the last five.

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*That figure came about in the course of a 1994 study done by University of New Hampshire psychology professor Dr. Linda Meyer Williams titled “Recall of Childhood Trauma: A Prospective Study of Women’s Memories of Child Sexual Abuse” (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, v. 62). In this study, Williams followed up on 129 women who had actually suffered childhood sexual abuse, as documented at the time by hospital and police records. Forty-nine women (37.9%) responded to a list of questions. The flag question asked if they were sexually abused as a child. For those women who recalled the abuse, 16% acknowledged that they had in fact forgotten it at one time in their lives, but eventually remembered it.

Dr. Meyer Williams’ methodology has since been called into question, and its clear in Drs. Pope and Brown’s recitation of the study that they have some skepticism about it too. If someone answered no to a flag question, for example, it could be that they just don’t want to talk about it, or admit it to strangers (especially researchers). That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those women forgot the abuse. Rather, it means that there is no good way of determining how many were simply denying the abuse, and how many honestly couldn’t remember.

**The sources cited in this passage:

Gardner, Martin. 1993. “The False Memory Syndrome.” Skeptical Inquirer, v. 17

Loftus, Elizabeth. 1988 (1980). Memory: Surprising New Insights into How We Remember and Why We Forget. NYC: Ardsley House.

Loftus, Elizabeth, Maryanne Garry & Julie Feldman, 1994. “Forgetting Sexual Trauma: What Does It Mean when 38% Forget?” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, v. 62,

Pope, Harrison & James Hudson. 1995. “Can Individuals ‘Repress’ Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse? An Examination of the Evidence.” Psychiatric Annals v. 25.

Wakefield, Hollida & Ralph Underwager. 1994. Return of the Furies: An Investigation into Recovered Memory Therapy. Chicago, IL: Open Court.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: The Malling of America

2011-12-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

Arguably the most widely cited study demonstrating the implanting of false memory was conducted by FMSF Scientific Advisory Board member Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. As she has written in a number of pieces over the years, and has spoken about publicly in the national media, her inspiration for the experiment came from a couple of sources. As a memory expert, her research on memory distortion began as a young scholar back in the 1970s. But the “germ” of the idea, as she called it, came about during a 1991 birthday party. Also in attendance were a friend and his twelve-year old daughter. As Loftus described the subject matter of her studies, the friend called over his child and nonchalantly asked if she had remembered the time she got lost in the shopping mall as a little girl. After some “prodding,” the daughter not only recalled the incident in front of Loftus, but elaborated on it in great detail.

Only one problem: according to Loftus’ friend, the incident never occurred.

That fall, Dr. Loftus extended her research by offering extra-credit to undergraduate students in her cognitive psychology course who could implant false memories on people they knew. As she wrote in a paper titled “Lost in the Mall: Misrepresentations and Misunderstandings” (Ethics and Behavior, v. 9, n.1, 1999):

I would typically give my class an extra credit homework assignment along these lines: I told them to go out and try to distort a memory or to create in someone’s mind a ‘memory’ for something that did not exist. My hope was that they would discover how relatively easy or hard this could be, depending on the conditions, and that once a memory was acquired in this way, it can seem as real to a person as a memory that is a result of one’s own ordinary perceptual sensations.

Some of the students who took up the extra-credit offer came back with stunning results, among them Linda Binet, who convinced her daughter that she’d gotten lost on a ranch, and Jim Coan, who convinced his younger brother Chris that he, in fact, had gotten lost in a local shopping mall. For good measure, he recorded the interview.

Coan, who would later go on to do graduate work in psychology at the University of Arizona, admitted that at the time he took the cognitive psychology course it was only “tangential” to his real goal of attending medical school. In a 1997 paper titled “Lost in a Shopping Mall: An Experience with Controversial Research” (Ethics and Behavior, v. 7, n.3, 1997), he chronicled his meteoric rise from undergrad with tangential interest to academic superstar when Loftus played the recording Coan brothers's conversation for the media. As he wrote:

Only months before, I had been a completely unknown undergraduate student in Psychology among hundreds. I had been unable to enter the University of Washington without first receiving an Associates Degree from a community college due to my poor high school grades. I had wanted to go to medical school, but did not believe it was possible. Suddenly, I was working closely to one of the biggest names in psychology [namely, Dr. Loftus], and seeing my name appear in the New York Times.

Extra-credit assignments and party conversation offers anecdotal evidence, of course. But in order for anyone in the academic world to take the concept seriously, Dr. Loftus and her colleagues would need to embark on a formal study. Trouble was, getting the approval from the university, for it risked violating ethical standards. Aware of this, Loftus explained in her 1994 book The Myth of Repressed Memories:

The trick was to design a study powerful enough to prove that it is possible to implant a false memory while also winning the approval of the university’s Human Subjects Committee, which reviews proposed research projects to ensure that they will not be harmful to participants.

Normally, when dealing with field research of any kind, academics have to learn and test on (and in my case become certified in) issues pertaining to human subject experimentation. The reasons for this are long and historic. But to cut to the chase, universities around the US instituted such procedures after a number of experiments (often psychological ones) actually traumatized or harmed volunteer subjects. For this reason, studies done on trauma and memory require highly specialized experts (e.g., Dr. James Chu, Harvard Medical School) who can examine patients in vivo, or as the traumatic situation arises. After all, it would be unethical to induce trauma artificially in order to observe its effects on the volunteer. Here, Dr. Loftus is intending to impose a mildly traumatic memory onto someone, or to get them to believe that something that something stressful happened to them in the past.

The study approved by the University of Washington consisted of (1) an interview with parents or relatives of subjects about childhood incidents, (2) the selection of three such incidents, (3) the inclusion of these three incidents and a fourth one about getting lost in a shopping mall, and (4) the subject’s response. The researchers gave twenty-four subjects (ages ranging from eighteen to fifty-three) the four narratives (the three supplied by family, and the shopping mall story) and asked them to respond to each one. If they didn’t remember an incident, they were instructed to simply say that they didn’t remember it.

The results: seven of the twenty-four, or almost 29% of the subjects said that they had a “partial or full” recollection of being lost in a mall, contrary to the recall of a parent or other relative. In a follow-up interview, 25% claimed to have still remembered the incident in whole or part.

In this research, Dr. Loftus carefully pointed out that a memory of getting lost in a shopping mall is different than, say, childhood rape. According to her, the point of the experience wasn’t so much to duplicate trauma as it was to point out that people can implant false memories on others. As she wrote for Scientific American:

Of course, being lost, however frightening, is not the same as being abused. But the lost-in-the-mall study is not about real experiences of being lost; it is about planting false memories of being lost. The paradigm shows a way of instilling false memories and takes a step toward allowing us to understand how this might happen in real-world settings. Moreover, the study provides evidence that people can be led to remember their past in different ways, and they can even be coaxed into ‘remembering’ entire events that never happened.”

That last quote is particularly important, for Dr. Loftus is here qualifying the significance of the study itself. In defense of Dr. Loftus against her critics, one can fairly say that she isn’t correlating getting lost in a mall to childhood sexual abuse, but rather showing that, under the conditions she has outlined, people can have false ideas suggested to them by others. At the same time, however, the importance of this research has often been pumped up by critics and proponents of the FMS hypothesis. The latter feels that this gives concrete proof of the ability of psychologists to coerce patients into remembering wild things, hysterical things, ugly things that never happened. Furthermore, the proponents of FMS have used this study to assert that this type of suggestion is very easy to do; the doctor could, in fact, do it unconsciously.

For critics , the Lost in the Mall study typifies the ethical, methodological and reasoning problems that plague the FMS hypothesis.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: The Suggestibility of Adults

2011-12-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

Although Drs. Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna felt that children were more easily manipulated through suggestion, they gave a number of examples of adult manipulation through suggestibility in their book The Science of False Memory. They demonstrated that the same factors that create malleable testimony in youngsters also apply to grown-ups through a number of case studies.

One study they cited dealt with the question of autosuggestion, the one's tendency to manipulate his or her thoughts in deference to an overriding belief structure:

Conway and associates…have exploited this methodology to considerable advantage in some informative studies of autobiographical false memory. In the cited article, for example, two subjects, both of whom were memory researchers, kept diaries over a period of 5 months. They made diary entries for a total of 147 days, with the entries for each day being recorded either late in the evening or early the following morning. The subjects were instructed to make entries for both personal experiences and news events of the day. Diary entries for individual days were roughly six or seven sentences in length. In addition to recording true events and thoughts, subjects were asked to record altered events and thoughts and false events and thoughts. Altered events and thoughts were generated by the subjects themselves by modifying the surface form of a true event or thought while preserving its meaning….False events and thoughts were things that could have happened on a particular day, but did not.*

According to Brainerd and Reyna, suggestibility is often in deference to authority. In one example, a transcript of a legal proceeding, they illustrate not only that you can manipulate adult memory through suggestion, but that you can do so quite easily, and with almost instantaneous results.

Officer: Where’d you guys eat lunch on Saturday?

Witness: Don’t remember.

Officer: Really?

Witness: Just can’t recall.

Officer: Well, I talked to your brother’s wife, and she said that you guys ate a lunch at Burger King.”

Witness: She said that?

Officer: Yeah.

Witness: Yup, I remember now. It was Burger King.

Officer: You certain of that?

Witness: Absolutely.

The authors add, ““The indicated conversation with the brother’s wife, which led this witness to ‘remember’ with absolute certainty that he and his brother ate at Burger King, never occurred.”

From this, one can only surmise that the memory was created by the court officer during questioning, using not only his authority as, well, a court officer, but also on the authority of his sister-in-law. This jibes with third and fourth conclusion drawn by Alfred Binet (cited in previous post). The confidence exuded by the witness that he actually ate at Burger King has no bearing on whether or not he actually ate at Burger King, since the memory was apparently induced by an outside party (namely, the examining attorney). At the same time, bringing the witness’ sister-in-law into the picture expands the pool of people who can definitely place him at Burger King that Saturday. The witness now has a court officer AND a relative placing him there. Although two is the smallest group possible, we can see that plurality gives weight to the validity of a proposition.

More directly bearing on the subject of false memory in forensic examination (especially as it pertains to child abuse), the authors also cite case studies of false confessions. In one, “The Case of Mr. K,” an engineer with two kids, nine and eleven, his sons invited a friend over, who consequently complained that Mr. K fondled his genitalia.

The investigators then proceeded to Mr. K’s house to interview his wife, who also reported no knowledge of the events complained of by Mrs. L’s son. They did learn, however, that Mr. K was a heavy drinker, who was in a state of moderate intoxication during most evenings, who had been encouraged to seek medical treatment for his drinking problem, and who had been drinking on the previous evening.

.....further investigation revealed that a parent had filed a complaint four years earlier that another woman complained that Mr. K fondled the buttocks of her son. Police asked him to come to the station a second time. After grilling, and noting his alcoholic tendencies, he said ‘Well, I suppose I can’t be 100% sure that it didn’t happen….I was so blotto that maybe I can’t rule it out completely, but I sure don’t think anything like that could happen….Yeah, the boy hadn’t been drinking and I had been, so I suppose his memory of Sunday night would have to be clearer than mine.’

Here, Mr. K. has a debilitation (alcoholism) that could lead to memory blackouts. The fact that someone previously filed a charge against him, the fact that he knew he didn’t remember everything, compounded by the authority of police officers led him to speculate that he very well could have done exactly what they said he did.

In another case, Mr. E., a man characterized by the authors as “slightly retarded,” accidentally killed his infant son when he picked up the crying baby to comfort him, and then tripped over something with the kid still in his arms.

Mr. E stated in response to the researcher’s questioning that although he was sure that he could not have done such terrible things, some of the events seemed quite real to him, both at the time of the police interrogation and at the time of the forensic interview. This was particularly true of the alleged motive for the crime: being very angry toward his wife for leaving him alone with the infant when he was in a state of sleep deprivation. He further stated that at the time of the interrogation, he thought that the police interviewer’s knowledge of events must be far more accurate than his own memory and that, even now, he would be inclined to believe that some of the acts of brutality happened if it were not for the fact that he knew himself to be incapable of such savagery.

After his arrest on murder charges: "As he was taken to his cell, he complained to the attendant that the interviewer had put words into his mouth and that he had not harmed his son, which the attendant duly noted.”

Compelling forensic evidence demonstrated that Mr. E. and his child had suffered a horrendous accident, and nothing else. So despite his confession, he was released. Likewise, authorities found Mr. K. innocent. Therefore, there confessions had to have been false. The authors subsequently infer that their memories of the events were likewise false.

Bearing even more directly on the subject of recovered memories of sexual childhood abuse, Drs. Brainerd and Reyna cited the case of Dr. Diane Humenansky, a psychiatrist who suddenly found herself surrounded by patients suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). One of these patients, Elizabeth Carlson, sued Humenansky for malpractice, stating that these multiple personalities, which included memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), had no basis in fact, but instead were planted into consciousness by the doctor’s suggestion. Commenting on this case, Brainerd and Reyna stated:

During the initial trial, [Dr. Diane] Humenansky [M.D.] testified that she did not believe that patients could recover false memories of sexual abuse; she did not believe in the phenomenon of false memory; and her patients’ recovered memories were therefore true. However, the presiding judge ruled that the psychological theory upon which recovered-memory therapy is based--the theory of repression--does not meet an accepted standard of scientific proof and that, in consequence, expert testimony that assumes the validity of this notion could not be presented at trial. Following a 6-week trial, the jury awarded the plaintiff more than $2.6 million for medical expenses, loss of income, pain, and suffering. The patient was awarded a further $461,000 for anticipated future damages, and her husband was awarded 210,000 for loss of partnership.**

Drs. Brainerd and Reyna summarized many of the arguments made by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and sympathetic researchers. While not exactly defining false memory, or clarifying what it is as opposed to what it isn’t, the researchers nevertheless present a convincing case, based on the fact that memory is fallible, and subject to such things as suggestion (from authorities, peers, or the subject herself), coercion (in the case of false confessions), or just overall deficiency in how we remember things. They contended that false memories are common, everyday occurrences, that affect all aspects of remembrance. Moreover, they said that others–perhaps due to maliciousness, perhaps due to incompetence–can easily plant false memories in a subject.

At the same time, many experts have expressed grave doubts to these and similar findings based on a number of factors. To them, the evidence cited by Drs. Brainerd and Reyna neither proves the existence of false memory, nor addresses the matter of recovered memory, especially in cases of trauma. Instead, these studies and this evidence indicates something that’s a bit more complex.

______________________
*The authors appear to be citing a number of studies simultaneously, here, those conducted by Dr. M.A. Conway, and others not conducted by him, but done by others who presumably had some professional relationship to Dr. Conway in the field of autobiographical memory. The actual study cited here was done by Dr. Craig R. Barclay (University of Rochester), and Dr. Henry Wellman (University of Michigan), and published under the title “Accuracies and Inaccuracies in Autobiographical Memory” (Journal of Memory and Language, 1987).

**Without delving deeply into the case against Dr. Humenansky, or the reasons for the judge to disallow testimony obtained through recovered memory, many would point out that courts have ruled in favor of the admissibility of such evidence because it meets the requirements of the Daubert standard. Some experts say that whether or not the court accepts recovered memory as evidence could depend on the jurisdiction, the nature of the statute of limitations, the specific expert witness, or court officers involved.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: Just a Suggestion

2011-12-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

Any schoolteacher, or developmental psychologist, could tell you about Jean Piaget. His most noteworthy contribution to science consisted of a model of intellectual development over the course of childhood. The model broke down cognitive growth into four stages: (1) sensorimotor, (2) preoperational, (3) concrete operations, and (4) formal operations. In the sensorimotor stage, a child’s primary thoughts center on control of the body and the exploration of the world through the senses. It’s in this stage that a child learns to walk, distinguish sounds and colors and so on. In the preoperational stage, the child develops a sense of self while she continues to master sensorimotor tasks. During this stage of life (between two and seven), the child has yet to become acquainted with logical thinking, and tends to see the world as operating on a magical level (e.g., belief in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas, and so on). In the stage of concrete operations (ages seven to thirteen), children can grasp logical concepts, but only in a limited fashion. They stop believing in “little kid stuff,” but at the same time can only understand things in a very black-and-white way, and can only apply their reasoning to things that they can directly experience. (As my psyche professors often said, a number of people will never leave this stage of development, and remain will here to old age.) The fourth level, formal operations (ages thirteen-on), is the adult thinking, the ability to apply logic to abstract concepts and critique principles; formal thinkers can even critique the value of logic itself.

Despite the fame of this model, Drs. Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna pay closer attention to Piaget’s work in another area: suggestibility. Specifically, they point to his criticism of ‘mesmerization,’ a belief in the natural magnetic properties of animal life over inanimate matter. Developed by physician Franz Mesmer, it eventually morphed into a crude form of hypnosis over the course of the Nineteenth Century. Piaget’s take on this was that mesmerization, or hypnosis, worked on suggestibility. In other words, the hypnotist has no power that the subject doesn’t forfeit to him or her. Or, as noted neurologist Jean-Martin-Charcot said, hypnosis was itself “an induced hysteria--what doctors nowadays might refer to more formally as induced dissociation.

Suggestibility plays a key role in Brainerd and Reyna’s premise, because they believe that false memories come about through “spontaneous distortion processes,” or “autosuggestion.”

Specifically, autosuggestion plays a larger role in the thought processes of children, precisely for the reasons alluded to by Piaget’s cognitive development model. After all, if a child is prone to accept Santa Claus as a reality, then he or she can ascribe a number of different magical causes for observable effects, thus (according to Brainerd and Reyna) creating a false memory of causality. They back this observation up with studies of what others called ‘the long-memory improvement effect.’* In these studies, children showed more accuracy in their memories after more time had elapsed. This might, at first, seem counterintuitive. After all, for most of us, the more time passes, the less we remember. The authors concluded that for preoperational children, there is no memory of events because they simply cannot grasp the underlying logic behind events. As Brainerd and Reyna wrote:

Piaget’s second, and more crucial prediction, is what Altemeyer, Fulton and Burney (1968) dubbed the long-memory improvement effect. On the 8-month test, contrary to the commonsense prediction of forgetting-induced deterioration, the memory of children who were classified below the concrete-operational level should be better than on the 1-week test. The reason is that many children will have made the logical concept that is necessary (according to Piaget) for accurate memory.

Children also have a tendency to believe what adults tell them, even if it runs contrary to their experience. The authors make the rather commonsense observation that authority can skew the response of children, who tend to defer to adults’ version of events because they presume that they are more accurate than their own. And even if they don’t assume that, there’s little they can do to clarify or champion such matters. After all, they’re too busy struggling with their conceptual framework to challenge the confidence authority exudes.

The authors further illustrate the concept of suggestibility in children by quoting verbatim the very same transcriptions that I cited earlier, in the series on McMartin Preschool. In this example, it should be clear to professional and layman alike that psychiatric social worker Kee McFarlane and pediatrician Dr. Astrid Heger’s aggressive questioning techniques coerced inaccurate responses from their preoperational interviewees. Brainerd and Reyna cite Alfred Binet’s findings on memory distortion in explanation of events similar to what went on at McMartin:

On basis of his findings, Binet (1900) offered four conclusions about false-memory reports that are still significant today. First, he concluded that the memories of younger children, older children, and adults are all susceptible to memory distortion, whether by autosuggestion or by external misinformation, but that young children are most highly susceptible….Second, Binet concluded…that the nature of an interviewer’s language and the form of the questions that are posed can powerfully distort memory reports….Third, Binet interpreted his finding of a lack of relationship between confidence and accuracy as demonstrating once an erroneous response is given, it is incorporated into memory as a faithful representation of the original events….. Fourth, Binet concluded that subjects, particularly children, were more susceptible to suggestion when tested in groups than when tested individually.

The McMartin children, for example, were often cited as the fundamental source of false information, even though most adults following the trial attributed this to the manner in which questions were put to them, thus illustrating Binet conclusions one and two. Conclusions three and four, however, apply more generally to the public, and are more readily seen in adults. Later in the book, the authors illustrated these conclusions by citing actual case studies. But when we consciously make the distinction between memory and belief, one can demonstrate that Binet’s last two conclusions explain a lot about the behavior of the McMartin parents.

____________________________________
*Drs. Robert Altemeyer, Daniel Fulton and Kent Berney did the initial study in 1968, which they published in a paper titled “Long-Term Memory Improvement,” appearing in vol. 3, n.4 (Sep 1969) of Child Development.

An Undemocratic Party

2011-11-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you're an oilman, living in Texas almost a century ago. If so, you would have been pleased about the Oil Depletion Allowance, a special tax exemption that would let you knock off 5% of your declared petroleum income for, um, depreciation. By electing such powerful politicians as House Speaker John Nance Garner, Samuel Rayburn, Hatton Summers and others, you get the government to jack up that allowance to 27.5% during the height of the Depression. That would call for a celebration, wouldn’t it?

Well, a celebration it was, until the American people elected this killjoy of a president named John F. Kennedy, who sought to reduce the Oil Depletion Allowance to something more reasonable. What’s worse, his brother, the Attorney General, was busy digging up dirt on your Washington lackeys, most notably the Vice-President of the United States, who’s chief aide had already been caught accepting bribes from shaky lobbyists with Mafia connections.

Now, imagine a party taking place on the eve of the JFK assassination, given at the house of Clint Murchison, Sr., an obscenely wealthy Texas oilman. Imagine a number of other powerful oilmen, surrounded by beautiful women, in attendance. Then the FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover himself, shows up out of the blue. When the guest of honor arrives shortly afterward, he, the oilmen, and Hoover, adjourn to a private room for an important meeting.

So, imagine that the guest of honor is none other than Lyndon B. Johnson. Furthermore, imagine that his mistress is at the party. He sees her after the meeting and declares to her “Those [blankety-blank] Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s not a threat, That’s a promise.”

Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. Just listen to what the surviving witnesses have to say.

Figure 1. Excerpt from The Men Who Killed Kennedy, “The Guilty Men”

Update: BoMoMaPiLa has contributed this excellent link featuring another interview with LBJ mistress Madeleine Brown. In it, she gives further details about this historically significant party.

Meet the Commission

2011-11-21T23:26:00.000-08:00

Formally known as The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, most of us simply refer to it as the Warren Commission. Assisted by numerous researchers, and junior counsels, the commission itself consisted of seven men. Here’s some information about each of them.

Earl Warren (1891-1974)
Resume: B.A. in Legal Studies, University of California, Berkeley (1912); LL.B., University of California, Berkeley (1914); Attorney, Robinson & Robinson (1915-1916); Lieutenant, USA (1917-1918); Clerk, Judicial Committee, California State Assembly (1919-1920); Deputy City Attorney; Oakland, CA (1920-1925); District Attorney, Alameda County, CA (1925-1939); State of California Attorney General (1939-1943); Governor, California (1943-1953); Chief Justice, US Supreme Court (1953-1969).

Background: Warren cut his political teeth in the progressive faction of the U.S. Republican Party, thus prompting many of his detractors to label him a liberal. As a prosecutor, supporters depicted him as “tough on crime,” and a crusader against political corruption. As a Supreme Court Justice, he openly opposed Jim Crow, and other right-wing agendas, thus making enemies out of such ultraconservatives as Richard Nixon, and more reactionary elements within the Republican Party, among them the John Birch Society. `

At the same time, Warren was quite ambitious, and had political aspirations for high office that sometimes led him to violate his own high principles. One example of this: playing on racist fears and paranoia of voters, he called for the illegal interment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps during his gubernatorial campaign. He later expressed remorse for these actions, writing:

I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken.

To say that President Lyndon Johnson dragged him into the commission kicking and screaming would be a bit of an overstatement. But it’s not much of one. Warren twice refused participation on the panel that would bear his name, but eventually acquiesced. In a taped telephone conversation with Richard Russell, Johnson revealed that he actually had to blackmail Warren to head the commission, boasting:

Warren told me he wouldn't do it under any circumstances... I called him and ordered him down here and told me no twice and I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City... And he started crying and said, well I won't turn you down... I'll do whatever you say.

Where are they now? Lies in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA.

Gerald Ford (1913-2006)

Resume: B.A. in Economics, University of Michigan (1935); J.D., Yale University (1941); Lieutenant, USN (1942-1946); US Representative, 5th District, Michigan (1949-1973); Minority Leader, US House of Representatives (1965-1973); U.S. Vice President (1973-1974); US President (1974-1977).

Background: As a US Representative, Ford went out of his way to position himself as far to the right. As Guardian, UK reporter Harold Jackson put it:

He built up an impressive record of flat-earth conservatism. He voted against federal aid for education and housing, repeatedly resisted increases in the minimum wage, tried to block the introduction of medical care for the elderly, and consistently fought any measures to combat pollution. At the same time he supported virtually all increases in defence spending.

Before his selection to the Warren Commission, Ford was allegedly compromised in an FBI sting. The Bureau taped his secret meetings with high-powered lobbyist Fred Black at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel in DC, according to Lyndon Johnson's top aide, Bobby Baker, whom the FBI also investigated. Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s investigation into Baker and Black revealed that the latter had ties not only to such powerful oil barons as Clint Murchison, but also to underworld crime bosses, most notably Mafioso Johnny Roselli.

Some speculate that Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover both had some complicity in the death of JFK, and by selecting Ford both men could rest assured that they could control the Warren Commission investigation through him. What’s not speculation, however, is the fact that Ford served pretty much as the FBI’s spy during the investigation, updating Hoover et al as to the progress of the case on a frequent basis. A 1963 FBI memo declassified in 2008 showed that he indeed divulged Commission information to the Bureau. As former Assistant FBI Director for Counterintelligence William Sullivan wrote in his memoirs, “He [Ford] was our man, our informant, on the Warren Commission.”

Although an ardent proponent of the single-shooter theory, Ford nevertheless noted that the CIA either destroyed or hid crucial evidence in the JFK assassination in his book A Presidential Legacy and the Warren Commission. He also let slip to New York Times publisher and editor (respectively) Abraham Rosenthal and Arthur Sulzberger that the CIA did conspire to assassinate political leaders.

Where are they now? Currently lies with his wife Betty at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, Grand Rapids, MI.

Allen Dulles (1893-1969)

Resume: B.A, Princeton University (1916); M.A., Princeton University (1918); J.D., George Washington University (1926); US Foreign Service (1916-1927); Division Chief for Near Eastern Affairs (1922-1927); Security Consultant to the US Government (1927-1961); Office of Strategic Services (1942-1945); Director of Central Intelligence (1953-1961).

Background: Allen Welsh Dulles hailed from a well-connected family with a history of political service. His grandfather, John Foster, served as Secretary of State during the Benjamin Harrison administration. His brother, John, was Secretary of State during the Eisenhower administration, and his sister, Eleanor, was a diplomat.

A career spy, Dulles consulted on national security matters for decades before heading the Central Intelligence Agency. Despite his reputation as a gentleman, moderate and anti-fascist, some depict him as a ruthless and dedicated cold warrior who forged alliances with Nazis and ex-Nazis before and after World War II. In their 1994 book The Secret War against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, former US Army intelligence officer John Loftus, and former Australian political advisor Mark Aarons implicate both Allen and John Dulles, as well as a man named St. John Philby, in a plot to establish a financial network between pro-Nazi German corporations, American oil companies, and wealthy Saudis. Others have listed the Dulles brothers as investors in dummy corporations used by Martin Bormann to hide stolen Nazi lucre in Aktion Alderflug, a capital flight program.

Dulles also spearheaded Operation PB-SUCCESS, the CIA-led violent 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan government, and the assassination of President Jacobo Árbenz on behalf of the United Fruit Company. The land reforms initiated by Árbenz threatened to cut into the profits of the fruit conglomerate. Dulles was on UFC’s board of directors, and a substantial stockholder.

As Director of Central Intelligence, Dulles and Deputy Director of Ops Richard Bissell convinced President Kennedy to back their plans to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Dulles and Bissell later conceded that they knew that the Bay of Pigs didn’t have a snowball’s chance of succeeding. For them, the point was to trap JFK into starting a war with Cuba. The President figured this out pretty quickly, publicly acknowledging the conspiracy, firing Dulles and Bissell, and relieving the CIA of the responsibility for peacetime covert ops.*

Lt. Colonel Fletcher Prouty, who knew the Dulles brothers personally, and had briefed them many times, saw the selection of Dulles to the Warren Commission as a potential conflict of interest. After all, Dulles would then be in charge of solving the murder of the man who had fired him--a man he had motive to kill.

Where are they now? Lies with Granny Dulles in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD.

Richard Russell (1897-1971)

Resume: B.L., Georgia University (1915); Seaman, USNR (1918-1919); State of Georgia Representative (1921-1931), Speaker, Georgia House of Representatives (1927-1931); Governor, Georgia (1931-1933); US Senator, Georgia (1933-1971); Chairman, Armed Services Committee; US Senate (1951-1953, 1955-1969); Chairman, Appropriations Committee, US Senate (1969-1971); President Pro Tempore, US Senate (1969-1971).

Background: Russell, along with Lyndon Johnson and Strom Thurmond, was one of the leading extremist right-wing voices of the Democratic Party. Russell and Johnson were close friends until the former’s death in 1971 (Johnson’s kids called him ‘Uncle Dick’). The two men also signed Senator Thurmond’s 1954 “Southern Manifesto,” which attempted to declare civil rights unconstitutional. During one of his Senate campaigns, Russell maintained:

As one who was born and reared in the atmosphere of the Old South, with six generations of my forebears now resting beneath Southern soil, I am willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and insure white supremacy in the social, economic, and political life of our state as any man who lives within her borders.

Kennedy’s push for a civil rights bill ironically became a reality shortly after his death when Russell’s friend, President Johnson, broke through a southern-led filibuster to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nevertheless, Kennedy faced massive opposition from his own party from southern Democrats who were outraged by his call to end Jim Crow.

Although Russell supported the single-shooter theory, he fiercely opposed the magic-bullet explanation that one shot produced a total of seven wounds in President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally.

Where are they now? Currently lies in Russell Memorial Park Cemetery, Barrow County, GA.

John Cooper (1901-1991)

Resume: B.A., Yale University (1923); Commonwealth of Kentucky Representative (1927-1929); Judge, Pulaski County, KY (1929-1938), Trustee, University of Kentucky (1939-1946); Captain, USA (1942-1946); US Delegate, United Nations (1949) US Senator, KY (1946-1948, 1952-1955, 1956-1973); US Ambassador to India (1955-1956) US Ambassador to East Germany (1974-1976).

Background: A liberal Republican, Cooper’s image was that of a populist advocate. Nicknamed “The Poor Man’s Judge” in his home district, Pulaski County, he had a reputation for finding legal ways to stay evictions of local farmers during the Depression. In some cases, he loaned defendant farmers money out of his own pocket to help settle their debts. In later years, he protested the war in Vietnam.

As a personal friend of President Kennedy, albeit from a rival party, Cooper was something of a wildcard on the Warren Commission. On the one hand, he publicly endorsed the Warren Commission’s findings. On the other hand, he resisted some of the efforts to depict Oswald as the lone shooter. Along with Representative Thomas Hale Boggs and Senator Russell, he criticized the magic-bullet explanation. Perhaps frustrated, perhaps disgusted, he was mostly known for his chronic absenteeism during Warren Commission meetings.

According to political writer C. David Heymann, Cooper privately expressed to members of the Kennedy clan his concerns that a conspiracy had, in fact, assassinated John Kennedy:

Regarding his service on the Warren Commission, Senator Cooper publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the commission's findings, terming the group's 1964 report 'premature and inconclusive.' In no uncertain terms he informed Jack's surviving brothers, Robert and Teddy, that, having personally examined thousands of shreds of documentation, he felt strongly that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone.

According to Heymann, Jacqueline Kennedy responded to Coopers information by asking, “What difference does it make? Knowing who killed him won’t bring Jack back.”

Cooper replied, “No, it won’t....But it’s important for this nation that we bring the true murderers to justice.”

Where are they now? Currently lies in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA

John McCloy (1895-1989)
Resume: LL.B, Harvard University (1921). Captain, USA (1917-1919); US Budget Director (1933-1934); Assistant Secretary of War (1941-1945); President, World Bank (1947-1949); US High Commissioner of Germany (1949-1952); Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank (1953-1960); Chairman, Ford Foundation (1958-1965); Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations (1954-1970)

Background: McCloy had numerous Nazi ties stemming from his firm’s representation of I.G. Farben and similar companies. He also shared a box with Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler during the 1936 Olympic Games. Not surprisingly, his views could be fairly characterized as racist, right-wing and sharply anti-Semitic. Roosevelt appointed him to Direct the federal budget in 1933, but McCloy resigned the post for ideological reasons, describing the New Deal as a communist-infiltrated plot against American business. Along with Earl Warren, he strongly advocated for the illegal interment of Japanese Americans. And he blamed what he called a “Hebraic influence” for leading Roosevelt astray, asserting, “...most of the bad things which it [the FDR administration] has done can be traced to it. [As] a race they seem to lack the quality of facing an issue squarely.” As Assistant Secretary of War he worked to prevent Allied Bombers from attacking the rail lines leading to Nazi death camps, despite the feasibility of such missions, and the enormous number of lives that action could have saved.

After WWII, McCloy helped protect fugitive Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie--at the time living in a US-provided safehouse--by refusing to acknowledge his new employment by the US Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). By this time heavily involved with US Intel, McCloy and like-minded hardliners saw Russian expansion as a far more serious threat than fascism. As High Commissioner of Germany during the Nuremberg proceedings, he ordered the release of nine convicted war criminals, among them businessman Alfred Krupp, and financier Friedrich Flick.

Through President Eisenhower, McCloy met and befriended Clint Murchison and other Texas oil barons who politically and financially supported Lyndon Johnson. Despite his connections to Johnson, however, McCloy was skeptical of the single-shooter theory to begin with. Moreover, he was appalled by the Commission’s “lack of urgency” in solving the case, complaining, “...trails of evidence will be lost.” An early critic of the magic-bullet explanation, he eventually came to endorse it and squelch his other doubts about the single-shooter theory.

Where are they now? Currently lies in Old Leacock Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Lancaster County, PA.

Thomas Hale Boggs (1914-1973?)
Resume: B.A. Journalism, Tulane University (1934); J.D., Tulane University (1937); Ensign, USN (1942-45); US Representative, 2nd District, Louisiana (1941-1943, 1947-1973); House Majority Whip (1962-1971); House Majority Leader (1971-1973).

Background: Throughout his life, Boggs’ opponents depicted him as a communist, or communist-sympathizer. As a result, his political career took hit points, most notably in his failed gubernatorial bid, and his defeat for reelection in 1943. He nevertheless managed to reclaim his seat four years later, and became a respected member of Congress.

Along with Senators Russell and Cooper, Boggs scoffed at the magic-bullet theory. As the lone public dissenter of the magic-bullet theory, he pretty much regarded the whole investigation as a coverup. Like Cooper and McCloy, Boggs had severe doubts about Oswald’s guilt (in whole or part) before the investigation began. But unlike the others, he increasingly expressed doubts about both the non-conspiracy explanation and the workings of the panel itself. As early JFK assassination researcher Bernard Fensterwald wrote:

Almost from the beginning, Congressman Boggs had been suspicious over the FBI and CIA's reluctance to provide hard information when the Commission's probe turned to certain areas, such as allegations that Oswald may have been an undercover operative of some sort. When the Commission sought to disprove the growing suspicion that Oswald had once worked for the FBI, Boggs was outraged that the only proof of denial that the FBI offered was a brief statement of disclaimer by J. Edgar Hoover. It was Hale Boggs who drew an admission from Allen Dulles that the CIA's record of employing someone like Oswald might be so heavily coded that the verification of his service would be almost impossible for outside investigators to establish.

Despite his misgivings, Boggs nevertheless signed off on the Warren Commission report without endorsing it. According to friends, this drove him to a crisis of conscience. Said one, “Hale felt very, very torn during his work (on the Commission) ... he wished he had never been on it and wished he'd never signed it (the Warren Report).”

According to another: “Hale always returned to one thing: Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission--on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it.”

Perhaps this explains why he urged Orleans Parish DA Jim Garrison to reopen his own investigation into the case.

Where are they now? Boggs’ flight disappeared over Alaska on 16 October 1972. Although reelected the following month, he was declared legally dead on 3 January 1973 by Congressional Resolution. His cenotaph currently stands at the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC.

______________________
*Kennedy subsequently entrusted covert ops to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

From Leon to Lee

2011-11-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

Figure 1. Excerpt from Evidence of Revision

Just think! The President of the United States is coming to your home town. And the first thing that comes to your mind is....

...Assassination?

This clip, a kinescope featuring live coverage of President John Kennedy arriving at Fort Worth, Texas on the morning of his death, seems prescient beyond belief. This broadcaster started out by mentioning--as off-handedly as possible--that Kennedy had disobeyed his Secret Service protectors just moments earlier (how he knows this, we can guess). But then this reporter just so happens to have a laundry list of extensive details on the assassination of US President William McKinley. Moreover, he apparently feels this info has some relevance to JFK’s visit to Texas.

It’s clear that the announcer prepared this material beforehand. As such, it comes across as a rather strained foreshadowing, something even the worst novelist in the world would try to avoid.

Incidentally, there are many who suspected a conspiracy in the death of William McKinley. Among them were authorities of that time, who arrested eleven others (including writer Emma Goldman) in addition to their prime suspect, Leon Czolgosz, a prototypical lone, angry nut. Witnesses at the Pan-American Exposition, where McKinley met his maker, saw a man with a rifle on one of the balconies overlooking the room. Curiously, the bullet doctors eventually pulled out of the President was a .35. Czolgosz’s gun was a .32 revolver.

President McKinley lived for over a week after his fatal shooting. Over the first six days, doctors reported improvement in his condition. After it became clear that they would have to remove the bullet, doctors couldn’t find it. As luck would have it, the Exposition had on display a real, working X-ray machine. No one thought to use it, however.

Mind you, I’m not saying there was a conspiracy in the death of President McKinley. My point is that glib statements and unquestioned suppositions often gloss over troubling questions.

For more stuff on the JFK Assassination, click here.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: The Fuzzy Gist of It

2011-11-06T19:44:00.000-08:00

In 2005, two Cornell human ecology professors, Drs. Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna, published a book titled The Science of False Memory.* Here, they cited Sir Frederic Bartlett’s "War of the Ghosts" experiment as an example of memory fallibility. While it’s quite possible for everyone here to memorize the folktale word-for-word, the limited nature of exposure precluded this for all except those manifesting exceptional or eidetic memory.

Such research demonstrates that when recalling something with culturally and temporarily limited exposure, most people cannot recall the event (i.e., the story) verbatim. What they retain is the ‘gist memory,’ an overall understanding of the story. As Professor Bartlett found, this gist is guided by a number of psychological and sociological factors, the basic framework upon which we organize our thoughts and incoming information, an internal construct of the cosmos/ Psychologists refer to this as our ‘schema.’

"The War of the Ghost" story challenges our memories because of its unfamiliarity. It simply lies outside our schema. Drs. Brainerd and Reyna demonstrate the power of schemata to shape our memories by citing a number of studies that simultaneously show how familiarity fosters verbatim memory, and how it also distorts memory.

On a commonsense level, we might expect to forget some of the details of a story, just like we forget the minutiae of the day (unless you’re Marilu Henner or someone else with hyperthymesia). What results is a soupy kind of recall, the general remembrance of experience that lies outside any context that details might provide. As Drs. Brainerd and Reyna put it:

The core precept of constructivism is that people remember what they understand to be the meaning of their experience, not their experience per se….If people remember what they understand, it is not in the least surprising that they remember false information that preserves the gist of their experience. [emphasis original]

In one study, researchers led subjects to an office desk cluttered with all sorts of items typically found on an office desk. If they put in something incongruous to the setting (in this case a toy truck), then the anomaly was recalled without problem. However, when nothing anomalous appeared on the desk, respondents often remembered many items accurately, but then said that something typically office-like (e.g., a stapler) was on the desk when, in fact, it wasn’t.

The authors use the term ‘semantic intrusion’ to describe the above, where an object that would be a logical item on a list, is in fact not on the list. It is here where the authors begin to form definition of a false memory. After all, if you remember stapler on the desk, and the stapler isn’t there, then the memory of that stapler is false.

Likewise, when trying to recall a list of words after minimal exposure, subjects could often recall many of the items if they kinda went together. For example, the words tower, mark, melon, table, boy, cooler, logged, and loo can all logically follow the character string ‘water.’ When remembering a list like this, some (if not many or all) respondents could very well add other words to this list, such as ‘bottle’ or ‘pipe.’ If the list does not contain linkable words, or if the subject has to respond in a precise order, then he or she might be subject to primacy and recency effects. We often remember the first few items of a series, and the last few items of the series. But as one of the respondents in our "War of the Ghost" exercise wrote, we’re often "losing some of the middle here."

In The Science of False Memory, Drs. Brainerd and Reyna went on at some length to discuss the dominance of gist memory over verbatim memory, although most people can handle both. This idea constitutes one of the basis of Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT), a concept the two developed back in the late-1980s. Basically, FTT describes how people intertwine memory, rationality, culture and emotion in their personal assessment of risk. Because we tend, primarily, to remember the gist of things (hence the term ‘fuzzy-trace’) as opposed to details (verbatim memory), we often see risk in very broad, and sometimes irrational terms. We might say, for instance, that New York City is a dangerous place, because we not only hear about real crimes committed there, but we also see the dangers of NYC in movies and television programs shot in the Big Apple. Tourists are especially leery of getting mugged or worse. In this case, the Fuzzy Trace recall of dangerous events linked to this city elevates the assessment of risk. However, the violent crime rate in NYC is fairly low, measured in objective terms.***

So, concluded the authors, memory is fallible. They would also say that it’s malleable. Even worse, they maintained that the memories of children are especially subject to manipulation.

___________________________

*The College of Human Ecology (CHE) at Cornell University should not be confused with the CIA research front, the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, even though both were based at the same Ivy League school. The latter came about through consultation with Psychology Department professor Dr. Harold Wolff after World War II. The former, according to its official website, grew out of the College of Agriculture in 1907 as The College of Home Economics. They changed the name to CHE in 1969.

**Brainerd and Reyna published their first paper on the subject in the 1990 edition (v. 10) of Developmental Review. It’s title: "Gist is the Grist: Fuzzy-Trace Theory and the New Intuitionism."

***Albuquerque, NM; Anchorage, AK; Atlanta, GA; Bakersfield, CA; Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY: Charlotte, NC; Cincinnati, OH; Cleveland, OH; Columbus, OH; Corpus Christi, TX; Dallas, TX; Detroit, MI; Fresno, CA: Greensboro, NC; Houston, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Kansas City, MO; Las Vegas, NV; Long Beach, CA; Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN; Miami, FL; Milwaukee, WI; Minneapolis, MN; Mobile, AL; Nashville, TN; New Orleans, LA; Newark, NJ; Oakland, CA: Oklahoma City, OK; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Sacramento, CA; San Antonio, TX; San Francisco, CA; St. Louis, MO; St. Paul, MN; Stockton, CA; Tampa, FL; Toledo, OH; Tucson, AZ; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC and Wichita, KS ALL have violent crime rates higher than New York, NY, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, Table 6.

I should point out, though, that, for some reason, the FBI cautions against taking the rankings too seriously(?). Nevertheless, the FBI’s statistics offer one more gist to offer your schemata.

The Limelight Dimmed

2011-11-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

X Dell: [ L], I just heard you were laid off. I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?
L: Oh, [X], relax. I’ve always known how to survive.
--1993 conversation.

Last week, I got into a nostalgic mood, reminiscing about all the high times and comradery with “the old gang.” I thought to Google some of my old pals, find out what they were up to, perhaps send them an e-mail or two. Many of them had gone on to do some wonderful things. In some cases, their small children had grown into adults. Other friends had been promoted to senior positions. Reading about their successes was a lot of fun.

The fun suddenly turned into horror when two of the search queries turned up obituaries.

I wanted to believe that there had been some mistake. Perhaps the obituaries were of other women with the same, or similar names. After all, these two took care of themselves. They were both far too young to die.

Unfortunately, I could confirm L’s passing all too easily. Going to Find a Grave, I read a brief biography (which I could have written myself). The site posted a photograph, too. Those familiar brown eyes staring back at me, the lips drawn into the warm smile that has kissed this face more often than I can count--it was her. The site also posted a picture of her final resting place. Strange. The last place you’d expect to find a woman so full of life is six feet under.

L studied drama at the University of Texas, and was a part of Austin’s hippie scene of the 1960s, along with such notables as Janis Joplin and Willie Nelson (she was a big fan of his). She left her native San Antonio, and came to New York to ply her trade on the stage. Of course, like many actors, she got sidetracked from her dream, and ironically found herself working up the executive ladder of corporate filmmaking.

Nevertheless, L found some success plying her other talents, mostly in the area of visual art and photography. I remember her laughter as she told me the story of the first serious display of her work. It was a show featuring female artists of color. On the day that should have been one of the triumphs of her life, her then-boyfriend decided to dump her. Consequently, she couldn’t enjoy the reception. As she sat alone, weeping, a man approached her and asked her what was wrong. She spent the next hour spilling out her sob story about the rotten boyfriend, his rotten timing, and so on, literally crying on the shoulder of this stranger.

The man had come to support his wife who also had work in this show. Her name was Yoko. His name was John.

L cackled to no end telling that story. After all, she was a Beatlephile. So, she finally met her idol, but couldn’t do anything more than be miserable.

Of course, when L told me this, I had alreadty read Albert Goldman’s biography of John Lennon, and was still strongly affected by it. This would be the first of many stories that led me to change my opinion of the man. So, as you can see from the Lennon series, L has had some influence on The X-Spot. I thought of her when posting each item.

One story that typifies L, in a nutshell, was the time me and my ex (?) spy friend were chatting at our favorite watering hole. A couple came in, and sat in the corner. Another couple came and sat beside them. Although both couples primarily spoke Spanish, I could see they were having difficulty communicating with each other.

Then L walked in, just off from work. She realized the problem right away. The first couple was from Mexico.

Apparently, Mexican Spanish is somewhat quirky, and a lot of hispanophones have difficulty understanding it. As a proud Texas Chicana, L knew Mexican Spanish like the back of her hand. And after living in Manhattan for so many years, she spoke fluent Nueva Yorker. So, as odd is this might sound, she volunteered her services as a Spanish-to-Spanish translator for the night. Right away, the couple had a lively discussion about visiting America, with me and the ex (?) spy friend getting in on the conversation (she translated into English for us). It all worked so seamlessly, too. Sometimes we even forgot that she was translating, and began speaking directly to each other.

Then, three Parisian businessmen came in. It was at this point that we found out that L also spoke perfect French--without a hint of a Texas drawl! Hell, she ~~can’t~~ couldn’t speak English without a twang.

So there she is, translating into and out of Spanish, Spanish, English and French when the Japanese tourist came in.

You guessed it. L spoke Japanese better than he did (I say that because he stuttered).

So if you can picture all this, we had this wildly fun night conversing with people who couldn’t speak our language or anyone else’s. And it was all because of L. You see, she had a knack for bringing people together--especially remarkable compared to nowadays when we’re so easily torn apart by ideological polarities and marketing demographics. But there was more to it. She had an enthusiasm for living, a sunniness instilled in her from the hippie days that never left her. And it was so infectious. It’s kinda difficult to explain, but everything seemed to be better when she was around.

Of course, L always went out of her way to let me, X. Dell, know that I meant something to her--whether we were out on the town, or hanging out by ourselves at her place writing songs. She had an even greater love for humanity, and a fierce determination to live within her own moral code. I always admired and respected her for having the courage to be herself. After all, you can take the girl out of Texas, but you’ll never take Texas out of the girl. Besides, I draw comfort in the fact that sometimes a flower child remains a flower child. Even if you dress her up in a navy pinstripe business suit. Even if gray hairs one-by-one replace the black ones.

Unlike many an artistic “type,” she was as non-pretentious and genuinely empathetic as our species gets. To say that she was a good woman is not only hackneyed, but grossly understates what she was. Quite simply, I’ve never met a more beautiful soul in this life. I doubt I ever will.

As is it goes with life, things kinda came full circle for L. Nine months before her death, she co-starred in an off-Broadway play, and got a very favorable reaction from the critics at The Village Voice and The New York Times. Her obituary (which I’m sure she wrote herself) whimsically stated “As the final curtain came down for [L] her life received rave reviews and resounding applause from New York City to San Antonio.”

That’s both literally and metaphorically true. I wonder if she can hear me, somewhere in the background, yelling “Encore! Encore!”

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: A Folktale Revisited

2011-10-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

A few posts back, I asked readers to read a story twice and then recite it back without referring to it again. This exercise was a partial recreation of a study done by Sir Frederic Bartlett, a psychology professor teaching at the University of Cambridge. In a 1920 paper titled “Some Experiments on the Reproduction of Folk Stories,” (Folk-Lore, v.31), he described an experiment in which he composed a written version of an oral tale told by indigenous Americans (i.e., the “War of the Ghosts,” which I cited verbatim), told twenty subjects to read the story twice, and then write it out.

Thus, in our exercise, we used the same text and procedures as Professor Bartlett did in the first stage of his experiment. The primary difference between our exercise and his experiment is that I asked the reader to recall the story immediately, and then only once. Bartlett, on the other hand, asked students to repeat the story at various time intervals--from weeks to months. During that time, the story began to change, very similarly to the party game of Telephone, where the message that you start out with is almost never the one you end up with.

To Professor Bartlett, the “War of the Ghosts” experiment demonstrated the tendency of human memory to shape narratives within the context of cultural perception. Some of this shaping is obvious. In some cases, we might tend to ascribe motives for the characters that they don’t have, or that the original story doesn’t intend to convey. For example, in our exercise, one respondent wrote:

The first young man said no, he was afraid he'd be killed and his relatives wouldn't know what had happened to him, but he told his friend to go (which makes me question what kind of a friend he actually was, considering his own reasons for staying behind).

Spoken from the perspective of Western culture, the above statement not only makes perfect sense, but is quite insightful. But we’re talking about a story from a non-Western culture. We therefore do not know, for example, if the culture that originally produced this story saw death as a transient experience--a loss, no doubt, but not a humongous deal. Moreover, war, or battle, might have represented an opportunity for status, glory, personal legitimacy, and so on. So we cannot assume that the man who chose to go home instead of to war did so despite his actual desire for combat. Moreover, the story doesn’t say that the one man told the other to go, but rather that he “may go.” This could have been more analogous to the Western question, “Wanna get wasted at Rick’s, tonight?” with the response, “No, I gotta cut down. You can go, though, if you want.”

Professor Bartlett’s primary concern was the shaping of the story through the omission of details that the Western reader would see as either irrelevant, unfamiliar, or “unpleasant,” but that the reader versed in the original culture would not. The above example he might see as an omission of the unfamiliar, since we’re not sure exactly what the original culture might have seen as important. Likewise, no one in our exercise mentioned Egulac, the hometown of our protagonist and his friend. These are just a couple of guys from somewhere, to us. Yet in the original context, the city (or town, or village) of Egulac could have had a specific meaning to the story. Although we don’t admit to holding stereotypical notions about other people based on geography, we do. So such terms as ‘New Yorker,’ ‘Brit,’ or ‘African’ evoke a certain set of expectation as to the nature of a person’s experiences, aspirations, attitudes, and so on. In short, someone hearing this story in the context of its original culture might say something like, “Ach! Typical Egulacans!”

Other than Seamus the Barbarian, who simply copied-and-pasted the story into the comments section (giving me a decent chuckle in the process), no one in our exercise mentioned that as the pair hid behind the log, they could hear the sounds of paddles in the water. Bartlett would say this is an omission of irrelevance, since you’re probably saying right now, “What the #$@! ‘s the difference? They came down the river in canoes. Yeah, yeah, the paddles made a noise. But is that critical to the story?”

I dunno. Is the two-note (minor second) motif in Jaws critical to its story?

The third type of omission discussed by Professor Bartlett, that of the “unpleasant,” is rather difficult to see in our exercise, for we did not repeat it as he did. Every response in our exercise mentioned the ghosts, and that “something black” came out of the protagonist’s mouth shortly before he died. Yet even in our immediate re-tellings, we see the seeds of a changing narrative. For example, one respondent did not mention that the protagonist wondered about whether or not ghostly deployment had been used during battle. “Something black” likewise was related as “black stuff” in one instance, and a “black shape” in another. Bartlett’s respondents showed a persistent tendency to change those two aspects of the story after time had lapsed, and after repeated tellings. Many of the original respondents eventually omitted the ghostly angle altogether, despite the fact that the title of the story is “The War of the Ghosts.” Likewise, many of the respondents eventually reinterpreted the “black stuff” coming out of the protagonist’s mouth as “his soul.”

Bartlett further found that salient features were over-emphasized, allowing for the introduction of items into the story that were not there originally. But, I did not intend to use Professor Bartlett’s experiment as he did, specifically to demonstrate how sociological factors impact upon what we remember, and what we forget. I used Professor Bartlett’s experiment to illustrate something else: specifically, a point made by two proponents of false memory syndrome. They cite Bartlett’s “War of the Ghosts” research, and accurately describe its intentions. Yet they used the study to prove something very different.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: What Are You Talking About?

2011-10-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

In the US, when professionals need a frame of reference for a particular diagnosis, they might very well consult the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). The American Psychological Association stresses that using this to diagnose someone using this manual isn’t something a layperson should do, and for good reason: diagnostic paradigms are a very crude framework, something to take into account along with other data, observational cues, training in how various parts of human thought, consciousness and physiology interconnect, and so on. Still, it’s a reference that can at least tell the layperson what the general criteria of a diagnosis are, so long as they don’t actually try to diagnose anybody.

If you consult DSM-IV to find a definition of false memory syndrome (FMS), then I hope you have either a lot of patience, or none at all. You won’t find it. But you can find a working definition of it, one endorsed by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). Dr. John Kihlstrom (University of California, Berkeley) described FMS as a:*

...condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships are centered around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false but in which the person strongly believes. Note that the syndrome is not characterized by false memories as such. We all have memories that are inaccurate. Rather, the syndrome may be diagnosed when the memory is so deeply ingrained that it orients the individual's entire personality and lifestyle, in turn disrupting all sorts of other adaptive behavior. The analogy to personality disorder is intentional. False Memory Syndrome is especially destructive because the person assiduously avoids confrontation with any evidence that might challenge the memory. Thus it takes on a life of its own, encapsulated and resistant to correction. The person may become so focused on memory that he or she may be effectively distracted from coping with the real problems in his or her life.

This definition presupposes several things. The first is that false memory is common.** The second is that those suffering from FMS have memories that are “objectively false.” Third, the false memory becomes the focal point of the sufferer’s life, to the point where they cannot cope with real life.

Over the next few posts, I will examine the first two presuppositions, and leave the third for a later time. For now, it’s important to realize that there is hardly academic or scientific agreement about what constitutes a false memory. Moreover, proving a memory is objectively false is a lot harder to do than it sounds.

_________________________
*Dr. Kihlstrom obtained his PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he assisted Dr. Martin Orne’s research in hypnosis. He got his BS in psychology from Colgate University in 1970. Dr. George Estabrooks still taught there at that time.

**In a later post, I will talk about talk about legitimate empirical studies that establish memory distortion and plain simple forgetfulness as an everyday occurrence--a rather commonsense observation. How inaccuracy in memory relates to FMS is a topic of debate for those supporting the FMS diagnosis.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: Time to Call In the Big Guns

2011-10-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Despite the Underwager flap, the FMSF continued to gain momentum and prestige, mostly through its academic and professional connections. Peter and Pamela Freyd enlisted the support of their psychiatrist, University of Pennsylvania Medical School professor Dr. Harold Leif who joined their Scientific and Advisory Board. The network of illustrious researchers who came to the Foundation’s aid hailed from around the US and elsewhere, among them: Drs. Jean and Loren Chapman (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Drs. Harrison Pope and Fred Frankel (Harvard University), Dr. Richard Green (Charing Cross Hospital; London, UK); Dr. Ernest Hilgard (Stanford University), Dr. Robert Karlin (Rutgers University), Drs. Jolyon West and John Hochman (University of California, Los Angeles), Dr. Susan McElroy (University of Cincinnati), Dr. Harold Merskey (University of Western Ontario), Dr. Ulric Neisser (Cornell University), Dr. Michael Simpson (Centre for Psychological & Traumatic Stress; Pretoria, South Africa), Dr. Elizabeth Loftus (University of Washington) and Drs. Margaret Singer and Richard Ofshe (University of California, Berkeley). In addition, the board included such non-academics as writer Martin Gardner, and famed stage magician James Randi (“The Amazing Randi”).

Dr. Leif also managed to bring in other supporting academics from the University of Pennsylvania, including Dr. Lila Gleitman, Dr. Henry Gleitman, Dr. David Dinges, and Dr. Aaron Beck. In addition, two more UPenn faculty members joined the board: Emily Carota Orne, and her husband, Dr. Martin Orne.

The heavyweight academic support for the concept of false memory syndrome gave it growing credibility to the public. In a 1996 book published by the American Psychological Association (APA) titled Recovered Memories of Abuse, authors Dr. Kenneth Pope and Laura Brown emphasized the critical importance the Scientific and Advisory Board had in popularizing the concept of false memory, and the implications of its opinions:*

[These experts‘] contribution of time, money, reputations, and credibility to the goals and work of FMSF may represent a significant, if not crucial factor in the Foundation’s success. The Scientific and Professional Advisory Board’s implicit endorsement of the FMS diagnosis may help explain why such FMSF claims are so vividly reflected in the professional literature, expert testimony, and the popular media. If widely accepted, claims about an FMS epidemic traced to therapeutic malpractice may influence diagnosis and treatment for many people, the access or lack of access that intervals have to various services, and the clinical, forensic, and public response to those who report memories of childhood abuse.

The Freyds initially found success in publicizing their plight in their local newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Due to the public relations efforts of their newly founded organization, the FMSF, over 300 articles on false memory would reach the mainstream from 1992-1994. In 1995 the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired a two-part Frontline documentary titled "Divided Memories," which cast huge doubt on the validity of recovered memories by conflating them with such issues as past-life regression, and by looking at some of the means by which they surface. Journalist Mike Stanton, in a 1997 Columbia Journalism Review paper characterized the television special as “...a four-hour polemic, including an interview with the Freyds, that gave short shrift to confirmed cases of recovered memories.” Stanton went on to give further speculation as to why the FMSF PR machine proved so successful, especially during this early stage:

A reporter making an honest effort to tell both sides finds it difficult to penetrate a world where many victims are reluctant to surrender their privacy. Instead of digging out the story for themselves, reporters take a soft-news approach--just as many did earlier with implausible stories of victimization--and allow themselves to be swayed by tearful parents, leaving the FMSF to package the hard news in a slick press kit.

The overwhelmingly positive press coverage, and the prestige lent by such academic stars as Dr. Orne, helped the FMSF amass funds. While some of the Foundation’s income came from membership dues, it received tremendous outside support, in substantial part from wealthy patrons. While at their height boasting a figure of between 13,000-21,000 members in 1994, Stephanie Dallam and other researchers reviewing their tax records over this time, proved these numbers were inflated. Because it is an officially recognized as a 501 (c) (3) charity, whose benefactors are allowed to declare their contributions as tax deductions, the FMSF was required to make its tax records public. Although not required to do so, the Foundation listed its membership at this time at 2,385 members.

Currently, FMSF membership dues are $100 per family, per year. Assuming that membership dues were approximately the same as they are now, then their annual income would be about $238,500. During this time (the early to mid-90s), however, their annual operating budget was $700,000-$750,000 per year. So approximately two-thirds of their budget came from private sources.

Summarizing this post and the one before it, Pamela and Peter Freyd relied upon the authority of Ralph Underwager, both as a psychologist/expert witness and as Lutheran minister, to legitimize their claim that recovered memories of abuse are usually false. When an interview with Underwager and his wife cast doubt on the Underwagers’ true attitudes about pedophilia, the Freyds turned to other experts who were closer to home. These experts networked with other like-minded academics who gave the fledgling FMSF even more prestige than it had before. This prestige helped them wage a public relations campaign to put false memory syndrome in the public eye as scientific fact. The publicity garnered additional funding allowing the Foundation to engage in even more PR.

Yet despite the accolades and achievements of the FMSF’s advisory board members, many academics have viewed the organization and its claims with a high degree of skepticism. At the center of their concerns are a number of tough questions. What is false memory? What is false memory syndrome? Are memories easily “implanted” by naive, incompetent or unscrupulous shrinks? Are traumatic memories the same as normal memory? Can people actually recovery memories after suppressing them, and if so could those memories be accurate?

_____________________
*Dr. Pope was formerly the Chair of the APA’s Ethics Committee.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: Wrong Foot Forward

2011-10-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

Sources not cited here can be found in this post.

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) experienced its share of setbacks, early on. The major one centered on its co-founder, Rev. Dr. Ralph Underwager. In June 1991, he and his wife, Hollida Wakefield, granted an interview to Joseph Geraci, editor-in-chief of Paidika, The Journal of Paedophilia, a scholarly journal published in Amsterdam.* The interview caused quite a stir because of several lengthy quotes that suggested Underwager and Wakefield’s support for both pedophiles and pedophilia. Paidika published the article in 1993, in the midst of the FMSF’s attempts to establish legitimacy.

In context, Rev. Underwager and Wakefield tried to establish several points: (a) pedophilia, like homosexuality, is a learned behavior and a deliberate choice; (b) pedophiles should be responsible and pay the consequences for their actions, whether that restitution comes in the form of a jail sentence or a long-term commitment with the youth in question. The third point, which Underwager discussed for some length, was that pedophilia was a responsible choice, and that pedophiles were within their right to, like gays, come out of the closet and assert the positive aspects of their sexual practices:

[Geraci] Is choosing paedophilia for you a responsible choice for the individuals?

[Underwager] Certainly it is responsible. What I have been struck by as I have come to know more about and understand people who choose paedophilia is that they let themselves be too much defined by other people. That is usually an essentially negative definition. Paedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don't think that a paedophile needs to do that. Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is to find the best way to love. I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God's will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of the flesh, between people. A paedophile can say: ‘This closeness is possible for me within the choices that I've made.'

Paedophiles are too defensive. They go around saying, ‘You people out there are saying that what I choose is bad, that it's no good. You're putting me in prison, you're doing all these terrible
things to me. I have to define my love as being in some way or other illicit.’ What I think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, ‘I believe this is in fact part of God's will.’ They have the right to make these statements for themselves as personal choices. Now whether or not they can persuade other people they are right is another matter (laughs).

Wakefield further alleged that research into the positive aspects of pedophilia were suppressed by academic orthodoxy:

“[Geraci] There is research and some scientific opinion that demonstrates that more positive examples and personal experiences exist. Theo Sandfort's research, cross-cultural models, the writings of the German sexologist Bomemann. Shouldn't we be putting positive views into the picture in order to come to an understanding?

[Wakefield] We don't know about The Netherlands. Our impression is that it's somewhat easier here than at home.

But your point is that potentially there can be good, healthy, positive relationships between men and boys. It would be difficult to come up with sexual research for that in the United States because it would frankly be suppressed. When I did a review of the literature on boy victims of child sexual abuse, some of the studies show not just negative effects in some of the boys. The authors try to explain this away. Their rationale is that because they didn't find negative things in their study, does not mean there are none. They just haven't shown up yet! If anyone in the United States were to do a study that showed positive outcomes and then wrote it up as a scientific paper, they probably would not succeed in getting it published. It could only be published if they found a way to explain away any positive findings. They would have to make it look like they found something other than what they found. They would be entirely vilified.

In summary, Geraci asked Rev. Underwager and Wakefield if they had any advice for pedophiles. Their response:

[Underwager] Take the risk, the consequences of the risk, and make the claim: this is something good. Paedophiles need to become more positive and make the claim that paedophilia is an acceptable expression of God's will for love and unity among human beings. This is the only way the question is going to be answered, of whether or not it is possible. Does it happen? Can it be good? That's what we don't know yet, the ways in which paedophiles can conduct themselves in loving ways. That's what you need to talk about. You need to get involved in discourse, and to do so while acting. Matthew 11 talks about the wisdom of God, and the way in which God's wisdom, like ours, can only follow after.

Paedophiles need to become more positive and make the claim that paedophiles is an acceptable expression of God's will for love and unity among human beings.

I think the paedophile movement makes a mistake when it seeks to label the church as the instrument of repression, and in a sense, the enemy. I'm certainly aware of the accusation that it's the church that represses sexuality. I don't believe that's the case at all. I believe that the repression of sexuality begins with Greek thought. People who want to deal positively with human sexuality will do best to see the church as an ally, and to elicit from the church the positive responses about sexuality that are there.

[Geraci] You spoke about the need for paedophiles to engage in a discourse. What should that be?

[Wakefeld] We can't presume to tell them specific behaviors, but in terms of goals, certainly the goal is that the experience be positive, at the very least not negative, for their partner and partner's family. And nurturing. Even if it were a good relationship with the boy, if the boy was not harmed and perhaps even benefited, it tore the family of the boy apart, that would be negative.

It would be nice if someone could get some kind of big research grant to do a longitudinal study of, let's say, a hundred twelve year old boys in relationships with loving paedophiles. Whoever was doing the study would have to follow that at five year intervals for twenty years. This is impossible in the U. S. right now. We're talking a long time in the future.

The fallout from this interview was immediate. Incest-survivor organizations circulated or cited the interview as widely as possible. The FMSF consequently asked Dr. Underwager and Wakefield to resign from their Advisory Board, but then withdrew the request.

_______________________
*In a rebuttal to the interview, Dr. Underwager gave the date as October 1990.

Most of the rebuttal does not actually address the interview or its context. It instead lashes out at various groups (most notably “radical feminists”) for what Underwager perceived as witch hunt hysteria. In the passages that directly addressed the Paidika interview, he stressed that he too was anti-pedophilia, and one need only to look at his prior publications to confirm this. He also stated that in the interview he acknowledged the harm pedophilia causes children. But upon reading the actual interview, the major harm Underwager expressed was caused by the jilting of such children when they grew too old to remain objects of sexual desire. Moreover, at no time in this interview did Underwager, or Wakefield, expressly say that they were anti-pedophilia.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: Putting Their Business in the Street

2011-10-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

Sources not cited here can be found in this post.

Drs. Jennifer and Pamela Freyd both told their shrinks, close family and friends about the former’s recovered memory of childhood sexual abuse, albeit from their own perspective. Naturally, Jennifer’s friends took her side, Pamela’s friends hers. And during the time of the Freyds’ e-mail correspondence, those were the only people who knew this story. Jennifer made no effort to contact police, an attorney, or media.

After Jennifer discontinued e-mail contact, Pamela, against the advice of her psychiatrist, Dr. Harold Leif, wrote a tell-all paper, the aforementioned “How Could This Happen? Coping with a False Accusation of Incest and Rape.” The paper itself wasn’t very scholarly, as it did not include much in terms of either critical analysis of memory literature or original research. Rather, it consisted of her and husband Dr. Peter Freyd’s version of Jennifer’s private accusation, with citations to resources that supported their side–or as Pamela stated it, “...literature I could respect.”

“How Could This Happen?” cast numerous aspersions on Jennifer and her shrink, some of which were provably false. Pamela stated, for example, that Jennifer sought employment at the University of Oregon because Cornell, where she first taught, denied her tenure for not publishing enough. Actually, Jennifer left Cornell for Oregon because the former would not make a decision on early tenure, and the latter would. Additionally, Pamela accused Jennifer’s therapist of implanting a memory in her and guiding her towards a false memory through hypnosis, when the actual turn of events was quite different (see first post in this series). Pamela also divulged intimate details that Jennifer had told her in confidence while growing up, among them a brief flirtation with illicit drugs in high school, a struggle against anorexia in college, and marital problems. There were also veiled accusations that Jennifer had fallen victim to schizophrenia, characterizing her memories as no more than mere delusions. She also speculated that Jennifer could have been under great guilt because her relocation to Oregon required her husband to leave a job he liked, and felt great stress because of feelings that she was an inadequate mother because of the pressures of academia.

She published the paper in a non-peer-reviewed journal titled Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, published by a Minnesota couple, Rev. Dr. Ralph Underwager, and his wife Hollida Wakefield.* In 1974, Underwager founded the Institute for Psychological Therapies (IPT). According to a statement on its website, IPT:

...is a private practice of clinical psychology. IPT's primary work is related to allegations of child sexual abuse, but also deals with cases of sexual harassment, claims of recovered memories of childhood abuse, accusations of rape, allegations of improper sexual contact by professionals, forced and coerced confessions, false confessions, personal injury claims, mitigating factors in sentencing, custody, and medical and psychological malpractice.

After testifying for the defense as an expert witness in a 1984 child abuse trial, Dr. Underwager formed Victims Of Child Abuse Laws (VOCAL), a lobbyist organization dedicated to changing laws pertaining to mandatory reporting of child abuse by doctors, teachers and social workers. Vocal also picketed social service agencies, hospitals and courts for their alleged “Gestopo-like” tactics, and against professionals they described as fanatics and lunatics.

Dr. Underwager and Wakefield were willing to do considerably more for Pamela Freyd than publish her paper. With their help, along with that of Dr. Lief and others, Pamela founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). To find members, the Freyds took out classified ads in papers across the country, asking for parents who were falsely accused of raping children. The ads included a 1-800 number answered by either Underwager, Hollida, or staff at IPT in Minnesota. By then, Underwager had testified as an expert in over 200 child abuse trials, always for the defense. So, he lent his prestige to the fledgling organization by publicly speaking on its behalf.

Meanwhile, senior faculty at the University of Oregon’s Psychology Department were considering Dr. Jennifer Freyd for a promotion. They received no less than four copies of the Issues in Child Abuse Accusations edition that featured “How Could This Happen?” One of the copies was sent by a member of FMSF’s ever growing board of experts. Pamela herself sent three copies, one of them anonymously. Although she had written the piece as Jane Doe, and despite the fact that she referred to her daughter and everyone involved by pseudonyms, Pamela included enough personal detail that anyone who knew Jennifer would immediately recognize her as “Susan” from “AnyCity.”

From 1992-1993, the FMSF’s publicity efforts began to take root. The Philadelphia Inquirer carried two stories, both of which were sympathetic to Peter and Pamela. The New York Times published another piece titled “Childhood Trauma: Memory or Invention?” A Time magazine article titled “Lies of the Mind” and a six-part expose in the San Francisco Examiner titled “Buried Memories, Broken Families” were also published in 1993. Like the Inquirer story, these too depicted Peter and Pamela in a kind light.

Jennifer, who had no idea that her mother had written “How Could This Happen?” until her colleagues showed it to her, said nothing on this very private matter until she spoke at a 1993 mental health conference in Ann Arbor, MI. In a presentation titled “Theoretical and Personal Perspectives on the Debate,” Dr. Freyd made her first public statements about her mother’s counter-accusations. Responding to the national press that had suddenly thrust her into the limelight, she said, “I am being punished, at a national and professional level... for my private and personal memories.” She stressed that she saw this debate as only partially about recovered memories. For her, it was about families “in pain.” Going on she wished. “For my parents' sake I hope they can find a way to look inward, to do their own healing, instead of waging a kind of war at the national level.”

When asked, Jennifer Freyd granted media interviews until 1994. She has since said little on the subject.

Pamela Freyd, on the other hand, wasn’t ready to keep quiet. She and the FMSF were just getting warmed up. And they would soon demonstrate that they had a stomach for waging war on a national level.

___________________________
*Rev. Underwager received his MDiv at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Minnesota

.

Waging Ghostly War on a National Level: Estrangement

2011-10-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

Sources not cited here can be found in the previous post.

The terror consuming Dr. Jennifer Freyd on the night of 21 December 1990 into the wee hours of the following morning wasn’t for her, but for her children. As her visiting jet-lagged parents slept, she felt more and more fearful for the kids’ safety. So her husband volunteered to sleep outside of their locked bedroom door. But this didn’t allay her fear.

Jennifer’s mother, Dr. Pamela Freyd, awoke to some noise outside the bedroom. When she went to check it out, she saw Jennifer carrying out her son,. “He was sick in the night,” explained the daughter. “I’m taking him to see the doctor.”

Several hours later, Pamela received a call from her son-in-law. “We lied,” he said. “We're not at the doctor's office. We're at friends. We want you to leave the house and fly home. We've made reservations on the 3:30 airplane. The taxi will arrive in an hour and a half. Susan now remembers that she was seriously abused as a child by Alex.”*

Pamela and Peter complied with their daughter’s request, and flew back to their home in Philadelphia on 22 December 1990. As soon as they arrived, Pamela initiated a volley of e-mails, to which. Over the objections of her shrink, Jennifer responded to them for the next seven months. The first simply read, “I love you. I hope we can keep some communication going.” Over the subsequent days, the missives grew more intense, not to mention probing. The next day, Pamela wrote:

I cannot deal with your memories — because I don't know what they are. We have been accused of something, but I could hardly go to a therapist, as you ask, without knowing what the details are. What is supposed to have happened?

On Christmas eve:

Susan, you have made serious charges against us. I don't have the slightest idea of what you are upset enough about to have initiated this crisis. I don't know where to begin to do what you ask and see a therapist like yours who is a young clinical psychologist, a female and a specialist in sex abuse.

In an e-mail sent 28 December 1990, Pamela hinted at feelings of betrayal:

I thought that you should know that we finally have heard some specifics of the charges. Your grandmother told me. You think you were sexually abused by Alex. Why could you tell her and not us?

After agreeing to see a therapist, and read the book The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Lauren Davis, Pamela asked Jennifer to open lines of communication with her father (which she did), and pressed her for more information about her therapist. It becomes quite obvious that Pamela really wanted to know the identity of this person in subsequent e-mails. Jennifer refused to divulge this information. Still, Pamela continued to press for who-what-when details in an effort to pin down a precise story.

A couple of weeks later, Pamela’s e-mails demonstrated early attempts to silence Jennifer by discrediting her account of events:

My concern was first raised by being informed that (a) the therapist had raised the subject of incest rather than taking it from you and (b) that you have been using hypnosis. There is much debate about the reliability of memories recalled under those circumstances. Also, I am aware that there is a Clinical Incest Group in Anycity [Eugene, OR] whose members enter the therapeutic situation with the bias that 50% of their patients will not remember sexual abuse and incest and so the therapist has to draw it out. This is outlined in a book by Maltz and Holman who have many followers in Anycity. Don't you think that there might be some dangers in such preconceived assumptions?

Pamela and Peter consulted with Dr. Harold Lief, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Lief had previously helped Pamela work out some unspecified problems. He also helped Peter overcome severe his alcoholism. Lief suggested that Peter submit to a polygraph, which he subsequently passed.

Still, Jennifer’s feelings didn’t change. In fact, she was now recalling far more than disembodied flashes of male genitalia--from bathtub groping at the age of three, to penetration during adolescence. She then sought counsel from her husband and then friends. She also sought the advice of other family, including her uncle, her grandmother and her sister, all of whom had been estranged from Peter and Pamela for years by then. Those closest to her, both supported her and believed her memories to be accurate.

Pamela Freyd could not believe that her husband would ever do such a thing. She therefore blamed feminism, the “contemporary cultural and social” climate and this unknown shrink for Jennifer’s “personality change.”** She had plenty of blame for other parties as well.

Zealots who lead crusades based on their belief of their own moral virtue and superiority have a history of bringing much repression to the world. I found an overabundance of "slop," articles and books in which the authors lack respect for the bounds between therapy and politics and in which they pander to emotions.

Pamela offered to fly Jennifer’s therapist to Philadelphia so that they could show him or her the polygraph. One might guess that mama and papa Freyd had something a bit more confrontational in mind, however. Pamela had busied herself since Christmas studying suggestibility in children. She had come across a number of articles, many of which were undoubtedly inspired by McMartin and other witch hunt cases of the 1980s. Perhaps she suspected that alone, with Dr. Lief and her parents, her therapist would have been walking into an ambush.

Pamela and Jennifer spent the spring and early summer of 1991 trying to arrange a family counseling session. But they couldn’t reach an agreement on the terms of that discussion (where it was, who would be subject to what conditions, where the visiting party would stay, etc.).

In July 1991, Jennifer had had enough, and in an e-mail alerted Pamela that she would finally heed her doctor’s and cut off e-mail communication for an indefinite period.

It would seem that Dr. Pamela Freyd would not take silence for an answer.

______________________________
*Pamela Freyd wrote this account in her paper “How Could This Happen?” Because she wrote it as a Jane Doe, everyone in the story has a pseudonym. She used the names Susan, Steve and Alex to refer to Jennifer, her-son-in-law, and Peter respectively.

**In the essay, Pamela characterizes herself as “conservative.” One could guess that she might have meant here more liberal attitudes, here, but she didn’t specify. She did write, however, “To be against childhood sexual abuse is a ‘politically correct’ position, especially for activist women." So this could be a gripe against feminism in general.

Assailing the Tender Age: Waging Ghostly War on a National Level

2011-09-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

As Christmas 1990 approached, University of Oregon psyche professor Dr. Jennifer Freyd grew increasingly nervous.* Sure, some people find the holidays particularly stressful (myself included). But there seemed more to it, in her opinion.

A married mother of two, Jennifer didn’t reveal the source of this anxiety to her family; then again, she didn’t even know herself. She also didn’t tell her parents: Dr. Pamela Freyd, a veteran schoolteacher; and Dr. Peter Freyd, a highly accomplished and respected mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. According to Pamela, she and Jennifer were planning the usual “conspiratorial coast-to-coast phone calls about secrets for presents….” The parents made their final preparations to fly from Philadelphia to the West Coast on December 21. In all, it sounded to everyone involved as if they could anticipate a normal, happy, festive Noel.

That is, to everyone except Jennifer.   Although she wouldn’t talk to her family, she would talk to a fellow shrink. The first visit with this individual didn’t produce anything Earth-shattering. As a psychologist herself, Dr. Freyd would have probably expected that. After all, psychotherapy/psychoanalysis often takes quite a while--sometimes decades--to produce noticeably dramatic results.

Dr. Freyd, as it turned out, wouldn’t have to wait that long. On her second visit, the shrink asked if anyone had sexually abused her as a child. She gave the doctor a curt and decisive “no,” and they moved on to something else.

That night, she had intense flashbacks of male genitalia. The anxiety that she experienced the previous weeks kicked into high gear, and continued to crescendo until her parents arrived two days later.

According to her mother, Jennifer and her husband greeted them at the airport with hugs and kisses, just as they had done the previous six times mama and papa Freyd visited their daughter for Christmas. Pamela didn’t foresee the eruption about to take place, but in hindsight she related a couple of things that she found odd in retrospect: (1) Jennifer looked considerably thinner than normal, and (2) she cooked chicken, liver and rice for dinner.**

While eating their chicken and liver, Peter made a crude joke about lesbians using turkey basters to impregnate themselves. He then went on and on about it in front of Jennifer’s two young children. Apparently, Pamela saw nothing inappropriate about the comment in that setting and context.

Apparently, Jennifer saw something else. The anxiety that she had felt for so long gave way to absolute terror.

____________________
*Information here about the Freyd story came from a number of sources, but chiefly from a 1995 essay, “Marshalling the Media” by Katy Butler, “Crisis or Creation? A Systematic Examination of “False Memory .Syndrome” in the 2002 book Misinformation Concerning Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Survivors (ed. Drs. Charles Whitfield, Joyanna Silberg, and Paul Fink) by Stephanie Dallam, Barbara Rogers’ 2006 post “The War against the Child’s and the Victim’s Credibility and Truth,” and a 1991 paper titled “How Could This Happen? Coping with a False Accusation of Incest and Rape” (first published in vol. 3, n. 3 in Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, ed. Hollida Wakefield) by Dr. Pamela Freyd (as Jane Doe).

**Pamela explained this was “a bit out of pattern.”   Jennifer usually made her mother’s favorite meals when her parents visited. But Pamela specifically hates liver, no matter how it’s cooked. As for the chicken, Jennifer knew that her father’s favorite piece was the breast--but she gave all of those to other family members, leaving him with other pieces.

Assailing the Tender Age: The War of the Ghosts

2011-09-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

This is a different kind of game.

Okay, maybe not a game. Not an experiment, either. Rather, it's a demonstration of something that will be coming up later on The X-Spot.

If you care to indulge me, do the following: (1) Read the below story twice, and then don't look at it again; (2) using a word processor program, write down the story in your own words; and (3) then cut and paste your response into the comment box on Blogger.

One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals and while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war cries, and they thought: “Maybe this is a war party.”

They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe, and they said: ‘What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people.’

One of the young men said, ‘I have no arrows.’

‘Arrows are in the canoe,’ they said.

‘I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone. But you,’ he said, turning to the other, ‘may go with them.’

So one of the young men went, but the other returned home.

And the warriors went on up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water and they began to fight, and many were killed. But presently the young man heard one of the warriors say, ‘Quick, let us go home: that Indian has been hit.’ Now he thought: ‘Oh, they are ghosts.’ He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot.

So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And he told everybody and said: ‘Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick.’

He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried.

He was dead.

‘Scuse Me, While I Kiss This Mondegreen (Answers)

2011-09-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

1. "Old Theresa Brown/And this guy is gray."
Song: “California Dreaming.” Singer(s): Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty, John and Michelle Phillips, or The Mamas and the Papas (Answered by Foam). Correct lyrics: “All the leaves are brown/And the sky is gray” (Partially answered by Foam).

2. "A weakling weighing ninety-eight pounds/Will get sand in his face when kicked to the groin."
Song: “I Can Make You a Man” (Answered by Dale). Singer(s): Rocky Horror Picture Show Original Cast, Dr. Frankenfurter, or Tim Curry (Answered by Dale). Correct lyrics: “A weakling weighing ninety-eight pounds/Will get sand in his face when kicked to the ground” (Answered by Dale).

Of course, with Tim Curry’s annunciation, that last word really sounds more like ‘groin’ than ‘ground.’

3. "Blue eye, blue eye/No, no, no, no/I said, ‘A wig and a comb.’"
Song: “Louie, Louie.” Singer(s): The Kingsmen, or Jack Ely. Correct lyrics: “Louie, Louie/No, no, no, no/I said, ‘We gotta go.’”

The song’s composer, Richard Berry, originally recorded “Louie, Louie” in 1957 with his band, the Pharaohs, and released it without incident as the b-side to the song “Rock, Rock, Rock.” This tune, about a Jamaican sailor pining for his girlfriend back home, didn’t do well nationally or internationally, but developed a cult following in the Seattle scene of the late-1950s and early-1960s. Many local rock bands included it as a must in their repertoires, and recorded numerous versions of it long before the Kingsmen committed it to vinyl in 1963. The Kingsmen’s version, however, struck a nerve. Its garbled lyrics gave it a mystique. Rock fans and anti-rock activists outside of Seattle, unfamiliar as they were with "Louie, Louie," tried to decode it for lewd hidden meanings.

The unintelligible singing resulted accidentally from a number of factors. First off, lead singer Jack Ely had blown his voice out the night before during a ninety-minute “Louie, Louie” jam session. What’s worse, the studio where they recorded it mounted it’s vocal mike on the wall in a fixed position approximately a foot over Ely’s head. So he had to stand on his toes and shout the lyrics so that they could be heard at all. Ely was also under the impression that they were rehearsing the song, and didn’t realize that this would constitute the final take until they finished. Moreover, Ely had to sing through all of this while wearing braces, which inhibited him from articulating clearly under those circumstances.

I got the idea for this particular question from these guys . Check it out if you need a good laugh.

4. "Has to, Edward’s side for Mitch/Den singer itch, I in lead for dish."
Song: “99 Luftballoons.“ Singer(s): Nena, or Nena Hagen (Gabrielle Kerner--Answered by Foam). Correct lyrics: “Hast du etwas zeit für mich?/Dann singe ich ein lied für dich [Got some time for me?/Then I’ll sing you a song]” (Answered by Foam).

In case you never knew, this anti-war song is about using the UFO scare as an excuse for militarization--thus making it right at home on Der X-Punkt, I mean The X-Spot.

5. "Midsummer’s day/Midsummer’s day."
Song: “It’s a Mistake.” Singer(s): Men at Work, or Colin Hay. Correct lyrics: “It’s a mistake/It’s a mistake.”

While on a road trip with my college sweetheart and her family, this song came on the radio, and her mother, singing along, actually perceived these as the lyrics. No, we didn’t tell her.

6. "Let’s get enemas, enemas/I wanna get enemas/Let’s get, uh, enemas."
Song: “Let’s Get Physical” (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Foam). Singer: Olivia Newton-John. (Answered by Eric1313). Correct Lyrics “Let’s get animal, animal/I wanna get animal/Let’s get into animal.”

The first time I heard this song, I could swear this is what she was singing--which kinda made sense because in the previous chorus I thought she said, “Let’s get physicals, physicals….” I thought the song was about going to the doctor, or playing doctor, or something.

7. "Old children/Is just a shadow way/It’s just a shadow way."
Song: “Gimmie Shelter” (Answered by Dale) Singer(s): The Rolling Stones, or Mick Jagger (First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Dale). Correct lyrics: “War, Children/It’s just a shot away/It’s just a shot away” (First answered by Dale. Partially answered by Foam.)

8. "I could be Jason/But my dime would be wasting/They got nothing on Hugh."
Song: “Nothin’ on You.” Singer(s): B.o.B. (Bobby Simmons, Jr, the credited solo artist) or Bruno Mars (Peter Hernandez, the actual singer of this passage). Correct lyrics: “I could be chasing/But my time would be wasted/They got nothin’ on you.”

9. "It’s bound to take your life/There’s a bathroom on the right."
Song: “Bad Moon Rising” (First answered by Charles. Partially answered by Eric1313 and Ray) Singer(s): Creedence Clearwater Revival, or John Fogarty (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Charles). Correct lyrics: “It’s bound to take your life/There’s a bad moon on the rise” (Answered by Eric1313).

10. "Here we are now/In containers."
Song: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Answered by Dale). Singer(s): Nirvana, or Kurt Cobain (Answered by Dale). Correct lyrics: “Here we are now/Entertain us” (Answered by Dale).

11. "Ha, ha, ha, ha/Steak and a knife/Steak and a knife."
Song: “Stayin’ Alive” (Answered by Dale). Singer(s): The Bee Gees, or Barry, Maurice or Robin Gibb (Answered by Dale). Correct lyrics: “Ah, ha, ha, ha/Stayin’ alive/Stayin’ alive” (Mostly answered by Dale).

12. "You see the sky?/The sky’s in love with you."
Song: “This Guy’s in Love with You.” Singer: Herb Alpert. Correct lyrics: “You see this guy?/This guy’s in love with you.”

Primarily known as a trumpet player and record executive, this was a rare occurrence of Alpert actually singing. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who wrote a number of hits for Dionne Warwick. Warwick also recorded this song as “This Girl’s in Love with You.”

13. "A frank zapper and the mother/Were at the best place around."
Song: “Smoke on the Water” (Answered by Charles) Singer(s): Deep Purple, or Ian Gillan (Answered by Charles). Correct lyrics: “But Frank Zappa and the Mothers/Were at the best place around.”

“The Mothers” refers to Zappa’s band, the Mothers of Invention. The song itself chronicles the events of the 1971 Montreux Casino fire. Zappa was onstage when the fire started, while the Deep Purple were preparing for a recording session nearby.

BTW, if you care to see more stick figure animation.

14, "A fine little bitch, she waits for me/She gets her kicks on top of me/Each night I take her out all alone/She ain’t the kind I lay at home."
Song: “Louie, Louie.” Singer(s): The Kingsmen, or Jack Ely. Correct lyrics: “A fine little girl, she waits for me/Me catch a ship across the sea/I sailed the ship all alone/I never think I’ll make it home.”

On The X-Spot, you’ve often seen me refer to items in a subject’s FBI file. “Louie, Louie” was a song that had it’s own FBI file, filled with speculation by anti-rock activists and clueless parents about the lyrics. The above represent an mishmash of these mishearings.

Figure 1. Suspected “Louie, Louie” lyrics investigated by the FBI.

15. "Lawrence of Arabia, British in Romania/Oldness, John Glen, Mr. Peeps, Allison."
Song: “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (Answered by Eric1313). Singer: Billy Joel. Correct lyrics: “Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania/Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson.”

16. "Just wrap your legs ‘round these velvet rims/And strap your hands ‘cross my inches."
Song: “Born to Run” (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Ray and Charles). Singer: Bruce Springsteen (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Ray and Charles). Correct lyrics: “Just wrap your legs ‘round these velvet rims/And strap your hands ‘cross my engines” (Answered by Ray).

The first time I moved to New Jersey, someone told me a rumor about a bill floating around the state legislature to make “Born to Run” the official state rock song (or official song). That made sense to me. After all, Springsteen’s a native son. Moreover, the song contains one of the most accurate descriptions of New Jersey I’ve ever heard:

It’s a deathtrap!
It’s a suicide rap!
We gotta get out while we’re young!

17. "He mass production, he got walrus gumbo/He got Ono cycle, he one spinal cracker."
Song: “Come Together” (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Ray and Charles). Singer(s): The Beatles, or John Lennon, or Paul McCartney (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Ray, Charles and Dale). Correct lyrics: “He bag production, he got walrus gumboot/He got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker.”

This is a case where the misheard lyrics make about as much sense as the real ones.

18. "Kitschy, Kitschy, ja, ja, Dada/Kitschy, Kitschy, ja, ja, here/Mocha choker latte, ja, ja."
Song: “Lady Marmalade” (First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Dale. Hinted at by Foam). Singer(s): Labelle, or Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, or Patti LaBelle (Patricia Holte-Edwards--First answered by Eric1313. Independently answered by Dale.). Correct lyrics: “Gitchi, gitchi, ya, ya, da, da/Gitchi, gitchi, ya, ya, here/Mocca chocalata ya, ya.”

In some respects, you could characterize Labelle as a real-life female version of Spınal Tap. They persisted for decades, constantly reinventing themselves to fit new times and subgenres: from the girl groups of the early-1960s, to glam-rockers, to backup singers for Patti LaBelle’s close friend Laura Nyro, to disco divas, to 1980s synthpoppers.

19. "Stood a rain/Cold and damp/Still, the warm wind/Tires friend."
Song: “Black Hole Sun.” Singer(s): Soundgarden, or Chris Cornell. Correct lyrics: “Stuttering/Cold and damp/Steal the warm wind/Tired friend.”

20. "To be a true player, you have to know how to play/If she say you’re night, convince her. Say you’re day."
Song: “It Wasn’t Me.” Singer(s): Shaggy (Orville Burrell, the credited solo artist), or RikRok (Ricardo Ducent, the actual singer of this passage). Correct lyrics: “To be a true player, you have to know how to play/If she say you’re not, convince her. Say you’re gay.”

This song inspired the colloquial term “Shaggy Defence” amongst attorneys. It refers to denying one’s guilt despite overwhelming and indisputably obvious evidence to the contrary. AOL Radio blogger Matthew Wilkening ranked “It Wasn’t Me” at #5 in his list of Worst Songs Ever, noting that it was “… so bad it further corrupted lawyers.”

‘Scuse Me, While I Kiss This Mondegreen

2011-09-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

Our friend Charles recently posted an item on Razored Zen about misheard song lyrics, or ‘mondegreens.’ For example, many people have mistakenly heard Jimi Hendrix singing, “’Scuse me, while I kiss this guy,” when in reality he sang, “”Scuse me, while I kiss the sky,” in the tune “Purple Haze.”

How many below songs can you identify by their misheard lyrics? Bonus points if you can name the singer (individual or group) and give the correct lyrics.

Old Theresa Brown/And this guy is gray.
A weakling weighing ninety-eight pounds/Will get sand in his face when kicked to the groin.
Blue eye, blue eye/No, no, no, no/I said, ‘A wig and a comb.’
Has to, Edward’s side for Mitch/Den singer itch, I in lead for dish.
Midsummer’s day/Midsummer’s day.
Let’s get enemas, enemas/I wanna get enemas/Let’s get, uh, enemas
Old children/Is just a shadow way/It’s just a shadow way.
I could be Jason/But my dime would be wasting/They got nothing on Hugh.
It’s bound to take your life/There’s a bathroom on the right.
Here we are now/In containers.
Ha, ha, ha, ha/Steak and a knife/Steak and a knife.
You see the sky?/The sky’s in love with you.
A frank zapper and the mother/Were at the best place around.
A fine little bitch, she waits for me/She gets her kicks on top of me/Each night I take her out all alone/She ain’t the kind I lay at home.
Lawrence of Arabia, British in Romania/Oldness, John Glen, Mr. Peeps, Allison.
Just wrap your legs ‘round these velvet rims/And strap your hands ‘cross my inches.
He mass production, he got walrus gumbo/He got Ono cycle, he one spinal cracker.
Kitschy, Kitschy, ja, ja, Dada/Kitschy, Kitschy, ja, ja, here/Mocha choker latte, ja, ja.
Stood a rain/Cold and damp/Still, the warm wind/Tires friend.
To be a true player, you have to know how to play/If she say you’re night, convince her. Say you’re day.

Click here for the answers.

The Sons of Minnie (Answers)

2011-09-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

1. What nickname (or nicknames) did not belong to an actual Marx Brother (mark all that apply): (A) Chico; (B) Dummo; (C) Groucho; (D) Gummo; (E) Harpo; (F) Zeppo? B, Dummo (Answered originally by Foam, independently by Ray). The actual Marx Brothers consisted of Leonard “Chico” Marx (1887-1961), Adolph “Harpo” Marx (1888-1964), Julius “Groucho” Marx (1890-1977), Milton “Gummo” Marx (1892-1977), and Herbert “Zeppo” Marx (1902-1979). A sixth Marx brother, Manfred, died in infancy in 1885.

Gummo was part of the original Marx Brothers vaudeville act, but was drafted into WWI. The brothers then replaced him with Zeppo. After his Army service, Gummo decided he no longer wanted to work onstage, so he became an artist manager instead. His clients included a number of writers (for radio, television and the movies), and his brother, Groucho. Gummo passed away shortly before Groucho. Because the latter’s health was so precarious at that time, family and friends never told Groucho of his brother’s passing. They were afraid that the bad news would kill him.

Zeppo appeared in the four movies the Marx Brothers did for Paramount. Despite its critical acclaim, their fourth movie, Duck Soup, was a box office disappointment in its initial run. So Paramount fired them, and they were without a contract for a year. When MGM picked them up in 1935, they pressured the brothers to let Zeppo go, since, as the straight man, he had no distinct comedic persona, as did the others. Groucho would later tell interviewers that he discovered just how valuable Zeppo was when, in subsequent movies, producers kept casting for the kinds of characters he played. Because he could impersonate all of his brothers, Zeppo sometimes appeared uncredited as a stand-in for them.

2. In the movie Horse Feathers, what does Harpo pull out of his pocket and give to a homeless man who asks him for change? You’re just gonna have to watch this scene to find the answer.

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3. How does the movie Animal Crackers end: (A) Chico steals a painting that he thinks is a masterpiece, but is in fact a forgery; (B) Groucho marries lovebirds Arabella Rittenhouse and John Parker; (C) Harpo slays nearly the entire cast, and then commits suicide; (D) Zeppo woos Arabella Rittenhouse away from John Parker, and the other brothers help the pair elope? C. Leave it to the Marx Brothers to make mass murder/suicide funny. When threatened with arrest by a surly cop, Harpo sprays him with a deadly insecticide, which he then turns on everyone else, including Chico. He’s about to leave when he sees that one of the slain is a woman he’s been chasing the whole picture. He lies down, cuddles up next to her corpse, and with a huge smile on his face, sprays himself.

4. Margaret Dumont often played a wealthy society matron in the Marx Brothers movies. Other than being an actress, what was she in real life? She was a wealthy society matron. Actress and comedienne Daisy J. Baker (1882-1965) took the stage name Margaret Dumont (left) when she appeared in vaudeville at the turn of the Twentieth Century. She married sugar heir John Moller, Jr. in 1910, and retired from the stage to fulfill her obligations as a society matron (for the most part--she took a bit part in the 1917 version of Dickens‘ A Tale of Two Cities). When Moller died in 1918, she returned to the stage. In 1925, she appeared in the Marx Brothers’ second hit Broadway play, The Coconuts, and three years later in their third smash musical, Animal Crackers. She reprised her role in both movies. Although she made fifty-four flicks during her life, she’s most remembered for her co-starring role in seven Marx Brothers movies.

In an interview with Dick Cavett in either 1969 or 1971 (I’ve seen the clip, but cannot tell which date it’s from--these are the two dates that Marx appeared on that show), Groucho fondly remembered her as a superb straight man. He further said that the reason she was so great was because she never understood their humor, especially when she was the butt of it.

Her family, however, insists that she always got Groucho’s jokes, and ad-libs. She was able to come across that clueless because she was just that good. Days before she died, Dumont taped a segment with Groucho for a television variety show. He made several ad-libbed wisecracks. Caught completely off-guard, and years out of practice in handling ’Julie’ (her nickname for him), she lost character and laughed. So you be the judge.

5. Marx Brother movies often featured beautiful women. Can you match the actresses below to the film they appeared in?

(1) Lucille Ball                 (a) A Day at the Races
(2) Kitty Carlisle              (b) A Night at the Opera
(3) Dorothy Dandridge   (c) Animal Crackers
(4) Marilyn Monroe        (d) Duck Soup
(5) Lillian Roth                (e) Love Happy
(6) Thelma Todd              (f) Monkey Business
(7) Raquel Torres            (g) Room Service

(1) Lucille Ball (1911-1989) in (g) Room Service; (2) Kitty Carlisle (1910-2007) in (b) A Night at the Opera; (3) Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965) in (a) A Day at the Races; (4) Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) in (e) Love Happy (Answered by Foam); (5) Lillian Roth (1910-1980) (c) Animal Crackers; (6)Thelma Todd (1906-1935) in (f) Monkey Business; and (7) Raquel Torres (1908-1987) in (d) Duck Soup.

Monroe, sadly, wasn’t the only one of these seven to die under mysterious circumstances. Several hours after talking on the phone with her ex-sister-in-law, Dorothy Dandridge (left) was found dead by her manager, Earl Mills. In his 1983 book Coroner, Chief Medical Examiner (Los Angeles County) Dr. Thomas Noguchi related how his staff originally determined that Dandridge died of a broken foot (the fracture supposedly caused an embolism, which resulted in fatty tissue breaking off from the bone, and traveling along the circulatory system to block blood flow to vital organs). Such a diagnosis is rare, so Noguchi ordered a follow-up just to be sure. A toxicology screening found that she had lethal levels of the antidepressant imipramine in her system. Many sources characterize the overdose as accidental. But due to the ongoing turmoil in her life over the previous several years--a decline in acting roles and club dates, a nasty divorce from a physically abusive ex-husband, her daughter’s confinement to a mental institution, and the embezzlement of over $150,000 by her accountants which not only left her broke but with a tax debt of $139,000--Noguchi believed she intentionally overdosed.

On 16 December 1935, maid Mae Whitehead went upstairs to clean an apartment when she found the body of Thelma Todd (right) slumped over the steering wheel of a car parked inside the building's garage. LAPD determined that she suffered carbon monoxide poisoning after she accidentally fell asleep when running the motor to start the car. A grand jury ruled her death a suicide. Many believe, however, that her ex-husband, reputed mobster Pat DiCioco, put a hit out on her. She last saw him at a Hollywood nightclub, the Trocadero, about twenty-four hours before her death. While there, they had an argument. The next day, witnesses saw her riding around LA with a dark-haired stranger. The garage where she died, was partially open. Moreover, someone had turned off the ignition, despite the fact that the car still had two gallons of gas in the tank. Police also noted blood on her face and dress, as well as a smudged handprint on the outer door. Three years later, DiCioco was implicated in another murder, that of comic Ted Healy.

6. For each quote, name the Marx Brother who said it:

(a) “If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world’s against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier, do it.” Harpo.

(b) “I wasn’t kissing her. I was whispering in her mouth.” Chico. (Answered by Foam)

(c) “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” Groucho, according to his friend, humorist Leo Rosten (1908-1997). (Answered by Foam)

(d) “When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun.’” Groucho.

(e) “[When visiting Weimar Germany] I saw the most frightening, most depressing sight I had ever seen--a row of stores with Stars of David and the word ‘Jude’ painted on them, and inside, behind half-empty counters, people in a daze, cringing like they didn’t know what hit them and didn’t know where the next blow would come from. Hitler had been in power only six months, and his boycott was already in full effect. I hadn’t been so wholly conscious of being a Jew since my bar mitzvah, and it was the first time since I’d had the measles that I was too sick to eat.” Harpo. He gave quite a bit of insightful commentary on anti-Semitism in the US and elsewhere.

(f) “Of course you miss your family and when you get older you have some people that you’re bound to miss. So [chuckling] you have to do the best you can. But it’s hard to think about the kind of feeling that you had with these brothers and your friends. Zeppo said this to an interviewer shortly before his death.

7.    What Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright (and original Knight of the Algonquin Round Table) wrote four of the Marx Brothers’ most successful movies? George S. Kaufman (1889-1961). Kaufman and Harpo were two of the original Knights, along with sportswriter Heywood Broun (1888-1939), and poet Dorothy Parker (1893-1967).

He received credits for The Coconuts and Animal Crackers, because he wrote both the original plays. He also wrote the screenplays for A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera. Side note: Irving Berlin (1888-1989) wrote the original score for The Coconuts.

8.   What legendary filmmaker produced two of the Marx Brothers’ most successful movies? Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) produced A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera. The Irving Thalberg Award given at the Oscars was named in his honor.

With such composers as Irving Berlin, such writers as Kaufman, and such producers as Thalberg working with them, the Marx Brothers had some heavyweight creative support behind them.

9.   What movies featured the following lines?

(a) “[Groucho] I am the same Sam Grunion who solved the international uranium-mining swindle. Scotland Yard was baffled; the FBI was baffled. They sent for me and the case was solved immediately: I confessed.” Love Happy. The Marx Brothers try to help some wannabe actors stage a play, when they accidentally come across some stolen diamonds.

(b) “[Chico] What you need is a good bodyguard.”
“[Groucho] What I need is a good body. The one I’ve got isn’t worth guarding.” A Night in Casablanca. This is a true X-Spot movie, in that it deals with finding loot stolen by the Nazis.

Warner Brothers was concerned about this film prior to its release, because they didn’t know whether or not it plagiarized their movie, Casablanca. According to urban legend, Warner Brothers threatened to sue MGM for using the word ’Casablanca’ in the title, which prompted Groucho to threaten to sue them for using the word ‘Brothers’ in their corporate name. According to most sources, however, this exchange of threats never occurred.

(c) “[Margaret Dumont] I’m afraid that after we’re married awhile, a beautiful young girl will come along, and, uh, you’ll forget all about me.”
“[Groucho] Don’t be silly. I’ll write you twice a week.” The Big Store. This was the last appearance of Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers film.

(d) “[Chico to Harpo] Right now, I’d do anything for money. I’d kill somebody for money. I’d kill you for nothing.”
[Harpo looks sad and betrayed]
“[Chico to Harpo] Ha, ha, ha, ah no. You’re my friend. I’d kill you for nothing.” The Coconuts. This movie poked merciless fun at the Florida Land Boom., a hot-button topic of the 1920s.

(e) “[Groucho] It’s all right, that’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause.”
“[Chico] You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Claus!” A Night at the Opera. Groucho and Chico are negotiating a contract. When they can’t agree on one’s demand, the other capitulates by ripping out the offending item. By the time this scene is over, their contracts are just scraps of paper.

10. Sometimes, a quote is attributed to a Marx Brother, and a controversy arises as to whether or not he actually said it. In the following two cases, what did legend have one of Minnie’s boys saying?

(a) What did Chico allegedly say to patrician actress Tallulah Bankhead upon meeting her at a party?

The host was a good friend of both Marx and Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968), who wouldn’t dare think of not inviting them both to his party. But according to Dick Cavett, he was worried that Chico’s crudeness would upset the genteel southern belle from an old-money family. So he told Marx to be on his best behavior, and alerted other guests to notify him if he acted in any way ungentlemanly to Bankhead.

When finally introduced to her, he allegedly said, “Miss Bankhead, I really, really want to fuck you.”

To which she allegedly replied, “And so you shall, you wonderful old-fashioned boy.” They then left the party together.

In some ways the story makes sense because both Bankhead and Marx were extremely colorful characters, with a ribald sense of humor, and a tendency toward wild behavior at times. They both also had a reputation (earned or not) for being (ahem!) sexually restless. And Cavett said he got the story from a reliable source.

The problem here is that a number of other men (some famous, some not) were rumored to have said this to Bankhead, and achieving the same result. Thus, the tale is apocryphal and has all the markings of an urban legend.

(b) During the taping of his radio show, You Bet Your Life, a contestant shocked Groucho when she told him she had given birth to sixteen children. When he asked her why she had so many kids, she said, “Well, I love my husband.” What did he allegedly say in response?

Groucho allegedly said to the woman, “I love my cigar, but I take it out once and awhile.” (Answered by Ray)

Despite the fact that You Bet Your Life was pre-recorded for broadcast and preserved, this conversation never appears on any of its tapes or transcriptions. Yet thousands upon thousands of people vehemently claim that they heard it.

George Fenneman (1919-1997), Groucho’s sidekick on the show, insisted for the rest of his life that the story wasn’t true. Groucho, on the other hand, insisted that it was. He explained that NBC censors cut out the naughty line before airing the program. Thus, the only people who could have heard the line were people in the studio audience, who then told their friends, who told more friends….

Whatever the case, no one actually heard this on radio. So if someone tells you otherwise, they’re lying their pants off.

The Sons of Minnie

2011-09-11T00:03:00.000-07:00

When dancer Minnie Schoenberg (left) immigrated from Germany to the US, she probably had no idea that she would spawn a legend.

Literally.

She met and fell in love with French immigrant Sam Marx, a second-rate tailor with a quick wit. Their children would dominate pop culture during the first half of the Twentieth Century, and their influence is still felt in the present day.

In a previous series, you learned about my love of exploitation films. But I’m also a fan of other cinema, including the movies of the Marx Brothers. I’m hardly alone. You might know more about them and their movies than you think. Test your knowledge of Marx Brothers trivia in the quiz below.

1. What nickname (or nicknames) did not belong to an actual Marx Brother (mark all that apply): (A) Chico; (B) Dummo; (C) Groucho; (D) Gummo; (E) Harpo; (F) Zeppo?

2. In the movie Horse Feathers, what does Harpo pull out of his pocket and give to a homeless man who asks him for change?

3. How does the movie Animal Crackers end: (A) Chico steals a painting that he thinks is a masterpiece, but is in fact a forgery; (B) Groucho marries lovebirds Arabella Rittenhouse and John Parker; (C) Harpo slays nearly the entire cast, and then commits suicide; (D) Zeppo woos Arabella Rittenhouse away from John Parker, and the other brothers help the pair elope?

4. Margaret Dumont often played a wealthy society matron in the Marx Brothers movies. Other than being an actress, what was she in real life?

5. Marx Brother movies often featured beautiful women. Can you match the actresses below to the film they appeared in?

(1) Lucille Ball                  (a) A Day at the Races
(2) Kitty Carlisle              (b) A Night at the Opera
(3) Dorothy Dandridge   (c) Animal Crackers
(4) Marilyn Monroe        (d) Duck Soup
(5) Lillian Roth                 (e) Love Happy
(6) Thelma Todd            (f) Monkey Business
(7) Raquel Torres       (g) Room Service

6. For each quote, name the Marx Brother who said it:

(a) “If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world’s against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier, do it.”

(b) “I wasn’t kissing her. I was whispering in her mouth.”

(c) “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

(d) “When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun.’"

(e) “[When visiting Weimar Germany] I saw the most frightening, most depressing sight I had ever seen--a row of stores with Stars of David and the word ‘Jude’ painted on them, and inside, behind half-empty counters, people in a daze, cringing like they didn`t know what hit them and didn`t know where the next blow would come from. Hitler had been in power only six months, and his boycott was already in full effect. I hadn`t been so wholly conscious of being a Jew since my bar mitzvah, and it was the first time since I had the measles that I was too sick to eat.”

(f) “Of course you miss your family and when you get older you have some people that you’re bound to miss. So [chuckling] you have to do the best you can. But it’s hard to think about the kind of feeling that you had with these brothers and your friends.

7.    What Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright (and original Knight of the Algonquin Round Table) wrote four of the Marx Brothers’ most successful movies?

8.   What legendary filmmaker produced two of the Marx Brothers’ most successful movies?

9.   What movies featured the following lines?

(a) “[Groucho] I am the same Sam Grunion who solved the international uranium-mining swindle. Scotland Yard was baffled; the FBI was baffled. They sent for me and the case was solved immediately: I confessed.”

(b) “[Chico] What you need is a good bodyguard.”
“[Groucho] What I need is a good body. The one I’ve got isn’t worth guarding.”

(c) “[Margaret Dumont] I’m afraid that after we’re married awhile, a beautiful young girl will come along, and, uh, you’ll forget all about me.”
“[Groucho] Don’t be silly. I’ll write you twice a week.”

(d) “[Chico to Harpo] Right now, I’d do anything for money. I’d kill somebody for money. I’d kill you for money.”
[Harpo looks sad and betrayed]
“[Chico to Harpo] Ha, ha, ha, ah no. You’re my friend. I’d kill you for nothing.”

(e) “[Groucho] It’s all right, that’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause.”
“[Chico] You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Claus!”

10. Sometimes, a quote is attributed to a Marx Brother, and a controversy arises as to whether or not he actually said it. In the following two cases, what did rumor have one of Minnie’s boys saying?

(a) What did Chico allegedly say to actress Tallulah Bankhead upon meeting her at a party?

(b) During the taping of his radio show, You Bet Your Life, a contestant shocked Groucho when she told him she had given birth to sixteen children. When he asked her why she had so many kids, she said, “Well, I love my husband.” What did he allegedly say in response?

A Real Love for Big Cheats: And Recurrence

2011-09-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, shrinks who dabble in that sort of thing, use the term ‘narcosynthesis’ to describe a treatment protocol whereby the psychiatrist uses drugs (narcotics) in combination with other techniques to facilitate the healing process. This practice grew out of CIA and military research on ‘narcohypnosis,’ which, as the name suggests, combines drugs and trances. Dr. William Bryan, a colorful figure who served as a technical advisor for Hollywood movies and television shows, and who sometimes dabbled in show-biz himself as a stage hypnotist, is often identified as the figure who, more than anyone else, developed the Agency’s narcohypnosis program.* Yet, others affiliated with Intel would have a similar expertise, among them Dr. Martin Orne.

That’s why Wikipedia’s entry on Sexton especially piqued my interest. Discussing Orne’s controversial release of Anne’s tapes to Dr. Diane Middlebrook, the writer states:

Following one of many suicide attempts and breakdowns, Sexton worked with therapist Dr. Martin Orne. He diagnosed her with what is now described as bipolar disorder, but his competence to do so is called into question by his early use of allegedly unsound psychotherapeutic techniques. During sessions with Anne Sexton he used hypnosis and sodium pentothal to recover supposedly repressed memories. During this process, he allegedly used suggestion to uncover memories of inflicting childhood sexual abuse. This abuse was refuted in interviews with her mother and other relatives.

If this were true, then Dr. Orne unquestionably performed narcohypnosis on Sexton. More important, the only place where he would have gained any knowledge about this protocol, in 1957, would have through his work with CIA. After all, the first public discussion of narcohypnosis wouldn’t occur until two years later, when Richard Condon published The Manchurian Candidate. This would be smoking gun evidence that Orne used Anne as an MK-ULTRA guinea pig.

The Wikipedia datum was documented by a footnote. I immediately clicked it, only to find, to my disappointment, that the writer cited Dr. Diane Middlebrook’s biography as the source. By then, I knew that her biography said no such thing. Instead, it said that Dr. Orne emphatically refused to hypnotize Sexton, who then asked for sodium pentothal. Curiously, while Orne’s refutation of hypnosis was short, sweet and unambiguous, neither he nor Middlebrook said anything about whether or not he actually administered the truth drug per Sexton’s request. Thus, the writer of the Wikipedia article did not get this fact from the Middlebrook bio.

I then thought the writer might have made a simple misattribution--which happens, sometimes, when you spill coffee on your notes, or you get to the age where you can no longer read your own handwriting. So I tried to find another source with this bit of information. That source might exist, but I haven’t found it.

Still, the juxtaposition of drugs and hypnosis per a patient’s request sounds kinda odd to me, especially in 1957. So one might wonder if Dr. Orne might have somehow planted the suggestion to her, perhaps quite subtly. Maybe he threw out various hints about using these techniques alone or in combination. Maybe he let her find her own way to making the connection herself, if perchance he knew that she were reading material that would lead in that direction. As Middlebrook explained:

Although Dr. Orne did not, apparently, encourage Sexton to read psychology, he didn’t discourage the practice either; after all, he had prescribed any kind of educational effort as highly therapeutic in her case…. Her inexactness about analytic theory indicates that she was not attempting to master it. Was her reading a way of identifying with her doctor, of finding yet another ‘twin’?

Simply put, it’s enticing to think that Dr. Orne might have actually manifest some solid connection between his treatment of Sexton and his work with the military and Intel. But if he did, he didn’t admit it to Dr. Middlebrook. And little other evidence would exist to suggest that he did. At the same time, for whatever reason, Sexton articulated a suggestion of narcohypnosis.

As noted previously, Anne Sexton manifest symptoms of what pop psychologists would call Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), or what psychiatrists nowadays refer to as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), in late-1957. The ‘second personality,’ Elizabeth, exhorted Dr. Orne to hypnotize both her and Anne so that the latter could give up the big secret (which, as it turned out, was childhood sexual abuse), and then asked him to apply sodium pentothal after he refused to put her under a hypnotic trance.

Elizabeth’s very existence calls to mind a number of alleged MK-ULTRA victims, who have claimed that Intel-funded psychiatrists deliberately developed another, more brash personality within their psyches. Candy Jones’ alter ego, Arlene Grant, immediately comes to mind, but there are many others.** The basic premise, according to claimants, was to split the subject’s mind into fragmented identities, making it easier for them to infiltrate, and convince authorities of innocence (e.g., by passing polygraph tests). Splitting the personality could also allow a handler greater control. Dr. Colin Ross, a controversial Texas-based psychiatrist (MD) specializing in dissociative disorders, echoes the conventional beliefs of the mainstream in some respects. Like his peers, he believes that DID results from iatrogenesis, or the therapy itself. As he explained in a lecture given at the Ninth Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation (April 1996):

When I combine the expert witness experience that I have had at clinically created iatrogenic DID using the techniques of destructive psychotherapy cults in the course of persuasion, as I described this morning-when I take that expert witness evidence and see those cases created out of a base of no pre-existing DID and then I go to this CIA military mind control literature, my only possible conclusion is yes, you can create full tilt DID artificially from ground zero.

While iatrogenesis usually implies an accidental, unintentional occurrence that adversely influences treatment, Ross goes on to posit that physicians and caregivers (especially those connected to the military and Intel) could make the same “mistakes” on purpose, and therefore produce the same affect.

Dr. Orne must have had some awareness of the psychoanalyst/ psychotherapist’s role in contributing to DID. That’s the reason he gave Middlebrook for ending his acknowledgement of the Elizabeth personality. Still, he allowed Sexton to manifest this character, and let her type letters in the dark, for some time. He obviously got an eyeful of Elizabeth. Although Dr. Orne did not publish a single paper on dissociation (at least as far as I know), he could have still spoken of his observations of Sexton--he wouldn’t even have to use her name or divulge other personally identifiable information--to other researchers more directly involved in artificially creating DID.

Of course, that’s if Dr. Ross and these MK-ULTRA claimants are correct. (And trust me, that’s a big “IF.”) Still, that’s one more MK-ULTRA association one could make with Sexton’s treatments, and another example of how Anne might have informed Dr. Orne’s future research.

Briefly summarizing this and the preceding post, Sexton’s therapy had undertones of contemporary CIA research on deception, hypnosis, narcohypnosis, and the artificial creation of alter egos. This is not to say that Dr. Orne manipulated Sexton in any profound way. But the strong probably remains that she informed various aspects of his work.

The most interesting connection between Sexton and Orne’s later work may not have any bearing on his work with Intel, at least directly. Looking back on how Sexton hooked up with Orne in the first place, we can see that she originally sought treatment from Martin’s mother, the prominent psychiatrist Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne. Sexton went to her because Dr. Brunner-Orne treated her father for alcoholism. When Martha could no longer accommodate Sexton because of a scheduling conflict, she gave the case to her son.

No doubt, Dr. Orne’s mom discussed Sexton with him before handing her over as a patient. Thus, Orne would learn that the crux of her problem centered around Anne’s love for an alcoholic father, who allegedly raped her as a young girl.*** Whether or not this rape occurred, we can only speculate. We would also have to speculate as to whether the father (Ralph Harvey) disclosed any sexual transgressions to Dr. Brunner-Orne, or if Martha disclosed any information about Harvey’s case to Martin, maybe just to give him some background on Sexton’s problems.

Here’s one thing, about which we don’t have to speculate: at the very same time that Dr. Orne is mulling over whether or not to release Sexton’s tapes to Dr. Middlebrook, he is treating a patient who will lead him to a story almost identical to Anne’s. As with Sexton, this case involved a brilliant young woman, from a well-heeled, socially respected eastern family, an alcoholic father, and the accusation of childhood sexual abuse.****

This story, however, has a twist. Instead of simply counseling his patient, Dr. Orne, this time, took a more active role. Moreover, he managed to get a number of other CIA-funded shrinks to join him in this quest.

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
--Anne Sexton, from “Wanting to Die”

____________________
*Dr. Bryan claimed that he personally programmed Sirhan Sirhan, and George Wallace’s would-be assassin Arthur Bremer.

**Just so we’re not totally bogged down, I’ll discuss these specific cases at a later date. Nevertheless, you can find oodles and oodles of sites linking the aritificial creation of DID to MK-ULTRA.

***Orne's position was that any number of adults might have inadvertently abused Sexton sexually, most notably her mother. At a very young age, Anne suffered a vaginal cyst which required constant attention both in the home and doctor's office. That meant that the adults in her life frequently inspected her for signs of trouble. As Middlebrook wrote:

The point is, the veracity of the incest narrative cannot be established historically, but that does not mean that it didn’t, in a profound and lasting sense, ‘happen.’ It is clear from many sources that Sexton’s physical boundaries were repeatedly trespassed by the adults in her family in ways that disturbed her emotional life from girlhood onward.

Sexton's mom, Mary Harvey, served as Anne's primary caregiver, prompting Dr. Orne to comment, “In many ways, her mother was the dangerous relationship.”

****One could speculate that Dr. Orne’s involvement with this case might have influenced his decision to release Sexton’s therapy tapes. an act that many could construe as a blatant violation of ethics.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: Recurrence

2011-08-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

Generically, the experimental method consists of abstracting relevant variables from complex situations in nature and reproducing in the laboratory segments of these situations, varying the parameters involved so as to determine the effect of the experimental variables. . . . However, the use of such a model with animal or human subjects leads to the problem that the subject of the experiment is assumed, at least implicitly, to be a passive responder to stimuli--an assumption difficult to justify.
--Dr. Martin Orne, from “On the Social Psychology of the Psychological Experiment: With Particular Reference to Demand Characteristics and Their Implications” (American Psychologist, v. 17, 1962)”

Although [experimenters] tend to assume that [subjects] respond passively to instructions and to experimental stimuli, this assumption does not hold up under scrutiny. In most psychological studies the [subject] comes to the laboratory having already agreed to participate in an experiment. Whether he is paid or not, he has reasons of his own for coming. The motives which brought him also give him a real stake in the experimental outcome. These motives should not be taken lightly. If it were not for a considerable emotional investment in the experiment, as would not willingly endure boredom, discomfort or even intense pain with so little apparent resentment.
--Dr. Martin Orne, from “Demand Characteristics and the Set to Cooperate” (18th International Congress of Psychology, Moscow, 1966--funded by the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command and the Office of Naval Research).

As the above quotes would indicate, Dr. Martin Orne saw the laboratory approach to other sciences as an inadequate tool for psychological research. Whereas the rock doesn’t care if you send a few volts of electricity through it, a human might. Humans have wills and agendas. They deceive (thus throwing off data). They don’t tend to be nearly as passive as physical phenomena, or as predictable as experimental animals.

That said, one could surmise that Dr. Orne learned what he could from the situations he encountered. Of course, he did his fair share of laboratory research, under conditions that were tightly controlled--just like any scientist. But what he actually learned seemed to come not only from these experiments, but also from other opportunities that afforded him some insight to his research.

It is in that regard that I find his sessions with Anne Sexton interesting. We know some of the things that Dr. Orne worked on. We know some of the projects he became involved with. We know some of the things his colleagues and contemporaries researched on behalf of the military and Intel. And we know these things because of two US Senate investigations--one chaired in 1974 by Sen. Sam Erwin, and another chaired jointly by Sens. Daniel Inouye and Ted Kennedy in 1977--and a 1975 Vice-Presidential commission that delved into Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), CIA and military efforts to control the minds of individuals and groups. We also know the topics of Sexton’s therapy because Orne released a good deal of information about it by granting interviews with a biographer, and by providing tapes of actual sessions. Thus we can see, in her therapy, issues relevant to MK-ULTRA research.

For starters, one of the major themes that recurs in the course of Sexton’s therapy is her compulsion to deceive Dr. Orne: what she referred to as “truth crimes.” Beginning in 1963, Orne subsequently wrote, or co-authored,* some seventeen papers on the topic of detecting subject deception. One of the primary goals of MK-ULTRA was to create the perfect spy, the spy who could not be turned, the spy who could deceive the enemy, but not you. So even in this minor matter, Sexton, early on, forced Orne to consider and seriously deal with subject matter that would later prove important to the military and intelligence parties sponsoring his research.

In a more acute example, Sexton exhibited evidence of self-induced trance states. These interrupted her treatment by preventing her from remembering what had occurred from session to session. Hypnosis was a major focus of MK-ULTRA, as evidenced by Dr. Orne’s contractual work for the CIA’s Subproject #84, “Hypnosis Work.” Drs. George Estabrooks, William Kroger, William J. Bryan and others assisted the hypnosis research conducted by the Agency. According to John Marks’ FOIA documents, Orne arranged to send case files of hypnotized subjects to the CIA’s chief resident psychiatrist, Dr. John Gittinger, who would subsequently perform assessments on them, in order to correlate personality traits with hypnotic susceptibility. A study titled “Validation and Cross Validation of a Scale of Self-Reported Personal Experiences which Predicts Hypnotizability” (Journal of Psychology, v. 53, 1962), co-authored with Drs. Ronald Shor and Donald O’Connell, not only had direct bearing on people like Anne, who had “’hypnotic-like’ experiences…in the normal course of living,” but also suggested no correlation between susceptibility and personality type. While that might seem to contradict Gittinger’s efforts to correlate the two, it could well be the case that the CIA’s resident shrink found no connection, and Orne subsequently included that information in this hypothesis:

An important deduction from these formulations is the prediction that most individuals who can readily become profound hypnotic subjects have had many profound ‘hypnotic-like’ experiences which have occurred naturally in the normal course of living. The theory supposes that these individuals have the ability to suspend their usual generalized reality-orientation so that ‘hypnotic-like’ experiences can occur. This hypothesized ability has been termed tranceability which is a component of, but is distinct from, hypnotizability. In other words, it is hypothesized that at least one permanent attribute of mental functioning lies behind the ability to achieve profound hypnosis. Such an attribute, conceived as a cognitive ability, is viewed as cutting across the currently common classifications of personality traits, such as hysteria or submissiveness.

If we believe what Dr. Orne told Dr. Diane Middlebrook, then Sexton was highly hypnotizable, someone who would have achieved the highest score on any hypnotic susceptibility scale.** Such persons were of value ro MK-ULTRA researchers who, as early as Dr. Estabrook’s research in the 1930s, realized that not all people were equally hypnotizable. Those on the high end of hypnotic susceptibility might possibly be more malleable to coercion and control. Dr. Herbert Spiegel, who developed his own susceptibility test, the Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP), personally examined such subjects as Candy Jones and Sirhan Sirhan, and found that they were extremely vulnerable to trance states, and thus highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion.

We would have no way of knowing if Dr. Orne made Sexton’s case file available to Dr. Gittinger. And although he discussed Sexton’s trance states with Dr. Middlebrook, at no time did Dr. Orne claim to have hypnotized her. And, as “Validation and Cross Validation” would indicate, he saw naturally induced trance states as distinct from hypnotized trance states. At the same time, he saw the very nature of trances worthy of study in future research. As he wrote in “The Nature of Hypnosis: Artifact and Essence” (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, v. 58, 1959):

The third aspect of hypnosis, the altered state of consciousness, presents the greatest problem for investigation, yet it has been felt necessary to include the concept in all attempts to explain the phenomenon. This residual aspect, which remains after increased motivation and role-playing are accounted for, may be regarded as the ‘essence’ of hypnosis, with reference to which increased motivation and role-playing appear as artifacts.

Reviewing Sexton’s treatment, we know that Dr. Orne taped a number of these sessions. He made them in response to her inability to recall previous sessions, because of what he claimed were slips into trances. Being in a trance state in and of itself would not preclude Sexton from remembering a session. But if she were under significant stress during the sessions themselves, then that could account for both the trance states and the dissociative amnesia that she endured. We would thus have to wonder about (or assess) why Sexton might have stressed out talking to Dr. Orne.

Although I am loath to consider this a possibility, one cannot rule out a scenario in which Dr. Orne simply hypnotized her early on in his treatment of her. This could obviously explain the trance states. In his work, he wrote extensively about post-hypnotic amnesia, which could also explain the forgetfulness. Because the earlier sessions were not taped, we would have no way of knowing what might have occurred between him and Sexton other than the former's depiction of events. And as we have seen earlier, in his dealings with John Marks, Orne sometimes mischaracterized situations to distance himself from his prior work with Intel. Then too, one has to wonder why this only seems to have been an issue with Orne, since Sexton experienced highly stressful events throughout her life without having the difficulty of memory that only seemed to manifest itself with Dr. Orne.

On the other hand, Sexton was prone to such bizarre behavior as masturbating in front of her children. One could posit that she might have committed this and other, more self-destructive, acts during a state of self-induced trance. It’s conceivable that she did not remember them, hence they were not discussed within the family during her lifetime. And just about everyone stipulates that Sexton found domestic life exceedingly stressful, so this could have exacerbated her tendency to tune in and drop out.

Sexton’s trance states and deception are but two subjects encountered by Dr. Orne that he would later deal with in future research, studies that would have some importance to his work with MK-ULTRA and other indoctrination programs. Perhaps other researchers can see more. But in the next and final post in this series on Anne Sexton, I would like to explore several additional themes that recur both in her psychoanalysis and in studies on what fellow MK-ULTRA researcher Dr. Margaret Singer referred to as “thought reform.”

_______________________
*For the bulk of these, he partnered with Dr. Lawrence Gustafson (Harvard), and Dr. Richard Thackray (University of Pennsylvania).

**If you click on the link, you’ll note that Martin’s wife, Emily Carota Orne, co-designed the Harvard Group Scale with his research partner, Dr. Shor.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: Themes

2011-08-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

The bulk of this series has focused on Anne Sexton, her mental illness, her work, her success as a poet, her inability to get along with family, and so on. What drew me to this subject, however, was not Sexton herself, but rather her therapist, Dr. Martin Orne. As I commented to our friend Susan earlier in this series, this is a conspiracy blog, not a literary one. And Orne was a key player in MK-ULTRA mind-control experimentation, and a pivotal figure in the history of hypnosis.

Although I have thoroughly enjoyed Sexton’s work over the course of the summer, this series offered an opportunity to explore the mind and methodology of Dr. Orne. As a psychiatrist, he obviously saw patients. But he spent the bulk of his professional time teaching at such Ivy League Institutions as Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, and doing research for the US military and intelligence interests. So any information that indicates how he actually handled patients becomes rather important.

I read Dr. Diane Middlebrook’s biography because I knew of Dr. Orne’s direct involvement with it. Not only did he supply the tapes, but he gave extensive information to Middlebrook in interviews, and even wrote the book’s foreword. So I reckoned that by reading it, I could gain some insight as to how he approached patients, their treatment, and ultimately their healing. It thus surprised me how often MK-ULTRA themes emerged in during his psychoanalysis of Sexton. In other words, subjects of interest to the CIA at that time--especially those pertaining to Dr. Orne’s expertise--seem to crop up over and over during Anne's taped sessions, and in other aspects of her care described by Orne to Middlebrook.

I’m not suggesting that Dr. Orne used Sexton as an MK-ULTRA guinea pig; although I cannot rule out the possibility, I highly doubt it. Likewise, I wouldn’t suggest that Orne attempted to create a Manchurian Poet out of Sexton, or anything like that. In fact, my first guess is that, in general, Orne accurately depicted the relationship as that between dedicated doctor and a genuinely troubled patient.

At the same time, I believe there was more to that relationship, given the content of what they discussed. You see, Orne always spoke of Sexton as a “difficult” patient. But just as often he stressed that she was generous, and had a strong (one could say neurotic) need to be helpful. And we have good reason to believe that she helped him quite a bit.

Because MK-ULTRA themes came up so often in the course of psychoanalysis, we can prove at least one instance (and possibly others) where Orne’s association with Sexton informed his research. In other words, while Orne, Middlebrook, Maxine Kumin and others (rightly) saw the psychiatrist as a guiding figure in Sexton’s life and work, Anne, perhaps unwittingly, might have been just as much a guiding figure in his life and work.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: Bond. Dr. Bond

2011-08-20T21:06:00.000-07:00

What's missing is the eyeballs
in each of us, but it doesn't matter
because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
You let me touch them, fondle the green faces
lick at their numbers and it lets you be
my 'Daddy! ' 'Daddy! ' and though I fought all alone
with molesters and crooks, I knew your money
would save me, your courage, your 'I've had
considerable experience as a soldier...

But I died yesterday,
'Daddy, ' I died,
swallowing the Nazi-Jap animal
and it won't get out
it keeps knocking at my eyes,
my big orphan eyes,
kicking! Until eyeballs pop out
and even my dog puts up his four feet
and lets go
of his military secret
with his big red tongue
flying up and down
like yours should have

as we board our velvet train.
--Anne Sexton, from “Daddy Warbucks”

A casual glance at Dr. Martin Orne’s curriculum vitae turns up some pretty interesting items, especially during the years he served as Anne Sexton’s primary psychoanalyst. In 1957, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the (US) National Institute of Health (NIH). From 1959-1962 he received grant money from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for an Investigation of the Nature and Uses of Hypnosis as a Control Technique, followed by a subsequent grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a Scientific Investigation of Personality Attributes of Good Subjects. He collected additional grant monies from the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command for Studies in the Detection of Deception (1963-1964), in addition to receiving two additional grants from the National Institute of Mental Health for Studies in Hypnosis (1959-1964 and 1964-1966). After his move to Philadelphia, Orne continued to treat or consult with Sexton until 1973, during which time he worked on a number of other government-funded research projects, most of them dealing with aspects of military and intelligence.

What’s not in his CV, but nevertheless evident in the public record, is Dr. Orne’s work for the Central Intelligence Agency. He contributed a chapter titled “The Potential Uses of Hypnosis in Interrogation” to the 1961 book The Manipulation of Human Behavior, co-edited by Albert Biderman and Herbert Zimmer. An organization called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (SIHE) funded the research.*

SIHE grew out of the CIA-funded study groups formed by Dr. Harold Wolff, a neurology and psychiatry professor at Cornell University. In 1955, Wolff incorporated these groups as SIHE, and with the help of Dr. Lawrence Hinkle (Cornell Medical Center) completed a brainwashing study for future-DCI Allen Dulles in 1956. In short, the SIHE constituted the Agency’s “window into the behavioral sciences.”

Dr. Orne’s personal lab, the Institute of Experimental Psychiatry, received a $30,000 SIHE grant in 1962. That same year, he received an additional $30,000 (over $224k in 2011 dollars) from the Scientific Engineering Institute, identified by former US State Department intelligence officer John D. Marks and other researchers as another CIA research front. In preparation for his 1979 book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, Marks corresponded with Dr. Orne about the latter’s involvement with the CIA’s mind control research program, Project MK-ULTRA. As noted by Marks, Orne first attempted to deny his relationship to the CIA. He backed off of that position, later saying that he did not wittingly participate in CIA-related scholarship. Instead, he fondly reminisced that SIHE (due to its secrecy) required “no stupid progress reports.”

Because of a FOIA suit that liberated some 16,000 pages of documentation, Marks knew that Orne was deeply involved in CIA research, in particular MK-ULTRA Subproject #84, blandly titled “Hypnosis Work.”** Moreover, the nature of his grant monies would suggest that Orne had to have known that the CIA had orchestrated their dissemination to him. As Marks wrote about Orne’s $30K SIHE grant, the money itself had:

…no specified purpose....Orne could use it as he wished. He believes the money was ‘a contingency investment’ in his work, and MKULTRA officials agree. ‘We could go to Orne anytime,’ says one of them, ‘and say, 'Okay, here is a situation and here is a kind of guy. What would you expect we might be able to achieve if we could hypnotize him?' Through his massive knowledge, he could speculate and advise.’ A handful of other Society grantees also served in similar roles as covert Agency consultants in the field of their expertise.

In other words, the CIA had Dr. Orne on retainer, so to speak. Thus, he had to have had knowledge of where his grant money came from, and its purpose. That he participated in research programs with the National Institute of Health, which also fostered MK-ULTRA, and received additional grants from the military, which not only assisted MK-ULTRA but conducted its own mind-control research to boot, indicates that Dr. Orne had become quite embedded in the research culture of Intel from very early in his career.

More to our concerns here, Dr. Orne embarked on all of these assignments during his care of one Anne Sexton. To sum up what I’ve previously written on MK-ULTRA, the major stated purpose was to create the perfect spy, the asset who could not be turned in the face of psychological indoctrination, intimidation, guilt or torture. On a broader scale, however, MK-ULTRA endeavored to discover what made humans “tick,” how to push the individual's “buttons,” and how to gain control and manipulate the understanding and behavior of individuals and groups.

Curiously, because a doctor heavily involved with MK-ULTRA released an extraordinary amount of Sexton’s personal medical information, we can see some MK-ULTRA themes recurring in Anne’s treatment.

_______________________
* You will find this particular organization referred to by a number of names and acronyms, from the Human Ecology Foundation (HEF) to the Human Ecology Society. These are not to be confused with the Society for Human Ecology (SHE) or similarly named organizations that have no apparent ties to Intel.

**MK-ULTRA consisted of 149 subprojects, a few of which are still classified. The bulk of them are administrative in nature, or so it would seem from their titles.

In Case You're Wondering....

2011-08-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

My series on Anne Sexton and Martin Orne got waylaid by several things. First, I had a freelance deadline to meet. Second, my nephews came to Cincy for a fun (but really hectic) week. So I spent all my time with them.

The kids left for New England on Saturday, and I said to myself, "Finally. I'll get some writing done."

Influenza had something else in mind. I fell ill last Saturday and haven't recovered yet. Yeah, I'm a wuss. But when everything hurts, the last thing I want to think about is writing.

I'm much better than I was on Sunday (worst day). And have made slow progress to normalcy (?) since. When I'm back up to 80%, you'll finally get my IP address on your Sitemeter.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: The Truth Crimes of Daddy’s Little Bitch

2011-07-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

The night of my cousin's wedding
I wore blue.
I was nineteen
and we danced, Father, we orbited….

Mother was a belle and danced with twenty men.
You danced with me never saying a word.
Instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.
The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me
like a great god and we bent together
like two lonely swans.
--Anne Sexton, from “How We Danced”

Theme Seven: Incest and Molestation

When Anne Sexton first displayed the “Elizabeth” personality, she constantly talked about something that Sexton herself couldn’t say. In one of her typed-in-the-dark letters to Dr. Martin Orne, “Elizabeth” exhorted the shrink to administer sodium pentothal so that Anne would tell him some deep dark secret.

Sodium pentothal is a barbituate that doctors might give to a patient for a number of reasons. They can use it as anesthetic, to inhibit phobias, or to induce a coma.* But here, Anne/Elizabeth is asking for its use as “truth serum.” The purpose here would be similar to that of a criminal suspect begging to take a polygraph. Both the suspect and Sexton want their examiners to believe that they‘re speaking the truth.

“Elizabeth” specified that she wanted Dr. Orne to administer the drug to Anne so that the latter could finally talk about something that was at the core of her psychic injuries: her turbulent relationship with her alcoholic father, and the degeneration of her relationship with Aunt Nana.

If you’re wondering why Dr. Orne might not believe Sexton if she talked about something exceedingly personal, it’s because Sexton admitted to deliberately lying about her past: transgressions she frequently referred to as “truth crimes.” In one instance, she told Orne about an incident she had on one summer vacation when, as a little girl, she was raped by a family friend. In the next session she claimed that she had deliberately made up the story on the spot--sort of an improvisatory narrative, if you will. As she herself once said:

I am nothing, if not an actress off the stage. In fact, it comes down to the terrible truth that there is no true part of me. . . . . . It is as if I will permit my therapy and think it all very interesting as long as it doesn’t touch me. I am a story-maker, a--doesn’t it strike him as odd that this ‘story’ is too pat?”

This posed a problem in assessing the veracity of what Sexton said in treatment. It’s for this reason that nieces Lisa Tompson and Mary Ford objected to Orne’s release of the tapes in the first place. Even in context one could consider them possibly defamatory, especially because of the explosive nature of this secret that Anne wanted to hide, but “Elizabeth” wanted to expose.

During the initial appearance of the “Elizabeth” persona, Dr. Orne noticed the increasing use of the epithet “little bitch.” Moreover, he began to associate it with “Elizabeth,” but not Anne. In probing this further, Sexton lapsed into a trance, where the following revelation took place:

Sexton: Father comes in drunk; wakes me up, saying ‘I just wanted to see where you were--your sister [Jane] is out letting someone feel her.’ And he says it again. Sits on the bed, takes a bottle out of his pocket and drinks. I asked where Mommy was; gone to bed and locked the door. He says, ‘Do you like me?’

Orne: What side of the bed is he sitting on?

Sexton: [Points with finger.] He asks me if anybody ever felt me. I don’t know what he means. I lay down and cuddle with Nana. I know that isn’t good, I shouldn’t.

Orne: Shouldn’t what?

Sexton: He is holding me. He says to press up against him, sort of wriggles and asks if I like it. And it feels good.

Orne: Does he say you are a good girl?

Sexton: He puts his hand on me and asks if I--if I ever do this and did I ever do it.

Orne: What did you tell him?

Sexton: [Shakes head]: He kissed me on the lips and he started to leave and I held on and didn’t want him to go. Then he came back, left his bottle on the table.”

Here, Sexton accused not just her father, but her Aunt Nana of sexually abusing her. Once conscious of this, Sexton explored the theme of incest in her writing. The subject rings as clearly as a bell in such poems as “How We Danced.” It also serves at the core of her play 45 Mercy Street, a pivotal scene in which depicts a freshly adolescent girl (thirteenish) being intimately fondled by her father, while an elderly woman (reminiscent of Aunt Nana) listens in from the next room.

Dr. Orne said that he did not automatically believe the allegation. He subsequently interviewed family members to see if Sexton’s claim of childhood sexual abuse had any merit, and found that others could corroborate a noticeable friction between Sexton and her father. After all, Ralph Harvey not only drank, but was excessively formal inside the home. Sexton found herself rebelling against these tendencies early and often. But Orne wanted to know specifically if any of this friction between parent and child were sexual. Sexton’s mother confirmed that her father could be somewhat crude with her. For example, she told of how Anne, then seventeen, was about to leave the house for a date dressed in a sweater blouse and skirt, when her father asked her, “Are you planning to get laid?”** Sexton had told the same tale to Orne shortly before.

Sexton’s friends had different opinions as to whether or not her father actually molested her. One close friend, a psychiatric social worker named Lois Ames, stated with confidence “I could never believe anything but that Anne was a victim of child sexual abuse by both Nana and her father [emphasis original]. Maxine Kumin, however, disagreed, characterizing the notion as more of a “dramatization,” similar to other “truth crimes” she had told to Dr. Orne in therapy. As our friend Susan wrote in an earlier post in this series:

Anne strikes me as someone who didn't live in her body much, so she acted out in order to feel something--irresponsible sexuality and self abuse made her come back into her body for a while--she lived more in her head.

Or as Dr. Diane Middlebrook wrote:

“…once she had put a memory into words, the words were what she remembered. Thus she could give dramatic reality to a feeling by letting it generate a scene and putting that scene into words for Dr. Orne while in a trance.”

In other words, this premise hypothesizes that Sexton created fictional characters (similar to Elizabeth) based on herself. This gave them a verisimilitude, but they nevertheless remained fictional characters, with fictional histories. Because of mental illness (or poetic license?), Sexton might not have been able to distinguish her characters from herself. Thus if she told a story of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father and aunt, would that have originated in fact, or fantasy?

Sexton herself seemed to question the actuality of the memory, but seemed quite certain that it was, at least, based on some real aspect of her relationship to her father:

Sexton: I couldn’t make all this up, or I don’t exist at all! Or do I make up a trauma to go with my symptoms?

Orne: There wasn’t a simple cause; it’s something that happened many times without its necessarily happening just this way. When your father was drinking he was communicating something to you.

Sexton: Disgust.

Orne: Or attraction.

Sexton: Sitting beside Daddy, his saying I can’t eat when she’s at the dinner table--I thought pimples were a sign of things inside that were showing.

Orne: Your feelings about him?

The tapes Dr. Orne submitted to Dr. Middlebrook gave every indication that he thoroughly believed the story at face value at that time. He acted as if the allegation were true, prompting him to explain to Middlebrook:

I dealt with it in therapy as a real event, because there were times that it was real to her. Anne, like most patients with this kind of disorder, easily adopted pseudo-memories in treatment which are experienced with great vividness, and their treatment may help the patient even though the events may never have occurred. If you ask me either as a psychiatrist or as a scientist, however, I would have to say I am virtually certain that it never occurred. It’s not plausible the way she described it, and it wasn’t the father’s style when he was drinking. But it fit her feelings about her father having abused her, and since she sexualized everything, it would become the metaphor with which she would deal with it.

Whether or not the sexual abuse actually occurred, one could say that this psychiatric disclosure might have indicated something more pertinent to Sexton’s sexuality. During the writing of Anne Sexton, Linda Gray Sexton told Dr. Middlebrook that Anne sexually abused her. Linda gave further details about this in her 1994 memoir, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, in which she frankly discussed such things as very intimate bedtime touching (similar to what Nana supposedly did to her mother), and Anne’s tendency to masturbate in front of her.

Personally, I don’t like to take anything at face value, and am loath to state something as fact based on a single source--unless the source happens to be me. At the same time, I’m in no position to question Linda Sexton’s memory or account of these incidents. And what she says does make sense in a way. If her mother had been sexually abused as a child, then that could conceivably put her at greater risk for sexually abusing her own kid.

This incestuous behavior allegedly began shortly after Dr. Orne left the Boston area to teach at the University of Pennsylvania, thus making him unable to continue as Sexton’s main shrink. Although the timing might make his leaving seem like a causal factor, this could have been due to the fact that Linda had just begun her adolescence, and was consequently developing into maturity. At the same time, however, even though he was no longer her psychiatrist, Dr. Orne continued to see Sexton once a month for several years, and maintained contact with her until 1973, about a year before her suicide. One thus has to wonder how he reacted when she disclosed this to him, or if she disclosed it to him at all.

_____________________
*It’s also used, in combination with other drugs, to kill condemned prisoners during lethal injection.

**The wording is that of Sexton’s mother. Sexton herself remembered the question as “Are you planning to get fucked?”

A Real Love for Big Cheats: One Hysterically Funny Memory of the First Certain Thing

2011-07-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

Theme Five: Death

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer....

Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
--Anne Sexton, from “Sylvia’s Death”

As should be clear by now, there were myriad contributing factors tied to Anne Sexton’s suicidal tendencies. There was the feeling of entrapment that came to the fore after her marriage to Alfred Sexton, and increased after the birth of her children. There was also a constant preoccupation with her own madness. She often wondered if she would wind up like her Aunt Nana, whose dementia led her to spend her final years institutionalized. As Sexton iterated during a taped session:

Sexton: Well, I said to Kayo, ‘Please don’t let them give me an shock treatments.’--Because she just got better, then she got sicker; they didn’t do her any good--Maybe I’m like Nana; she really just wanted Mother. I think that something very [unintelligible] was hard for me, you know, because she had been my mother in many ways--She got sick and just wanted to be my mother’s child; she kept saying my mother’s name under her breath, ‘Mary, Mary Gray,’ every single minute. Every time she said it, it meant ‘You’re not my child, I’m your mother’s child.’ And actually, as you said, I got sick when my mother went away.--When Nana died, I was pregnant with Joy; after that, when Joy was six months old, Mother went away--it was a combination of things--probably I am like Nana.

Orne: But you are not Nana.

Sexton: Why would I try to become Nana? That doesn’t make any sense: I try to become Nana in order to kill her?

Orne: In order not to lose her. It’s what we do when we can’t let people die.

Sexton: I become the Nana I didn’t want, which I suppose I thought was better than nothing, after she died.--Maybe I come from a morbid--just inherited this. My father was really rather depressed, even though he didn’t seem it, he was depressed.--And Nana, who was so active and intelligent and warm, that’s what happened to her....

While Sexton's preoccupation with death became apparent during adolescence, Dr. Orne saw it, in a weird way, as healthy. As he wrote for Dr. Middlebrook:

Anne also had a remarkable fascination with death, and it seemed likely that she used some of the trance episodes to play the role of dying, which perhaps helped her not to suicide.

As expressed in “Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women,” Sexton often saw herself as a rat, her metaphor for own sense of worthlessness. Also, as the poem would suggest, her self-destructive tendencies in part originated from the self-loathing that had become a part of her. It also suggests that she saw death as a panic button, of sorts. If she found that she could no longer bear the weight, responsibility and stigma of being the spokes poet for the mentally ill, she could end it all whenever she chose. In this respect, Sexton might have seen controlling her death as an important part of controlling her life.

Theme Six: Memory lapses

One of the most difficult things Dr. Martin Orne initially had to deal with, according to him, was Anne Sexton’s “severe difficulty of memory.” He said that she couldn’t remember things that they had discussed “from one session to the next.” This led him to conclude that she suffered from “…a condition that traditionally was known as hysteria.”

Hysteria?

Mind you, Dr. Orne wrote this in the foreword of Dr. Diane Middlebrook’s 1991 biography, Anne Sexton. So, we have to wonder why he gave us such a quaint nineteenth-century diagnosis. Traditionally, doctors believed that women had certain mental illnesses because of troubles with their reproductive organs. Okay, she’s in the loony bin for post-partum depression. But did he actually believe that Sexton's uterus turned her suicidal?

Hysteria had always been a vague diagnosis, with an exhaustive list of symptoms that could apply to just about any sane or healthy organism regardless of gender. Subsequently, over the past 100 years or so, psychiatrists and other mental health researchers have broken down some of the more common and pathological manifestations of this malady into a number of different diseases, as defined by DSM-IV.* Most of these fall under the general rubric of dissociation, but several seem more directly applicable to Sexton: depersonalization disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and dissociative amnesia.

My guess is that Dr. Orne was referring to that last illness when talking about Sexton's poor memory. Still, if Sexton were that prone to memory loss, especially on a persistent basis, one might guess that it would have been an issue both in and out of therapy for all of her life. That would mean that she would have difficulty learning new things. Certainly this would be a tremendous handicap if in a college course or workshop where the moderator or professor cannot simply go back over all the material covered in the previous lecture. Other than Orne, no one seemed to have characterized this as a condition that dominated their relationship with her.**

Dr. Orne explained that while in psychoanlysis, Sexton would spontaneously lapse into trance states, where one part of her would interact with him and continue to maintain progress, while her conscious mind had wondered off to who-knows-where. He became exasperated with:

...her tendency to become uncommunicative in a self-induced trance, which could last minutes, hours, or, in a few rare circumstances, even days. Typically, the trance episode could easily be ended by a therapist familiar with the symptom. But in therapy and out, the problem persisted: when Anne was extremely angry, she was given to entering a trance and becoming unresponsive….

In order to maintain some consistency from one session to the next, Dr. Orne tried several things to help her remember what went on during their previous meeting. First, he had her take notes. But that disrupted the normal rhythms of therapy. Next he tried tape recording the sessions. Yet her review the tapes yielded the same results as before: no memory of what happened during psychoanalysis. He then hit upon a combination of tape recording and note taking that seemed to do the trick:

First we would audiotape the therapy session, and afterward Anne was asked to make extensive notes about everything she could remember from the session. The next day she would come to the office, and my secretary would put the tape on the recorder and leave her alone to listen to the session. She was asked to note particularly the discrepancies between her memories, her notes from the previous day, and what actually happened on the tape. In the beginning, it was necessary for Anne to listen to the audiotape twice before she was able to recall on her own what we had dealt with during the session. This tedious approach demanded a great deal of Anne, but its consequences were profound. For the first time in her life, she was able to recall why she had been angry at me, without knowing the reason. In other words, Anne could really remember and learn about her feelings, whereas in the past she had been unable to recall more than fragments of what occurred--many of which she recalled incorrectly.

Curiously, Dr. Orne admitted that once Sexton got the hang of this process, she began to correct his memory lapses during therapy. He subsequently realized she was right when he played the tapes back for himself.

________________________
*This would have also been true for DSM-IIIR, the edition Orne would have used as reference in 1991.

**Her friends and family would, however, speak openly about what they perceived as Sexton's tendency toward memory distortion, which is another issue. I'll discuss that later.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: Inferiority and Entrapment

2011-07-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

Theme Three: Feelings of Worthlessness

Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was—
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?
I kneel once more,
in case mercy should come
in the nick of time.
--Anne Sexton, from “Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women”

Early in their sessions, Dr. Martin Orne asked Anne Sexton what special talents she had, and what endeavor she would be most suited for. After some thought, she replied that she would make an excellent prostitute, because she had a real talent for making men feel powerful. The response immediately got Orne’s attention as perhaps the overriding theme of Sexton’s sessions. In the foreword of Anne Sexton, he wrote:

I sought to explore Anne’s resources and goals. She had married early and had barely finished high school. She particularly regretted her lack of formal education, which contributed to her feelings of inadequacy. It is difficult to communicate fully how pervasive Anne’s profound lack of self-worth was and how totally unable she was to think of any positive abilities or qualities within herself [emphasis Orne]

Dr. Orne felt it imperative that Sexton intellectually develop herself, and thus strongly urged her to enroll in college. She didn’t think college was for her, so Orne suggested that she write.* Sexton chose poetry as her primary medium. According to him, he read these early poems, but did not comment on their content or quality. The point, for him, was to convince her of her own potential, which he felt confident was substantial given the high IQ scores she achieved on the tests that he administered. He then gave these early drafts to one of his Harvard colleagues, an English professor, for an appraisal. As a layman he thought the poems were impressive, but didn’t know for sure. This unnamed professor friend affirmed that they were in fact quite good, and told Orne that Sexton should seriously pursue poetry.

Despite the success that poetry brought her, Sexton continued to see herself as essentially ugly and vile. She sometimes metaphorically referred to herself as a rat with destructive tendencies, as she did in the work titled “In the Deep Museum,” a poem told in first person from Christ’s point of view. These feelings of inadequacy also played a part in her suicidal fantasies.

Another source of her self-deprecation lay in her identification by self and others as a mentally ill person. Along with the stigma (especially during the 1950s and 1960s) of mental illness came the worry, the fear, the dread that like the other destructive and self-destructive persons institutionalized with her that she too was as particularly loathsome and dangerous, a theme she explored in “Flee on Your Donkey” and others poems in To Bedlam and Part Way Back.

Theme Four: Entrapment

The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!….

Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer…..

I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.
--Anne Sexton, from “Live”

One thing that repeatedly comes up in Sexton is her inability to fit into the roles that others have cast for her. From her perspective, life represented a number of obligations and responsibilities that ate away at her: marriage, family, domestication. In “Live,” Sexton pondered whether it would really be better to live than have to face daily what she saw as suffocation and suppression.

In some ways, this sentiment endeared her to some of her female readers, who also thought that this mandatory lifestyle offered slim chance of escape without grave censure (or worse) from parents, friends and family. One has to remember that during the 1950s and 1960s, economic prosperity allowed for a number of single-income families, and working women were not only often seen as embarrassment (I actually remember people saying such things back then as “Your wife has to work?”) or failures (e.g., “Poor thing, can’t catch a husband”). Many were otherwise stigmatized as poor mothers, who, failing to recognize their place in society (i.e., the home), did who-knows-what kind of long-term damage to their children.

Anne didn’t simply imagine the pressures on her to conform, although one could definitely argue that she melodramatically overstated them. Her father-in-law, George Sexton, the man footing her medical bills, and whose daughter Joan served as the primary custodian of Anne’s children, saw Sexton’s emersion into psychiatry and poetry as overindulgence, an excuse to get out of her wifely duties. In a letter to Dr. Orne, he wrote that Anne was playing them all “…for a bunch of suckers, and that she has no intention of ever assuming her family responsibilities….It appears to me that we all, you, her husband and I, should now get tough with her.”

Kayo, her husband, seemed to take his father’s advice, “getting tough” on rare occasion to the point of domestic violence.

In the end, you’ll note that Sexton chose to live--at least for a time longer. At the same time, it’s clear that she constantly weighed the price of living against the freedom of death until the latter finally won out.

___________________

*While she would eventually take a poetry class taught by former Poet Laureate Robert Lowell at Boston College, she never matriculated.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: The Chameleon’s Evil Twin

2011-07-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

Recounting the complete psychiatric history of Anne Sexton would require verbiage far beyond that of a blog post, or series for that matter. And it would be exceedingly tedious. Dr. Diane Middlebrook’s Anne Sexton: A Biography does a decent job giving the play-by-play of suicide attempts, the near-suicide attempts, the hospitalizations, the medications, and the psychiatrists she came to know both inside of therapy and out.

Perhaps it would be more helpful here to recount some of the psychological themes that developed both inside and outside these therapy session. These shine light specifically on Sexton’s relationship with Dr. Martin Orne, which extended far beyond his role as her official shrink.

Theme One--Suggestibility

One of the things that Dr. Orne first mentions about Sexton was the diagnoses previous doctors had given her. Basically, they were all the same: one flavor of schizophrenia or another. Orne too initially saw her as typically schizophrenic until he discovered something that changed his entire attitude about Sexton. He wrote in the Foreword of Anne Sexton:

As I began to get to know Anne, I realized that she was showing ideation that one might expect in a patient with a thought disorder. Fortunately, she happened to mention that she was spending a good deal of time with two patients who suffered from a schizophrenic disorder, and thus I became aware of her tendency to take on symptoms that were like those of the people with whom she was currently interacting.

After several weeks of working with Sexton, Dr. Orne dismissed schizophrenia diagnosis. Instead, he regarded her as highly suggestible, and immediately secured her release from the hospital lest she fall under the influence of truly psychotic patients. As often as he could, he treated her on an outpatient basis.

During her life it would be difficult to say how this hyper-suggestibility manifest itself, especially in a figure so iconoclastic as Anne Sexton, a woman seemingly almost infatuated with her own individualism. However, there were times she complained about a suffering a certain kind of loneliness, even in her work:

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind. [From “Her Kind”]

Hyper-suggestibility would imply that Sexton had almost a desperate longing to fit in, much like the eponymous character in the movie Zelig. In her sessions, she depicts herself as someone trying to live according to the mandatory stereotype of the 1950s normal, suburban, middle-class housewife. But try as she might, she can’t keep up the charade very long before completely ‘losing it.“ Of course, losing it meant another trip to the hospital. She sometimes talked about not being a “real” woman--from her inability to care for her kids to questions about her own sexual orientation, to wondering if her literary ambitions were, for a lack of a better term, ladylike.

In this we can imagine that Sexton had a desire to blend in. I find it curious that the only place where Dr. Orne can confirm her fitting in is with schizophrenics. On the other hand, this might also help explain her development as a poet. She hooked up with some pretty heady and erudite people, among them Maxine Kumin, who had two Masters by the time she met Anne. Maybe fitting in with that crowd helped to refine a raw talent.

Then again, that’s sort of the purpose of workshops whether the attendee is highly suggestible or downright obstinate.

Theme Two: Doppelgängers

Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
whom you'd call lamb chop
yet this one is old and malformed.
His head is okay
but the rest of him wasn't Sanforized?
He is a monster of despair.
He is all decay.
He speaks up as tiny as an earphone
with Truman's asexual voice:
I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
No. I am not the law in your mind,
the grandfather of watchfulness.
I am the law of your members,
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware . . . Beware . . .
--Anne Sexton, from “Rumpelstiltskin”

In therapy and out, Sexton seemed to profess a belief that every individual consisted of at least two different people. There’s the person themselves, of course. Then there’s an other self, an archetypal soul that might center on one body, but encompass one or several. In the poem “Rumpelstiltskin,” for example, she references shaking hands as a symptom of a hidden self emerging.

Sexton’s hands did in fact shake at one time. Of course, her tremors probably had more to do with a side effect of an antipsychotic medication prescribed to her, specifically chlorpromazine.* Nevertheless, the fact that she would see the trembling in this particular way, as if someone else were trying to get out, becomes especially interesting for two reasons. First of all, since Dr. Orne dismissed schizophrenia as a potential diagnosis, then an antipsychotic seems a weird drug to administer. True, the drug's also used in the treatment of migraines, opiate withdrawal, severe itching, and cholera. It’s also been used as a sleep aid for insomnia, and that would seem to be why she received it.** Still, there were other sleep remedies available at this time, some of them over-the counter. Given that one of the side effects of the drug is potential memory loss, one would have to wonder why she received this drug in the first place, and whether or not her brief usage of it resulted in any long-term ill effects.

A second reason to look at that passage is that because of Dr. Orne’s 1991 disclosure of Sexton’s sessions we know that during the summer and fall of 1957, Anne manifest a second personality. Calling herself Elizabeth Harvey (the name of Sexton’s paternal grandmother), the second personality began typing unsigned letters to Orne, explaining that Anne was unaware of her existence. Moreover, she typed them in the dark so that if Anne did get suspicious or remembered something she still couldn’t read what was in the letters.*** The Elizabeth personality eventually receded after Dr. Orne made the decision not to acknowledge her existence anymore.

Sexton (as Elizabeth) made an early and conscious connection between the split of her personality and the Capgras Syndrome delusions of her beloved aunt Nana. In one typed-in-the-dark missive, she wrote:

[Anne] thought of me as a brother that died--she used to think about him all the time there wasn’t really any brother--but she liked to pretend about him--I’m not so different from her but I would tell you what she doesn’t dare think--She acts her life away….I am part of her sometimes but she is not part of me…Nana knew I was not Anne….If you give her enough time to get dissociated enough she will be willing….I know a lot.

What Sexton (as Elizabeth) is referring to here is a pretend sibling that she fantasized about at the age of five. Unlike the other grownups, Nana indulged the fantasy. Because of the alcoholism and aloofness of her mom and dad, Sexton found in her aunt a parental confidante, an irreplaceable figure that at times during her life she had to replace. Consequently, just as Sexton had this eternal soul of Elizabeth inside her, she could just as easily see the spirit of Nana in others. Thus, a lot of people began to play the role of auntie in her life, among them Kayo Dr. Orne, her father-in-law George Sexton, her mother-in-law Billie Sexton (who began to refer to herself as “Nana”), Dr. Forked Tongue, and Dr. Anne Wilder, a psychiatrist friend whom she didn’t see professionally.

_________________________
*Chlorpromazine sold under the brand name Largactil in most places, and as Thorazine in the United States.

**Dr. Diane Middlebrook mentions that Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne would occasionally pinch-hit for her son when the latter wasn’t available. During the early 1960s, the two seem to have had some disagreement over sleep medications, so I’m not certain if he prescribed it or she did. Whatever the case, Sexton found it difficult to write under the effects of Thorazine, and eventually discontinued its use.

***While he took the emergence of a second personality seriously, Dr. Orne never knew for sure whether or not she was joking about the typed letters in the dark.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: Controversial Ethics

2011-07-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed. . . .
--Anne Sexton, from “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator”

We don’t have to speculate about the bulk of went on during Anne Sexton’s treatment by Dr. Martin Orne. Orne, with permission from Anne’s daughter Linda Gray Sexton, allowed biographer Dr. Diane Middlebrook to review some 300 or so audiotapes of their sessions. Dr. Middlebrook had already penned a draft of Sexton’s biography, but rewrote it from virtually scratch after receiving the tapes. She also interviewed Orne. Moreover, he wrote the bio’s foreword. In it, he gave extensive details about the nature of her problems, what they discussed, and his treatment of her.

Usually, shrinks don’t talk about patients, even dead ones, except perhaps in consultation with other doctors. Much less do they write about them, or publish the minutes of sessions. Doctor-patient confidentiality is legally recognized in the United States and elsewhere as grounds to keep personal information out of the public record. This allows us to discuss our most secret problems and feelings with an assurance of privacy, a necessary component of the therapeutic process.

Dr. Orne could offer no written or audiotaped statement from Sexton that she wanted him to give extremely private information about her to the public. So one could regard his dissemination of this material as unethical. Orne defended this disclosure by declaring that Sexton herself would have wanted it. He cited her actions at Glenside Hospital and Westwood Lodge--her compulsion to help other patients, her desire to ease their suffering--as evidence that she would want her dirty laundry aired to give some solace to people like her. He also said that he had a verbal agreement with Sexton to do with the tapes whatever he thought was best.

Many of Sexton’s friends agreed with Dr. Orne’s actions. To hear them tell it, Sexton had already divulged much of the most secretive parts of herself in her poetry. As the poem quoted above would indicate, she wasn’t exactly a private person to begin with. In a foreword to Sexton’s Complete Poems, Maxine Kumin, one of her closest friends, wrote, “She wrote openly about menstruation, abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery, and drug addiction at a time when the proprieties embraced none of these as proper topics for poetry.”

Newsweek quoted Linda Gray Sexton as saying, “I sometimes wonder if Mother is angry with me [for giving public access to her psychotherapy tapes]…She might have preferred to be seen as a tragic victim. My feeling was: ‘Look, Mom, you wrote about this stuff. You lived it in public. How could I cover it up?’”*

And with respect to psychoanalysis, friend and fellow poet Charles K. Williams told Middlebrook that he was “…surprised by how much she would talk about her therapy when our relationship was not very intimate. But then, it wasn't a very intimate subject to her.”

In short, it would seem that Sexton was a woman without secrets.

Dr. Orne faced severe criticism from psychiatric and literary circles over his disclosure of Sexton’s private materials when the book came out in 1991. He expressed surprise and dismay at receiving any criticism to Pennsylvania Gazette reporter Samuel Hughes, musing, “You know, it isn’t something which under normal circumstances would bother me so. But it is a peculiar situation.”

The “peculiar situation” prompted those supporting the shrink to take a somewhat defensive posture. Kumin scoffed at his critics for being hypocritical and “pietistic” telling Hughes, “Those same doctors would never have taken on a patient as demanding as Anne. They just want nice, mannerly depressives.”

Dr. Orne himself, while trying not too much as if he’s tooting his own horn, agreed with Kumin, telling Hughes:

I don't know. I am not one of those psychiatrists who makes diagnoses without knowing the patient. Some of my colleagues did, unfortunately….

I had a temper, and I lost it with her more than once. I learned from her that it didn't matter what mistakes I made -- only what I could do to help her.

In a sense, the difference was that when the third psychiatrist got angry with her, she -- the psychiatrist -- dropped her. I got angry, but I got over it, and I continued to work with her. That was what counted.

Dr. Orne and Dr. Middlebrook also defended the release of the materials because of their historical, literary and clinical importance. As Dr. Orne explained, “I felt that the book would be a way of showing the public what psychotherapy can do.” Dr. Middlebrook pointed to the (literally) thousands of letters from readers who totally identified with her, as if she had become some kind of “voice for the mentally ill.” Because of the importance of mental illness and psychotherapy in Sexton’s work, both Middlebrook and Orne agreed that the latter didn’t have a very good “feeling” for the person of Anne was until hearing the tapes. Thus, in order to understand Sexton’s approach to literature she had to understand the main causal factor of it, which both Drs. Middlebrook and Orne credit as psychoanalysis. Moreover, other shrinks have revealed secret information about their famous former patients (e.g., Jackson Pollack) to biographers.

In time, the voice of the critics would dim. Nevertheless, one can see their concerns as quite valid. Dr. Carola Eisenberg (Harvard Medical School) summed up the critics’ objection to the release of Sexton’s material in a paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine:

If Sexton had ever explicitly given permission for the release of this material to her biographer, I would not protest, even though I might well question her judgment. That permission was never given, however; Orne would not withhold such news from us if he had it. He infers Sexton's acquiescence in the release of the tapes from her willingness to have him use them in therapeutic and didactic settings. I disagree; the two situations are not comparable. Sharing therapeutic material with students or other patients, when permission has been given, lifts the curtain of confidentiality only partially and briefly. It is understood by the participants that neither students nor patients will talk with others about the material. In contrast, once published, these privileged communications are open to the public at large without controls on the way they are used, understood, or gossiped about. Furthermore, they are available to those who find themselves in the book, and this may be extremely wounding.

The therapeutic contract with physicians--and with psychiatrists in particular--is based on confidentiality. What the patient says belongs to the patient, not to the doctor. Its disposition is the patient's prerogative. The full confidence that such is and will remain the case is what allows patients to discuss their most intimate concerns, matters they cannot share with family or friends. Once patients begin to doubt the fidelity of therapists, the context for effective treatment is destroyed….Anne Sexton is dead and beyond harm. The legions of other patients who will learn of Dr. Orne's action are not, and erosion of trust in the profession is irreversible....

It is only the patient who could speak for herself, but Anne Sexton can no longer do so. Precisely for that reason, her silence on the matter should have been respected.

In a 15 July 1991 New York Times article, reporter Alessandra Stanley quoted Columbia University Psychiatry Professor Dr. William Gaylin as saying, “Doctors have no obligation to history and certainly should not act as a research assistant to a biographer.” To him, Dr. Orne’s actions were a “betrayal” of psychotherapy, which can only exist if openness is protected by the promise that nothing said in session, leaves the session without the patient’s explicit consent.

Even if one acknowledges Sexton’s disregard for her own privacy, then he or she must still question whether or not that gives us license to disrespect that privacy. If, for example, someone disrobes in front of an open window, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have the moral right to stand outside his or her house and gawk. But even more important, patients don’t just talk about themselves in therapy, but about all the people in their lives. Thus, it was not just Sexton’s privacy at stake, but that of all those close to her. Drs. Orne and Middlebrook got explicit consent from only a handful of the people involved with Sexton’s inner orbit, among them her daughter Linda and her friend Maxine Kumin. Other relatives had severe misgivings about the disclosures, among them Sexton’s nieces, Lisa Taylor Tompson and Mary Gray Ford. In a letter to the Times, they wrote that the Middlebrook bio contained a number of unchallenged false and salacious allegations made by Sexton in these tapes. These accusations, originally made in the privacy of therapy, tarnished the reputation of good and innocent people, and consequently caused great harm within their family.**

By contrast, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s widower, destroyed the poet’s most sensitive papers in order to keep them out of the hands of biographers and protect the privacy of their children (and probably himself).

Stanley also quoted Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, chairman of the Ethics Committee of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) as saying, “A patient’s right to confidentiality survives death. Our view is that only the patient can give that release. What the family wants does not matter a whit.” To some extent, this brings up the possibility that the family might have its own animus against the deceased, and thus there could be some conflict of interest. In the case of Linda Sexton, we will see in future posts that she did have a particular axe to sharpen in the revelations that nieces Tompson and Ford would call inaccurate and “sensationalistic.” Lazarus went so far as to later write in a piece for Clinical Psychology News that Orne’s action merited at the very least an investigation by the Ethics Committee. Lazarus later backed off that position, and no one ever investigated Dr. Orne for any ethical breech.

As it would turn out, the ethics controversy died because Dr. Orne's support among his colleagues and literary critics overshadowed the concerns of protesters. The tenor of much of this support seemed fairly consistent, with an acknowledgement of Dr. Orne’s dedication to Sexton as a clinician; followed by the affirmation that shrinks should never, ever give out personal information about a patient, even after death; followed by "except in this case," or words along those lines. Dr. Alan Stone, a professor of law (Harvard Law School) and psychiatry (Harvard Medical School) went so far as to characterize client patient confidentiality as not an ethic, but merely a tradition. As he said to Samuel Hughes:

There isn't any doubt that Dr. Orne has crossed a boundary that no psychiatrist that I know of has ever crossed before, and because ethics is so entangled with tradition, it immediately seemed that Dr. Orne had done something obviously and clearly unethical. ... The vehemence is a direct result of the break with traditional practice. Any radical break with traditional practice is seen as unethical. But in fact, the whole last 20 years of medical ethics has been devoted to giving patients more autonomy and more control vis-a-vis their doctor. Twenty years ago, doctors wouldn't even let patients look at their own medical records, on the notion that we knew that it wasn't in their best interest. Now, it's quite clear that the patient has the right to look at their own records. Therefore, Anne Sexton's wishes in this matter are really crucial. And Dr. Orne claims that she gave him permission to use these tapes. My view is that if you believe Dr. Orne, then what he did was a judgment call -- but, I think, ethical.

You’ll note that Dr. Stone’s whole digression into the history of medical ethics over the previous twenty years had no bearing whatsoever on the question of the matter here. This statement and others like it therefore read more like post facto apologia. Most important, his statement, “If you believe Dr. Orne….” shouldn’t be tossed aside lightly. After all, Dr. Orne’s made previous appearances on The X-Spot precisely because of his involvement in some shady operations with a lot of shady characters. Moreover, he was less than honest about his other activities during the time he treated Sexton, only coming clean when clear-cut documentary evidence contradicted him. Although it makes sense that Sexton might have given him permission anyway due to her exhibitionistic nature, we still only have his word that she gave her consent. And I, for one, wouldn’t buy a used car from the man.

And that’s important for another reason. Dr. Middlebrook’s biography not only takes an uncritically laudatory approach to the role of psychotherapy in developing Sexton as a poet,*** but also heaps uncritical praise upon Dr. Orne himself--an element that receives notice even from Orne’s supporters. As literary critic Sandy McClatchy told Stanley, “There is something a little sleazy about the way he has put himself forward as her [Sexton’s] Pygmalion.”

In fact, Dr. Orne’s presence in the Middlebrook bio is quite profound. Not only did he write the foreword, but Dr. Middlebrook quoted him extensively, and at length. Indeed, the book goes to great lengths to establish Dr. Orne’s integrity.

And considering what else was taking place in his professional life during this time, in conjunction with what’s contained on those tapes, I can’t help wondering….

Wondering…..

Is there a bit of snow job going on in Dr. Middlebrook’s biography? More to the point, was there a connection between Orne‘s night gig, and his treatment of Anne Sexton?
_________________
* In a later letter written for the New York Times, Linda Sexton went on to explain that the tapes "…would have been mere objects of prurience had they not revealed the roots of her poetic style-the unconscious associative process employed in analysis, which was to become the trademark of her poetry. And, perhaps unlike therapy tapes from any other author, these were almost uniquely relevant to any searching analysis of her poetry….”

**On an interesting note, Sexton’s elder sister, Blanche Taylor passed away several days after my research on this series began in earnest. She was the mother of Tompson and Ford, and a prominent person in her own right. Curiously, many of the obituaries I found of her make no mention of her relationship to Sexton. That’s not to say that the Middlebrook bio might have caused enough consternation within the Harvey family to make associations with the poet uncomfortable or awkward, despite Sexton’s accomplishments and fame. But I must admit, the thought crossed my mind.

***See Charles Gramlich’s comment to the previous post.

A Real Love for Big Cheats: The Road to Psychotherapy

2011-07-03T01:29:00.000-07:00

Anne Sexton was the youngest of three daughters born to Ralph and Mary Gray Harvey, who named her after her great-aunt, Anna Ladd Dingley. Both parents came from established, well-heeled families, with some of her relatives in the publishing business. Despite the economic woes of the 1930s, the Harvey family prospered during the Depression. They lived in a fairly spacious house staffed with servants, and vacationed regularly. They entertained often, and were society fixtures.

Anne’s family might have seemed glamorous and solid to the neighbors. But cracks undermined the pristine surface. Their troubles ironically surfaced after the Depression. Plagued by increasingly severe alcoholism, Ralph’s behavior grew more and more unpredictable. As Sexton would later explain, he’d be his usual happy loving self one minute, and then “He would just suddenly become very mean, as if he hated the world.” Her mother also drank, and her moods shifted erratically too.

Anne often found solace in the company of her great-aunt Anna, or as she called her, ‘Nana.’ The two were quite close until around 1940 when Anne, then thirteen, discovered boys. Later on, they had a falling out when, stricken with illness, Nana accused Sexton of being an imposter of her beloved niece.*

Anne dated regularly, but only had one steady boyfriend, Jack McCarthy, during most of her teenage years. He dumped her, and she wound up dating Alfred (called Kayo by friends) Sexton two years later.

Things seemed to go well for Anne and Kayo during courtship. But marriage changed everything. Anne’s wondering eye became a major problem. A serious extramarital flirtation began with a man she and her husband met on their honeymoon. When it threatened to become a full-blown consummated affair, Sexton’s mother intervened, and sent her to Dr. Martha Brunner-Orne, the psychiatrist who had previously treated her father for alcoholism.

Dr. Brunner-Orne wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill shrink. She was a former research fellow at the Mayo Clinic, on the staff of Wellesley College, and Director of Westwood Lodge. Her assessment was that Anne had “…difficulty controlling her desire for romance and adventure.”

Ya think? I know a few couples who are only interested in each other after years of marriage, and I know many more connubial veterans for whom the thought of adultery has either crossed their minds, or crossed their reality. I’ve never known a newlywed to chase someone she met just days after tying the knot.

In 1951, Kayo entered military service. The Army shipped him off to Korea. Anne, lonely and bored, could no longer hold back, and began a series of affairs that lasted until his discharge, whereupon they decided to have a family. She gave birth to her elder daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, in 1953. No problems. But two years later, after her second pregnancy with Joyce Ladd Sexton (named after Nana), she went into post-partum depression, which quickly grew worse. As Diane Middleton wrote:

Sexton’s psychological state took a definitive turn for the worse five months after entering treatment, when she developed a morbid dread of being alone with her babies…

Increasingly, Sexton became prone to episodes of blinding rage in which she would seize Linda and begin choking or slapping her…She felt she could not control these outburst, and she began to be afraid that she would kill her children.

On top of this, Sexton felt suicidal. When she finally confessed her feelings to Kayo, he sent the kids away to live with relatives, and took her back to the same doctor she saw in 1955.

Understanding the urgency to treat Sexton, Dr. Brunner-Orne checked her into the hospital.** She couldn’t tend to Anne right away, however, because she had already booked her vacation. So she handed the case over to her son, a young psychiatrist only a year Sexton‘s senior.

Dr. Brunner-Orne’s son, Dr. Martin T. Orne, would wind up treating Sexton exclusively over the next eight years, and in consultation with other physicians until 1973.

____________________________
*This particular delusion, called Capgras Syndrome, seems to occur under varying circumstances, from schizophrenia to brain injury to stroke. It’s characterized by the sufferer’s belief that an imposter has replaced someone close to them.

**Sources vary as to whether she first checked into Glenside Hospital initially and then transferred to Westwood Lodge, or went straight to Westwood.

Assailing the Tender Age: A Real Love for Big Cheats

2011-06-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

Well Doctor--all my loving poems
write themselves to you.
If I could channel love,
by gum, it’s what I’d do.
And never pen another
foolish freudian line
that bleeds across the page
in half assed metered rhyme.

If all this bother and devotion
is not, in truth, for you--
(since you’re the expert on emotion)
tell me Doctor--who?--Anne Sexton, “Real Love in an Imaginary Wagon”
On the morning of 4 October 1974, Anne Sexton (left) already had, at the age of forty-five, a lot of things that many people would envy. She had a lifetime of accomplishments: among other things a lecturer position at Boston University and a visiting professorship at Colgate--which is quite a coup for a former fashion model who never graduated from college herself. She had numerous accolades, among them a fellowship from the Royal Society of Literature, and a Phi Beta Kappa key. Her 1967 Pulitzer Prize for a collection of poems titled Live or Die brought with it fame and prestige. She had a new book coming out in 1975. And she had friends and family, including two grown daughters. She even had her own rock band (Her Kind).

So there is some poignancy to Sexton’s actions on that day. After a lunch meeting with Maxine Kumin to go over some galley proofs of her upcoming book The Awful Rowing Toward God, the woman with so much to live for went home, locked herself in her garage, started her car, and sipped vodka while she patiently waited for the carbon monoxide to chase away the breathable air.

Although stunned, those who knew Sexton could see her suicide coming for years. She had a history of suicide attempts and bipolar disorder. She and her pal, Sylvia Plath, openly shared a fascination with death, especially their own. Her mortal obsession manifest itself early, during her teenage years, where she would, as a prank, fake her demise. A former boyfriend, Jack McCarthy, recalled for biographer Diane Middlebrook an incident when he came to a snow covered hill to meet her for a moonlight sledding date. He arrived late to find Sexton crumpled motionless at the bottom of the hill covered in what looked like blood. As it turned out, the blood was Mercurochrome. They were fifteen at the time.

Sexton had other problems, as well. Family life seemed to overwhelm her. Her in-laws in large part raised her children, for she was often unable to care for them. And despite her love for and seeming dependence on her husband, she felt compelled to sleep around with other people. As she once explained:

I don’t really want to have an affair with anyone, but I have to; it’s the quality of action. I first had this feeling, I suppose, when I was dating, after Kayo [Alfred Sexton, her husband] went into the service. Pound, pound, pound heart: makes me feel crazy, out of control.

By now, you’re probably thinking that the woman really needed psychiatric help. Truth was, Sexton had seen a parade of shrinks for over two decades. In a way, psychiatry had become her life. That’s kinda ironic, actually, for she saw psychoanalysis as out-and-out quackery. She derisively called it “the big cheat.”

One has to wonder what she saw in psychiatry given her low opinion of the profession. That opinion had to have intensified when one of her shrinks, referred to by Middlebrook by the pseudonym Dr. Zweitung, bedded her.*

One of her early shrinks--in fact, the one who treated her for the longest contiguous period of time (eight years)--would later answer that psychoanalysis gave her the most important thing she ever had: her gift for poetry.

__________________

*Translating the name from German, Dr. Middlebrook’s really calling him Dr. Two-Tongue, or Dr. Forked-Tongue. The New York Times identified him as Dr. Frederick Duhl.

Silly Crostics Answers

2011-06-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Wow! I thought it might take you guys a week to get all of these. You got them in a day, with SJ and Susan giving a bulk of the answers.

1. Duplicitous disciple: Judas
2. The Hindenburg, for example: Airship
3. Locale of Bailey Quarters’ quarters: Cincinnati
4. Even more snarled: Knottier
5. Capital of Saskatchewan: Regina
6. Acid that’s a real pisser: Uric
7. How K9 paints: Beautifully
8. Japan’s second largest city: Yokohama
9. Shrinky’s craggy landmass, and its neighbors in the North Sea: Islands
10. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s sweet home: Alabama
11. Idiot: Moron
12. You, me or everyone else: Anybody
13. A section of either London or New York: Soho
14. Conditional word: If
15. British actor and songwriter Anthony: Newley
16. “The ________ Song” (Ringo Starr): No-No
17. Third largest Hawaiian Island: Oahu
18. What air conditioners are good for: Cooling
19. Winnie-the-Pooh’s donkey pal: Eeyore
20. US President Richard: Nixon
21. Middle Ditch star Sue: Tarrant
22. James Earl Ray’s edible handler? Raoul
23. Lift up: Elevate
24. Bride’s partner: Groom
25. Suitable for raising crops: Arable
26. Consequence: Ramification
27. Rum cocktail, often made with strawberries: Daiquiri
28. The consequence for eating on the run: Indigestion
29. A doctor that’s on your nerves? Neurologist
30. Cold in the Light author Charles: Gramlich
31. Hometown of St. Francis: Assisi
32. Chemicals that are cheaper than day rates? Nitrates
33. Old ____________ (Disney Movie): Yeller
34. Where Denver got Rocky Mountain high: Colorado
35. Location of clue #3: Ohio
36. Burning, gooey weapon used in Vietnam: Napalm

When you get all the words correct, the message reads:

[Jack Ruby] I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you gentlemen in this room.

Since Ruby’s saying that in front of the Warren Commission, we can see a delicious irony in his words. While they’re deceptive, and deliberately so, they are literally true.

The fact that you could derive such a meaningful statement from a double acrostic rests on the fact that the lines are relatively simple. They’re just single words. All you have to do, as the puzzlemaster, is line up the letters (making sure that they are an even number--the first choice I had for this puzzle had an uneven number of letters, so I had to scrap it). Then you find words that start with one letter, and end with another. Any Scrabble player could do it, although finding a word that begins with ‘u’ and ends with ‘c’ forced me to put on my thinking cap.

Maintaining a double acrostic structure with lines consisting of something meaningful is considerably more difficult. Some poets have used double acrostics. Often, however, such double acrostics yield a much simpler message than the one in the above puzzle. Moreover, the poetry is usually nothing to write home about. Take, for instance, the following poem by Paul Hansford about the English town of Stroud.

Set among hills in the midst of five valleys,
This peaceful little market town we inhabit
Refuses (vociferously!) to be a conformer.
Once home of the cloth it gave its name to,
Uphill and down again its streets lead you.
Despite its faults it leaves us all charmed.

Double acrostics prove just as challenging to the a-list poet. As exemplified by Anne Sexton, in an early draft of her poem “For God, While Sleeping”:

Sleeping in fever, I am unfit
       to know who you
are; blind, your left eye is tragic
      right eye closed back,
bleeding for the wicked Jews
      until your last sigh
crowds out the uninvited Rabbi.

              Kill me! Kill me! such dreams
              shine in the kingdom of deceit,
             Lost to feverish dreamer.

Under my fever I accounted my alibi
softening my panic
to tell God not to break
from the sweet Magi;

Under my fever I announce my alibi
      softening my panic
to tell God not to break
      for the wide Magi.
Surely I will recognize your face soon,
      not the crowd’s hysteria,
and not here where you grow public.

              Undo me! Undo me! terrible Mama.
              God bless thee. God bless thou,
              however we shout our lost hozzanas.

Sexton began work on this poem sometime in 1958, or 1959 while attending an informal poetry workshop that included her, Sam Albert, Maxine Kumin, George Starbuck, and the moderator/teacher John Holmes. The workshop focused on the technical aspects of poetry, thus they sometimes tried to outdo each other by deploying such “tricks” as double acrostics in their poetry.

Here, Sexton is trying to work out an acrostic for the message “Starbuck’s lust is naughty and sick. He tucks his trick in a caustic acrostic.” As you can see, she got as far as “Starbuck’s lust” on the left, and “tucks his trick i[n]” on the right. Then she apparently gave up on the double acrostic idea, and decided instead to write a much better poem without any gimmicks.

“How do I know that’s what she intended to write?” you ask.

Simple. I recently read Dr. Diane Middlebrook’s page-turning 1991 book Anne Sexton: A Biography. In it, you can see photographs of the actual worksheets Sexton composed to work out that very message in this poem.

While critics and fans typically cite the emotive power behind Sexton’s work, and the sometimes embarrassing candor of her “confessional” style, one can see in her poems, and in the worksheets she left behind, a technical precision that’s second to no one.

Of course, she didn’t start out that way. She had to learn the craft. This workshop, a subsequent class taught by Robert Lowell at Boston University, and her conversations with friends and fellow poets Kumin, Starbuck and Sylvia Plath, all played a role in developing her writing to what it would soon become.

But to hear the late Dr. Middlebrook put it, the person who really unlocked Sexton’s gift for poetry was himself nothing close to a poet.

An Exercise in Silly Crostics

2011-06-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

Corrected 6/20/11

This is a syllacrostic puzzle. To solve it, fill in the answers to the clues by using all the syllables in the Syllabox. The number of syllables for each answer appears in parentheses. The number of letters in each clue corresponds to the number of dashes next to it. You can use each syllable only once. If you fill all the clues in correctly, their first and last letters, reading down, will reveal a quote, preceded by the speaker’s name.

I did the first one, just as an example. I'll add correct answers, and cross out their syllables in the Syllabox, as they come in. By all means, use Google if you get stuck.

1. Duplicitous disciple:

(2) _J_ _U_ _D_ _A_ _S_

2. The Hindenburg, for example:

(2)_A_ _I_ _R_ _S_ _H_ _I_ _P_ (Foam)

3. Locale of Bailey Quarters’ quarters:

(4)_C_ _I_ _N_ _C_ _I_ _N_ _N_ _A_ _T_ _I_ (SJ)

4. Even more snarled:

(3)_K_ _N_ _O_ _T_ _T_ _I_ _E_ _R_ (Susan)

5. Capital of Saskatchewan:

(3)_R_ _E_ _G_ _I_ _N_ _A_ (SJ)

6. Acid that’s a real pisser?

(2)_U_ _R_ _I_ _C_ (Susan)

7. How K9 paints:

(4)_B_ _E_ _A_ _U_ _T_ _I_ _F_ _U_ _L_ _L_ _Y_ (Susan)

8. Japan’s second largest city:

(4)_Y_ _O_ _K_ _O_ _H_ _A_ _M_ _A_ (SJ)

9. Shrinky’s craggy landmass, and its neighbors in the North Sea:

(2)_I_ _S_ _L_ _A_ _N_ _D_ _S_ (Susan)

10. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s sweet home:

(4)_A_ _L_ _A_ _B_ _A_ _M_ _A_ (SJ)

11. Idiot:

(2)_M_ _O_ _R_ _O_ _N_ (Susan)

12. You, me or everyone else:

(4)_A_ _N_ _Y_ _B_ _O_ _D_ _Y_ (Susan)

13. A section of either London or New York:

(2)_S_ _O_ _H_ _O_ (SJ)

14. Conditional word:

(1)_I_ _F_ (SJ)

15. British actor and songwriter Anthony:

(2)_N_ _E_ _W_ _L_ _E_ _Y_ (SJ)

16. “The ________ Song” (Ringo Starr):

(2)_N_ _O_ _N_ _O_ (Susan)

17. Third largest Hawaiian Island:

(3)_O_ _A_ _H_ _U_ (SJ)

18. What air conditioners are good for:

(2)_C_ _O_ _O_ _L_ _I_ _N_ _G_ (SJ)

19. Winnie-the-Pooh’s donkey pal:

(2)_E_ _E_ _Y_ _O_ _R_ _E_ (SJ)

20. US President Richard:

(2)_N_ _I_ _X_ _O_ _N_ (SJ)

21. Middle Ditch star Sue:

(2)_T_ _A_ _R_ _R_ _A_ _N_ _T_ (SJ)

22. James Earl Ray’s edible handler?

(2)_R_ _A_ _O_ _U_ _L_ (Susan)

23. Lift up:

(3)_E_ _L_ _E_ _V_ _A_ _T_ _E_ (Susan)

24. Bride’s partner:

(1) _G_ _R_ _O_ _O_ _M_ (SJ)

25. Suitable for raising crops:

(3)_A_ _R_ _A_ _B_ _L_ _E_ (Susan)

26. Consequence:

(5)_R_ _A_ _M_ _I_ _F_ _I_ _C_ _A_ _T_ _I_ _O_ _N_ (Susan)

27. Rum cocktail, often made with strawberries:

(3)_D_ _A_ _I_ _Q_ _U_ _I_ _R_ _I_ (Susan)

28. Penalty for eating on the run:

(4)_I_ _N_ _D_ _I_ _G_ _E_ _S_ _T_ _I_ _O_ _N_ (Susan)

29. A doctor that’s on your nerves?

(4)_N_ _E_ _U_ _R_ _O_ _L_ _O_ _G_ _I_ _S_ _T_ (SJ)

30. Cold in the Light author Charles:

(2)_G_ _R_ _A_ _M_ _L_ _I_ _C_ _H_ (SJ)

31. Hometown of St. Francis:

(3)_A_ _S_ _S_ _I_ _S_ _I_ (SJ)

32. Chemicals that are cheaper than day rates?

(2)_N_ _I_ _T_ _R_ _A_ _T_ _E_ _S_ (Susan)

33. Old ____________ (Disney Movie):

(2)_Y_ _E_ _L_ _L_ _E_ _R_ (Foam)

34. Where Denver got Rocky Mountain high:

(4)_C_ _O_ _L_ _O_ _R_ _A_ _D_ _O_ (Foam)

35. Location of clue #3:

(3)_O_ _H_ _I_ _O_ (SJ)

36. Burning, gooey weapon used in Vietnam:

(2)_N_ _A_ _P_ _A_ _L_ _M_ (SJ)

Death by X-Spot (Answers)

2011-06-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Below are the answers to the previous quiz. Next to each clue I’ve listed the name of subject and his or her life dates, followed by the length of time between my last blog post about them during their lives and their passing.

1. Actress and songwriter for Elvis Presley; co-starred in Glen/Glenda; played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the film Ed Wood: Dolores Fuller (1923-2011)--three years, eleven months, one day. First answered by Ray.

2. Singer/songwriter known for her advertising jingles and the song “Poetry Man”; claimed to have had an encounter with an extraterrestrial: Phoebe Snow (1950-2011)--three years, ten months, eighteen days. First answered by Susan.

3. Controversial Los Angeles Police Chief; Daryl Gates (1926-2010)--three years, eight months, one day. First answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

4. Attorney, former JFK advisor and speechwriter; advisor to Ted Kennedy; he represented an early nemesis of Ralph Nader: Ted Sorenson (1927-2010)--three years, seven months, four days

5. Singer, actor, and sausage maker; best known for the song “Big, Bad John” and for his role in Diamonds Are Forever: Jimmy Dean (1928-2010)--three years, six months, twenty-four days. First answered by Ray. Independently answered by Susan.

6. Professor and activist; best known for his book A People’s History of the United States: Howard Zinn (1922-2010)--three years, three months, seven days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Pinetop Swamp.

7. Musician known as the “King of Pop”; former son-in-law of Elvis Presley: Michael Jackson (1959-2009)--two years, nine months, thirty days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

8. Actress; best known for her roles on Maude and The Golden Girls: Rue McClanahan (1934-2010)--two years, eight months, twenty-two days

9. A 1960s folk singer; the last name mentioned in a famous trio: Mary Travers (1936-2009)--two years, three months, eight days. First answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

10. Musician; last surviving original member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience--Mitch Mitchell (1947-2008)--two years, one month, two days. Partially answered by Pinetop Swamp.

11. Former baseball player; most famous as a live Las Vegas entertainer: Danny Gans (1956-2009)--two years, five days

12. Scion of a wealthy Saudi family; cited as the founder of Al-Qaeda: Osama bin Laden (1957-2011)--one year, three months, twenty-two days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

13. Actor, political activist, food company founder, and race car driver; won a Best Actor Oscar for The Color of Money: Paul Newman (1925-2008)--one year, three months, eighteen days. First answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

14. Minister; the oldest of Charles Manson’s followers; the father of one of Manson’s youngest followers: Dean Morehouse (1920-2010)--one year, three months, fifteen days

15. Cuban-American spy; participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion; one of the Watergate burglars: Bernard Barker (1917-2009)--one year, twenty-five days

16. Professor of media studies (University of Western Ontario); friend of Marshall McLuhan; famous for writing the books Subliminal Seduction and The Clam-Plate Orgy: Brian Wilson Key (1925-2008)--one year, seven days. First answered by Foam.

17. Notorious artist manager; his clients included Sam Cooke, the Beatles, and The Rolling Stones: Allen Klein (1931-2009)--eleven months, twenty-nine days. First answered by Susan.

18. Musician and actor: famous for such songs as “I’m a Man”; appeared in Trading Places, and The Blues Brothers 2000: Bo Diddley (1928-2008)--eleven months, twenty-five days

19. Former spy, stationed in South America: recruited other spies through a YMCA basketball program; best known for his book Inside the Company: A CIA Diary: Philip Agee (1935-2008)--eleven months, two days

20. Former President of Iraq: someone surreptitiously recorded his execution on a cell phone: Saddam Hussein (1937-2006)--ten months, nineteen days. First answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

21. Musician; member of The Country Music Hall of Fame; known for such songs as “Gone” and “Wings of a Dove”; appeared in the movie Swamp Girl: Ferlin Husky (1925-2011)--ten months, ten days

22. Hitman; alleged assassin of JFK; father of a famous actor: Charles Harrelson (1938-2007)--nine months, ten days

23. Filmmaker: produced such legendary grindhouse fare as Color Me Blood Red, Space Thing, and Blood Feast: David Friedman (1923-2011)--nine months, four days

24. Statesman; scion of a political family; two of his brothers were assassinated; walked into a “bear trap” in 1969: Ted Kennedy (1932-2009)--nine months, three days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Susan.

25. Murderess and minister; mentored by Anton LaVey and Charles Manson; terminally ill when I began a series featuring her: Susan Atkins (1948-2009)--seven months, thirteen days. First answered by Susan.

26. Beatles chauffer and road manager; former CEO of Apple Corps; rumored double of Paul McCartney: Neil Aspinall (1941-2008)--five months, seven days. First answered by Susan.

27. Former CIA case officer, and ultraconservative political columnist; National Review editor: William F. Buckley (1925-2008)--five months, three days. First answered by Ray. Independently answered by Susan.

28. Actress; best known for numerous roles she played in all five Star Trek series: Majel Barrett Roddenberry (1932-2008)--four months, nine days. First answered by Susan.

29. Reclusive author; best known for his novel Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)--three months, twenty-one days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Susan.

30. Standup comedian and actor; appeared in Prince of Tides, Dogma, and Car Wash, but best known for seven words: George Carlin (1937-2008)--two months, twenty-nine days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Susan.

31. American/British writer; most famous as a contributor to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail: Richard Leigh (1943-2007)--one month, twenty-seven days

32. Highly esteemed television journalist; CBS News anchor succeeded by Dan Rather: Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)--twenty-eight days. First answered by Ray. Independently answered by Susan.

33. Actor and gun activist; best known for such lines as “Solyent Green is People!“ and “Take your hands off of me, you damned dirty ape!“; although politically conservative, he marched in support of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963: Charlton Heston (1923-2008)--four days. First answered by Foam. Independently answered by Pinetop Swamp. Independently answered by Susan.

Death by X-Spot

2011-06-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, when I wrote academic papers, or parts of the dissertation, some of the people featured in those pages croaked within a few months or so. I chalked it up to coincidence. But now, the phenomenon seems to have followed me into cyberspace. Some of the people I’ve mentioned here were alive when I posted about them, but have since passed away.

From the descriptions below, can you identify the lucky decedents who at least lived long enough to see their names in The X-Spot? A point for each one. No fair Googling.

1. Actress and songwriter for Elvis Presley; co-starred in Glen/Glenda; played by Sarah Jessica Parker in the film Ed Wood.

2. Singer/songwriter known for her advertising jingles and the song “Poetry Man”; claimed to have had an encounter with an extraterrestrial.

3. Controversial Los Angeles Police Chief.

4. Attorney, former JFK advisor and speechwriter; advisor to Ted Kennedy; he represented an early nemesis of Ralph Nader.

5. Singer, actor, and sausage maker; best known for the song “Big, Bad John” and for his role in Diamonds Are Forever.

6. Professor and activist; best known for his book A People’s History of the United States.

7. Musician known as the “King of Pop”; former son-in-law of Elvis Presley.

8. Actress; best known for her roles on Maude and The Golden Girls.

9. A 1960s folk singer; the last name mentioned in a famous trio.

10. Musician; last surviving original member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

11. Former baseball player; most famous as a live Las Vegas entertainer.

12. Scion of a wealthy Saudi family; cited as the founder of Al-Qaeda.

13. Actor, political activist, food company founder, and race car driver; won a Best Actor Oscar for The Color of Money/

14. Minister; the oldest of Charles Manson’s followers; the father of one of Manson’s youngest followers.

15. Cuban-American spy; participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion; one of the Watergate burglars.

16. Professor of media studies (University of Western Ontario); friend of Marshall McLuhan; famous for writing the books Subliminal Seduction and The Clam-Plate Orgy.

17. Notorious artist manager; his clients included Sam Cooke, the Beatles, and The Rolling Stones.

18. Musician and actor: famous for such songs as “I’m a Man”; appeared in Trading Places, and Blues Brothers 2000.

19. Former spy, stationed in South America: recruited other spies through a YMCA basketball program; best known for his book Inside the Company: A CIA Diary.

20. Former President of Iraq: someone surreptitiously recorded his execution on a cell phone.

21. Musician; member of The Country Music Hall of Fame; known for such songs as “Gone” and “Wings of a Dove”; appeared in the movie Swamp Girl.

22. Hitman; alleged assassin of JFK; father of a famous actor.

23. Filmmaker: produced such legendary grindhouse fare as Color Me Blood Red, Space Thing, and Blood Feast.

24. Statesman; scion of a political family; two of his brothers were assassinated; walked into a “bear trap” in 1969.

25. Murderess and minister; mentored by Anton LaVey and Charles Manson: terminally ill when I began a series featuring her.

26. Beatles chauffer and road manager; former CEO of Apple Corps; rumored double of Paul McCartney.

27. Former CIA case officer, and ultraconservative political columnist; National Review editor.

28. Actress; best known for numerous roles she played in all five Star Trek series.

29. Reclusive author; best known for his novel Catcher in the Rye.

30. Standup comedian and actor; appeared in Prince of Tides, Dogma, and Car Wash, but best known for seven words.

31. American/British writer; most famous as a contributor to The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

32. Highly esteemed television journalist; CBS News anchor succeeded by Dan Rather.

33. Actor and gun activist; best known for such lines as “Solyent Green is People!“ and “Take your hands off of me, you damned dirty ape!“; although politically conservative, he marched in support of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963.

Assailing the Tender Age: The Children of God vs. McMartin

2011-06-10T03:20:00.000-07:00

I had planned to write a series on what conspiracy researcher Robert Sterling derisively calls “The Pediocracy” for quite some time, but delayed it for several years. Frankly, I didn’t relish the thought of doing it. I don’t like the subject matter (as do most of you). I don’t like researching it. And I certainly don’t like thinking about it (again, that would apply to most of you).

At the same time, I realized that I would have to post about the topic someday. I also felt that the best way to broach the subject would be to give twin examples of the issue from conflicting points of view. For that, the McMartin Preschool Trials in Los Angeles and the international investigations into the Children of God/Family of Love proved the most readily accessible foils. In many respects, the cases are quite similar. Yet, they demonstrate a huge disparity in terms of public reaction to the subject of pedophilia. On one extreme, you will find some who feel that charges of child sexual abuse reflect a lynch-mob mentality, a conservative Christian paranoia about shifts in personal power and autonomy which frets over any indication of egalitarianism. On the other extreme, you’ll find those who will tell you, “Believe the children,” as if everything said by them--no matter the conditions that prompted them to say it--has to be true, or that devil-worshipper's indeed lurk everywhere.

McMartin and CoG represent these extremes. Each featured a charge of systematic abuse and ties to power. Authorities investigated and subsequently adjudicated both. Each narrative focused on a quasi-demonic figure who allegedly used gestures of goodwill and respected vocations (schoolteacher, minister) to exact sexual and/or physical violence upon the most vulnerable population within our society. And in both instances, prosecutors failed to win convictions.

Most important, the dominant depiction of them in mainstream media is, for the most part, well-founded. Prosecutorial misconduct, as well as overzealousness on the part of investigators and experts with personal, financial and promotional axes to grind, probably led to a near miscarriage of justice in the McMartin case, and to probable injustices in similar proceedings that led to convictions. So one can understand the mainstream characterization of McMartin as a witch hunt. On the other hand, the Children of Love all but admitted (in Steven Kelley’s apology to Lord Justice Alan Ward) that abuse did take place. Couple that with David Berg’s teachings on sexuality, incest and pedophilia, and you can see that authorities had good reason to investigate them and file charges. Moreover, one can understand why people remain suspicious about the FoL to the present day, despite the fact that their members have never been convicted of a serious crime.

The differences between these mainstream depictions (and subsequent public perceptions) partly lay in the nature and reliability of evidence in both cases. The McMartin evidence consisted of witness interviews (of previous students), an archeologist’s declaration of tunnels beneath the school, and a few personal items of the main defendant, Ray Buckey. Defense attorneys challenged the validity of all of this evidence, and with good reason. The witness interviews gave every indication of coercion by (arguably) well-meaning professionals of children who, after badgering by authoritative figures, kowtowed to the opinion of the adults around them. The claimed existence of tunnels was soundly disproved by a reputable archeology firm which conducted a more thorough, more methodologically scientific, and unbiased dig than the lone-archeologist-for-hire. The items taken from Buckey’s place--a graduation gown (supposedly for black ceremonies), a few pin-up photos (supposedly illustrating an unusual sex drive--for a twenty-five year-old male, no less) and a rubber duck (supposedly--well, I’ll leave that to your imagination)--were all taken contrary to context, and interwoven into a story of perversion that assumed a priori the guilt of the defendant.

The evidence against the CoG consisted of eyewitness testimony, the cult’s own print and electronic media, and the observations of various social services agencies doing routine (and later extraordinary) investigations. Whereas the McMartin pupils gave coerced testimony as children malleable to adult influences, the FoL kids voluntarily told their stories, for the most part as adults. Their accounts show a remarkable consistency with no good evidence of collusion. Local, state, and national authorities noted the conditions in which the children lived (e.g., overcrowding and inadequate education), and documented these in situ. Most important, the cult’s own literature demonstrated its approval of (1) prostitution; (2) the indoctrination of minors into prostitution (e.g., “The Little Flirty Fish”); (3) its expectation of sexual capitulation, especially from females, and regardless of circumstance;* (4) the hypersexualization of children (e.g., The Story of Davidito);** and (5) incest (e.g., “Sex with Grandma”). From the filmed exploits of flirty fish, to the nude dancing, masturbation and sex-confessional videos that members sent Berg for his enjoyment, we can see that the cult had a profound belief in combining sexuality with religious practice. That children took part in making said videos demonstrated (a) concrete evidence of sexual activity among pre-teens, and (b) that the cult’s sexual mores extended to their children--at least during a limited period of time, if we believe the FoL’s current vehement protestations.

While logic formed some basis for public acceptance of mainstream accounts, other, more visceral aspects supported them. Because of widespread reliance on day care, parents could very well have felt neglectful for leaving their children with someone who isn’t part of their family, especially if that places them at risk for sexual abuse. The blanket depiction of organized sexual abuse charges as hysteria could go a long way in allaying anxiety over day care, especially when accompanied by statistical evidence that sexual abuse is less likely to happen there than in the homes of friends and family. Moreover (let’s face it), some of the people who served as the face of the anti-satanic group weren’t the most popular, or mediagenic folks around (e.g. Kee MacFarlane, Judy Johnson). Many people found them easy to demonize, spoof, or otherwise dislike.

By the same token, the CoG story affirms long-standing prejudices against New Religious Movements (NRMs), simply for being different, or for not believing what the mainstream does.*** The public thus saw David Berg and the Children of God in the same context as Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate, or other coercive cults that either killed or seriously harmed its members. By implication, this tarnishes the reputations of newer sects that don't use coercive mind-control methods.

Of course, there’s a validity to linking the CoG to all of those nefarious groups. The similarities are obvious. And Family’s actions speak for themselves. The point here is that part of our understanding of these cults, even when accurate, comes from emotive reasoning, over-reliance upon which usually leads us astray.

Which leads us back to McMartin. Its most profound legacy consists of a thorough and passionate “debunking” of what Dr. Lawrence Pazder called ‘Satanic Ritual Abuse’ (SRA). True, the evidence of McMartin points away from any systematic, religious-based child abuse at the school, and more towards the uncoordinated, non-conspiratorial and sporadic abuse of far fewer children in other settings. That’s just one case, however. It would constitute a tremendous fallacy to assume that because SRA didn’t happen at McMartin--or even at the other schools where authorities engaged in similar investigations and prosecutions--that it didn’t happen elsewhere.

And the Children of God gives us ample evidence that something very close to SRA actually occurred. In short, the CoG manifest, in real life, almost everything that Ray Buckey and his associates were accused of at McMartin.

Adults within the CoG sexually abused children. Moreover, this abuse was widespread and persistent. The indoctrination of children into sexual activity (through various Mo Letters, and the realization of their instruction by colony leaders, parents and guardians), was documented by eyewitness accounts and the cult’s own literature (which they then tried to get rid of during the so-called ‘Pub Purges’).

Whereas the kids at McMartin sang a song titled “Naked Movie Star,” some of the CoG kids, including Berg’s granddaughter, Merry, actually played the game--and we have the videotaped evidence (featured in Noah Thompson’s HBO documentary) to prove it.

McMartin accusers alleged a cover-up because of the perpetrator's supposed connection to very powerful people. The CoG, on the other hand, documented its own attempts to connect with power through Flirty Fishing. They met with some stipulated successes, (e.g., Duke Victor Emanuele Canevaro, President Bush, Sr.), alleged successes (e.g., Augosto Pinochet), and some successes we can only guess at.

While the McMartin accusers alleged that the kids were constantly flown back and forth to meet with the demands of supposed organizers, Community Services Victoria and other social service agencies initially suspected wrongdoing because the CoG kids really were transient, constantly flown from one country to another, without the supervision of one or perhaps both parents.

And while the McMartin accusers averred that the kids were either tortured or threatened with torture should they “spill the beans,” the CoG made videotapes boasting of their use of “punishment.” Said videos also showed how “grateful” the kids were to receive it. Lord Justice Ward found that this “discipline” went much farther than the normal spanking, and bordering on physical abuse. And as Natalie Raynes stated in her Cosmo article, the punishments at the ‘Victor Camps’ was far more intense--mind you she was sent there because she had misgivings about submitting to adult groping.

Because the CoG/FoL's child abuse resulted in large part from Berg’s doctrine, it had a ritualistic component to it. I think one can fairly classify these actions as ritualized abuse.

Of course, with their self-righteous-holier-than-thou-wearing-their-piety-on-their-sleeve-like-a-pharasee-fundamentalist form of Christianity, one can hardly see the CoG as practicing Satanic Ritual Abuse.****

Perhaps the term ‘Christian Ritual Abuse’ would be more in order?

Then again, would there be much difference between CRA, and SRA? If so, which would be worse?

___________________________
*Berg’s dictates regarding the sexual submission of women are not only evident in eyewitness testimony given by former members, but also in such Mo Letters as the previously cited “IRFERS Beware,” where he chastised a female member for not submitting to a brutal rape, and in “The Girl Who Wouldn’t!” (DO, dated 17 June 1978), where he berated a heterosexual female member for not submitting completely to the woman whom leadership assigned her to please.

**The Story of Davidito, as described by Lord Justice Ward, was nearly 800 pages, many of which he found to be quasi-pornographic. Those posted here, and on the site XFamily.org are but a small sample.

***In this series and in previous ones, I have used the term ‘cult’ to describe a coercive organization, based around religion or ideology, and totally reliant upon heavy indoctrination of new members. I use the term “NRM’s” to distinguish between cults and new sects that do not resort to violence, threats, blackmail, or brainwashing to keep their flocks in line, and are otherwise legitimate.

****The Argentinian and Australian investigations turned up rumors that Berg and others within the CoG were, at least at one time, practicing a form of occultism that bordered on satanic. I didn’t mention the rumors earlier, because I don’t think they are true, and they’re somewhat distracting. But if the rumors were true, then you’d have an actual case of SRA.

To read this series from the beginning, click here and scroll down.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: Consequences

2011-06-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Davidito book does relate David's early witnessing of sexual behavior and encouragement to explore his own sexuality, and while these experiences would be characterized as sexually abusive or neglectful by most child abuse experts, there is no report of his having been actively molested or abused by adults. Moreover, there is no evidence of long-term negative effects on David. The first author, a clinical child psychologist with thirty years of experience, recently administered a psychological evaluation to David, who is now nineteen, and found him to be a bright, well-adjusted, and emotionally strong young man.
--Sex, Slander and Salvation contributor Lawrence Lilliston, testifying to Lord Justice Alan Ward about the effects of pedophilia on Ricky Rodriguez as documented in The Story of Davidito.

Figure 1. The “Ricky Rodriguez” Video

Ricky Rodriguez made this tape sometime in early January, 2005. During the course of it, you can see him pulling out a mini arsenal of weapons, as if he’s about to fight his own personal war.

And that’s exactly what he’s about to do. Like any other soldier, he’s a man on a mission: to kill his mother, FoL leader Karen Zerby, and her consort, Steven Kelly.

Rodriguez was but one of hundreds of second-generation Children of God/Family of Love members who left the cult once they became adults. While one might have the wherewithal to leave physically, leaving psychologically could prove far more difficult. First, many of these people, as children, suffered physical and sexual abuse, for which they never received treatment. What’s worse, they had very little education, which limited the types of employment they could find, and the amount of money they could earn.

Some of the women born into the Children of God turned to the sex industry for survival, among them two former children of David Berg’s own household. Davida Kelley worked for years as an exotic dancer before turning to modeling and “sexy wrestling .” According to a June 2005 issue of Rolling Stone, Berg’s granddaughter, Merry, barely eked out a living as a prostitute after psychological breakdowns forced her withdrawal from Bible college. The cult sometimes uses her as an example to other wannabe independents, although friends say that she is doing much better these days. Still, she had her struggles. As her mother told RS, “She’s just given up on life.”

She wasn’t the only one. Many of these children self-medicated. Merry at one time had an addiction to methamphetamine. River Phoenix, of course, most likely died chasing the dragon. Some of these second-generation members gave up completely and committed suicide, among them Abe Braaten, Simon Novotny, and Josh Lykins.

Rodriguez was in a unique position as Berg’s handpicked successor. Of course, after Berg’s death, Zerby and Kelly actually took the reins. So, one might guess that Rodriguez simply hated his mom for passing him over. But in his personal correspondence with Zerby, Rodriguez--described by almost everyone who knew him as an honorable and kind man--demonstrates a genuine crisis of conscience about the Family’s teachings and practices. In a very gentle way, he tried to reason, almost plead with his mother to distance the FoL from Berg's doctrine and reform the cult before it was too late. In a letter dated 29 May 2000, which began with the salutation, “Dear Mama and Peter; God Bless you! We [he and his wife, Elixcia Munumel] love you too,” he wrote:

People have tried to warn you before, but your minds have been so darkened to the truth and your ears so stopped to the voices of reason you have chosen to ignore them. You’re like the prophet in the vision of [David Berg’s] Bahai Temple prophecy who just keeps on chattering even after the light has gone out. Most people can see that it’s a joke and some even start laughing, but you just keep on going because you whist not that the spirit has departed.

There’s so much truth in what you believe and constantly cajole others to, but there’s also so much falsehood, and so many lies and pretenses. It’s the worst kind of lie really, because it has a good measure of truth in it. If only you could make love and acceptance the focus of the Family instead of self-righteousness and spiritual pride, you could make it into a truly wonderful place....

Of course, no reform came. And Rodriguez grew increasingly embittered. His marriage fell apart, and he moved from California to Tucson, AZ in September 2004. In a telephone interview he gave to Noah Thompson for the latter’s HBO documentary later that year, Ricky would not echo the outrage expressed by both Thompson and Davida Kelley (with Noah when he made the call). It’s certain that Rodriguez sympathized with Thompson’s anger, but he didn’t show any signs of it.

Perhaps Rodriguez had already decided to kill his mother, and didn’t want to say anything that would jeopardize that plan. One could speculate that he had already been working on it when he decided to move to Tucson.

Why Tucson?

Well, he had one big problem. Since 2001, he and his mother were estranged. So, he didn’t know where she was, although he seemed to suspect that she lived around there. More important, he knew someone in that area who would have knowledge of Zerby’s whereabouts: his mother’s close associate Angela Smith, née Susan Kauten--the same Angela Smith whom he identified (along with his mother) as one of his childhood rapists.

Figure 2. Rodriguez and Smith, from The Story of Davidito

In January 2005, Rodriguez put his plan in motion by contacting Smith and inviting her to dinner. On 8 January 2005, he arrived at her home demanding she tell him his mother’s location. When she didn’t divulge the information, he tortured her, stabbing her repeatedly until she died.

It’s not certain whether Smith gave Rodriguez false information, or none at all. What’s clear is that Rodriguez subsequently spent the next ten hours driving around in circles looking for Zerby. At 7:30 the next morning, he gave up, pulled his car off the road, and pumped a bullet into his temple.

While the Family of Love’s leadership managed to avoid the consequences of their actions--David Berg especially--someone had to pay them. In many instances, second-generation members foot the bill.

One could argue that Zerby finally paid some consequences, given the violent deaths of her son and her friend within a ten-hour time-span. Still, she didn’t pay like Rodriguez and Smith did.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: Useful Sex Idiots

2011-06-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

Commissioner Juan Carlos Rebello readily stipulated, “We found evidence suggesting that the Family [International] was funded by influential businessmen worldwide.”

That hardly seems surprising. After all, the Flirty-Fishing ministry had, as one of its stated goals, the connection to powerful people who could pull strings for the cult in host countries. As stated by a member identifying himself only as Simon in a videotaped report on FFing activities in Osaka: “We start off by the letter, Esther the Queen of FF-ers, was read, and was really convincing about how we need to make sure that we’re reaching people that will be able to help us in our ministry.”

Dr. Miriam Williams Boeri noted in her memoir Heaven’s Harlots that Flirty Fishing gave the Children of God access to a lot of influential people: from celebrities to international arms dealer. An internal video produced by the cult about local ff-ing efforts featured in the documentary The Love Prophet gives a glimpse of just what kind of connections the cult had made:

There’s Faithy there in the foreground with this sweet gentleman, the ambassador of France. She was able to really witness to him and he really fell in love that night. We had sweet... David, dancing with one of his little sheep to the song, ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ Here, you see Faithy as she witnesses to the vice-president of an [redacted] company from Sweden. And he’s asking her at this time, “Do you think I’ll go to heaven?” Very, very sweet man who really enjoyed their contact that night.

Figure 1. Clip of internal Children of God Flirty Fishing video

As you can see, the group’s contact extended beyond the famous and the infamous. They included government officials, and captains of industry. Then too, the Family immediately benefited from the early landing of one of its biggest fish, Duke Victor Emanuele Canevaro. They made use of his Italian properties to hide out Berg, and to train future Flirty Fishers. But one could easily speculate that the Duke also gave them ties to other titled aristocracy. He could have also helped legitimize the group in certain socio-political circles.

The CoG had documented ties to Muammar Qaddafi (see a photo of Faith and Jonathan Berg with the Col. here). Conspiracy researcher Alex Constantine listed even more:

One Argentine magazine found that some financial supporters of the cult were ‘well-known and powerful people,’ and pondered whether Berg's disturbed mental state ‘is being exploited by a network of powerful people to sexually control an army of children.’ Julia Berry [Julia Berg], the prophet's own kin, has said that it was her 'privilege' to be paired sexually with ‘very important men - men from the government.’ The Children of God, she said, ‘always had very powerful friends.... I met presidents from around the world. The children's chorus gave us an image of purity and innocence. It was a seduction.’

According to the Washington Post for June 2, 1993, ‘the Family's leadership follows a policy of lying to outsiders, is steeped in a history of sexual deviance and has even meddled in Third World politics.’ Edward Probe, a Canadian who once edited Family publications, worked in the Philippines from 1986 to '88. He told the Post that ‘Family officials openly sympathized with right-wing military officers who tried to overthrow the government [of President Corazon Aquino]. What we were doing was supplying all the moral support.’ One former member from Costa Rica told Argentina's Gente magazine on September 9 about her life inside the cult: ‘My father used to have certain privileges inside the organization,’ she said. ‘He was considered a very important person for public relations. His paternal grandfather, the criminal lawyer, Guillermo Puddle, was a close friend of Chile's military dictator Pinochet, and Juan Carlos, the king of Spain.‘ Pinochet and Carlos became financial and political benefactors of the cult.

The Family, according to David Hubert, a former member, contends that sexual evangelizing was used to curry political favor. ‘They would target special people,’ he told the Washington Post, ‘in the media, lawyers, in the government.’

I don’t know how accurate those connections are. But if any of them are true, that’s an impressive rogue’s gallery when taken in conjunction with another, more thoroughly documented connection to political power: specifically, the US Republican party. In fact, their good relationship to the GOP allowed their children’s chorus to perform twice for President George Bush Sr.: once at the White House, and again when the President toured the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew. When Bush lost his bid for reelection, the White House visits continued under Democratic President Bill Clinton. In 1998, The US Department of Agriculture chose the Family Faith Foundation, a CoG front headed by Berg’s daughter, Faith Fischer, to distribute several million dollars worth of relief supplies to Siberia--a mission Faith jeopardized by actively proselytizing once she landed in Russia.

Constantine’s question wasn’t so much whether or not the Family actually had important international political and industrial contacts. They did. The question is whether or not their highly placed friends shielded them from prosecution. There’s really no solid proof that this occurred. Yet when you look at all the times they escaped the consequences of their crimes, from New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz’s 1974 investigation to the difficult-to-explain legal exonerations of the cult in the face of substantial evidence, it’s a difficult hypothesis to rule out.

You’ll also note in the above Constantine quote a concern that “influential businessmen” were not only protecting the cult, but using them as well, mostly for their sexual services--as if they were useful idiots perfectly suited for sexual compromise and other sex ops. You’ll note in the above video (Fig. 1) someone censored the actual faces of the big fish they were attempting to land. The potential for embarrassment (and subsequent blackmail) is obvious, especially if the flirty little fisher were underage. Then again, the cult’s frequent travels could have made them useful as couriers, smugglers or a host of other espionage activities.

There’s not substantial proof that anyone other than David Berg used the cult in an underhanded way. Our problem here is that we have very little to disuade us from this second part of Constantine's hypothesis, yet.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: Never Mind

2011-06-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Family of Love’s pressure against Judge Roberto Marquevich successfully distracted the Argentinian investigation. The focus was no longer on child abuse. It was now on religious persecution exacted by overzealous and close-minded authorities.

I could guess that the group’s accusations took Judge Marquevich by surprise. But it's no speculation the decision of his colleagues on the Appellate Court flabbergasted Judge Daniel Rudi by overturning Judge Marquevich’s order to detain twenty-one adult members of the Family of Love. Judge Rudi wrote a blistering 135-page dissenting opinion that copiously quoted Family literature. But outvoted two-to-one, he could do nothing but let authorities release the prisoners, and allow the cult to carry on as it always did.

Likewise, prosecution efforts in Australia, Spain, and France failed to net a single conviction.*

Despite citing abundant evidence of physical and sexual abuse within the cult, Lord Justice Alan Ward granted custody to the child’s mother, even though she was still in the group. In his opening statements, Lord Justice Ward explained that he found Mrs. T’.s daughter, as an individual, a suitable parent. So the only reason he could award custody to Mrs. T. would be the negative effect the FoL could have on the child, referred to in court documents only as ‘S.’. Although he himself chronicled, documented and found numerous instances and circumstances in which the child could have been harmed, he still, essentially, found in favor of the cult. He cited religious freedom and tolerance in his decision. Most of all, he cited his belief that the family had changed, and were still changing for the better. Thus, the abuses were all in the past, and thus had no bearing in this case:

I am impressed by the winds of change that have blown and continue to blow through The Family. Although sullied by their participation in the sexual excesses, Maria and Peter Amsterdam have demonstrated convincingly a willingness to change. With Berg's death they have an opportunity subtly yet dramatically to change further. In my judgment, they may be ready to do so. In my judgment, they should be given an opportunity to do so. I intend, therefore, and subject to argument from Counsel, to impose a Stay upon this Order so that NT and those who are close to her in The Family may have some short period of reflection. I would extend that Stay if I were given certain assurances.

One of those assurances was a court-ordered apology given by leadership (the Steven Kelly quote in the previous post) for past child sex abuse. Perhaps some would like to give the cult a benefit of the doubt, and believe that they had not only put the practice behind them, but had come to the horrifying realization that they had serious harmed their children. But as ex-member Natalie Raynes wrote in her 2006 Cosmo article, she and other children fell victim to sexual abuse inside the cult well after 1987 when the FoL declared that the practice had ended. And in her speech before the 1993 FoL Summit Meeting outside of Budapest (Hungary), Karen Zerby stated her belief that the practice was righteous. It’s just that they had to stop it because it looked bad to authorities:

This [sexual contact between adults and minors] is about the only subject where we're really going along with the System, we're playing along with them, we're acting like we believe what we did was wrong, because we have changed, and stopped doing it [. . .] We need to somehow explain to our [teenagers] that love and loving affection is not wrong. As it says in [Berg's writings], if it's not hurtful, if it's loving, then it's okay. Of course, having actual intercourse with a child wouldn't be okay as it wouldn't be loving, but a little fondling and sweet affection is not wrong in the eyes of God, and if they have experienced the same in the past they weren't 'abused.' [. . .] We need to explain to our [children] that any experience they may have had along these lines, if it was loving and if it was desired, was not wrong. We need to show them that even if in some case the experience for them wasn't so great, that by comparison to what goes on in the System, it still wasn't abuse.

“Fondling” was precisely the type of abuse Raynes said she suffered. To repeat from her Cosmo article:

If someone touched you, you had no choice but to let them or they’d abuse you or a person you cared about in front of you, which was even worse.

By the time I was ten, we were living in Poland. I was being abused by someone every single day. They’d shove fingers inside me or else get me to ‘pleasure’ them (as they called it). They didn’t believe in condoms and when you started your period they stopped having intercourse with you, but still did everything else. The cult also didn’t believe in doctors so I’m lucky that I never got an STI.

By now, you’re probably wondering how the Children of God/Family of Love eluded prosecution for their crimes for over two decades. And once caught by authorities, walked away virtually scot-free, despite strong evidence of guilt.

Obviously the PR efforts helped. After all, Lord Justice Ward and other law enforcement officials would be loath to rule in favor of the FoL if that created a public backlash. If such were the case, the PR allowed them a hook upon which to hang any decisions that would be unpopular otherwise.

That premise, of course, assumes that law enforcement officials were actively trying to find a way to exonerate the Family of Love, as if they were somehow protecting them.

And that leads us to Alex Constantine’s question: did the FoL have powerful allies in many countries who would keep them safe from prosecution?

According to Commissioner Juan Carlos Rebello, who headed the Argentinian raids, the answer would be “Yes.”

__________________________
*One Australian FoL member, Peter Riddell, was found guilty of kidnapping his infant son, forging his wife’s signature on a declaration of consent, and absconding to Japan with him in 1983. Japanese authorities simply deported him back to Oz, which subsequently voided his passport.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: PR to the Rescue

2011-05-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

With negative publicity and investigations against the Family International growing in leaps and bounds during the 1990s, the cult felt it necessary to take an extremely aggressive approach to their public relations. In the past, they deftly used media as a method of expanding the organization and controlling a flock spread around the globe. But now, they had to use their media and PR savvy for defending their faith.

As they say, a good offense is sometimes the best defense.

Their PR efforts began with the Pub Purges, the Family’s attempted destruction of the very literature that would give well-founded credence to all of the accusations made against it. When authorities raided a colony, what could be more damning than reading stories about Davidito, Techi, sex with grandma, little flirty fishes, and so on?

While the raids and consequent legal actions were occurring in Australia, South America and Europe, the Family went out of its way to establish a two-pronged message as fact: (1) if there were abuses in the past, they were done by individual members, and do not accurately reflect the teachings and policies of David Berg and the Family; and (2) the ongoing raids, the negative press and the statements of former members amounted to little more than religious persecution.

The first part of their message became easier after Berg’s death in 1994. In testimony before Lord Justice Alan Ward, Steven Kelly (aka Peter Amsterdam) apologized for the past abuse, saying:

The judgment refers in particular to ‘The Law of Love’ and ‘The Devil Hates Sex’, and we accept that as the author of ideas upon which some members acted to the harm of minors in 'The Family,' he [Berg] must bear responsibility for that harm. Maria, and all of us in World Services leadership, also feel the burden of responsibility [. . .] Further, in 1980 Father David’s statements in his discourse entitled ‘The Devil Hates Sex’ opened the door for sexual behaviour between adults and minors, such sanctioning being the direct cause of later abusive behaviour by some ‘Family’members at that time.

Since Berg was dead and free of consequence, the cult could now blame him for a lot of the past abuse. After all, he’s hardly a character who would garner sympathy.

As for the second prong in that PR fork, the cult understood that if they alone claimed religious persecution, the public would simply see it as a self-serving excuse. It would be nice if a group of experts not connected to the cult would make this claim on their behalf. Said experts could show that New Religious Movements (NRMs) were not dangerous, but rather misunderstood, and consequently targets of injustice. But where are you going to find such experts at the drop of a hat?

Fortunately for The Family, Rev. Dr. J. Gordon Melton, attached to the Religious Studies Department of University of California Santa Barbara, and Dr. James R. Lewis co-edited a 1994 volume titled Sex, Slander, and Salvation: Investigating the Family/Children of God, laying out the very nature of the public, political and legal persecution of The Family.

Dr. Stephen Kent, whose work I previously cited in this series, criticized the questionable research found in Sex, Slander, and Salvation by pointing to their sole reliance upon members and officers still in the cult, excluding testimony or evidence from previous members or even from disinterested observers. He characterized Drs. Melton and Lewis, as well as the other scholars participating in this project, as ‘media homes’: “Hand-picked individuals living in these well-funded facilities went through rehearsals about how to portray themselves and the group to media, scholars, and others who might scrutinize them.”

Both Drs. Melton and Lewis faced severe criticism in 1995 when they flew to Japan to declare the innocence of Aum Shinrikyo members and their leader Shoko Asahara, despite copious evidence that they were behind a sarin gas attack aboard a Tokyo subway that killed thirteen people. While one can forgive an expert for mistaking a guilty party for an innocent one--after all, presumption of innocence is part and parcel of American jurisprudence--what irked critics was that the researchers had a conflict of interest: they had received benefits and possibly money from the Aum Shinrikyo. As T.R. Reid wrote for the Washington Post:

The Americans held a pair of news conferences to suggest that the sect was innocent of criminal charges and was a victim of excessive police pressure....

One of the Americans, James Lewis, told a hostile and evidently incredulous roomful of Japanese reporters gathered at an Aum office Monday that the cult could not have produced the rare poison gas, sarin, used in both murder cases. He said the Americans had determined this from photos and documents provided by Aum….

The Americans [Lewis and Melton] said the sect had invited them to visit after they expressed concern to Aum's New York branch about religious freedom in Japan. They said their airfare, hotel bills and ‘basic expenses’ were paid by the cult.

Dr. Melton testified as an expert witness on behalf of the Family of Love in the previously mentioned British case brought by Mrs. T. and heard by Lord Justice Alan Ward. He also made videotapes on behalf of the Family. His bias seemed quite evident in an interview in which he declared that all ex-cult members lie:

To put it bluntly, hostile ex-members invariably shade the truth. They invariably blow out of proportion minor incidents and turn them into major incidents, and over a period of time their testimony almost always changes because each time they tell it they get the feedback of acceptance or rejection from those to whom they tell it, and hence it will be developed and merged into a different world view that they are adopting.

More damning than bias has been the accusation that Dr. Melton again had another conflict of interest when it came to the Family of Love. A 2000 IRS disclosure document posted on the now-defunct MovingOn.org site showed that the Family (under one of its myriad aliases, The Family Care Foundation) made a $10,000 donation to the International Religious Directory, a project Dr. Melton headed.

Rumors have surfaced that in the aftermath of the raids, the Church of Scientology offered assistance to the Family by giving them advice on legal and PR tactics. Whether that’s true or not, I cannot verify independently. But one thing is certain: The Family began to employ some of the Scientologists strategies. Just as Scientology has often used a very aggressive legal team to sue, and subsequently suppress dissenting voices, The Family dealt with the Argentinian raids by using legal pressure to impeach presiding Judge Roberto Marquevich from the case for partiality.

With respect to PR, the Scientologists seemed to have taken a cue from the Family of Love. In 2009, Dr. Lewis wrote a paean of the cult simply titled Scientology.

While a book and a very public retooling during the British hearing might seem like small potatoes in terms of affecting public perception of the Family International, the fact remains that these PR methods proved particularly successful. Among the first places feeling their effect were courtrooms.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: A Right, Honourable Judgment?

2011-05-27T04:52:00.000-07:00

Another legal action worthy of special attention began in 1992, when an unnamed British mother of a Family International Member, referred to in court documents only as ‘Mrs T.’, sued for custody of her grandchild. The case fell to the Right Hounourable Lord Justice Alan Ward. In an unusually thorough investigation into what on the surface seemed like a simple custody case, Lord Justice Ward solicited eyewitness testimony from people all over the world, including Berg’s granddaughter Merry. He also consulted with a number of psychiatrists and healthcare officials before hearing the case three years later. The hearing itself took over two months (seventy-five days). Ward’s finding, issued in a 295-page report, found that despite the vehement denials, the Children of God/Family of Love officers committed numerous transgressions. Among them, lying:

In ‘Deceivers yet True,’ June 1979, Berg seemed to countenance deceit and sometimes outright lies to accomplish God’s purpose….”

…I regret to find that in many instances [during these proceedings] there has been a lack of frankness and a failure to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth....

In particular, lying about their sexuality.

No doubt the pedant World Services would contend that the Family do not believe in ‘total promiscuity’ because it would no doubt be defined by The Family as sexual activity born of lust. But the Family do believe in sexual activity freely enjoyed by consenting parties who can convince themselves that they are each sacrificing the sanctity of their body in order ‘lovingly’ to satisfy a need of the other. In its way this is an example of dissembling the truth--deceiving yet true.

He especially chastised them for their mischaracterization of Flirty-Fishing:

I am quite satisfied that most of the women who engaged in this activity and the subsequent refinement of ESing, (which was finding men through escort agencies), did so in the belief that they were spreading God's word. But I am also totally satisfied that that was not Berg's only purpose. He and his organization had another and more sordid reason. They were procuring women to become common prostitutes. They were knowingly living in part on the earnings of prostitution. That was criminal activity. Their attempts to deny this must be dismissed as cant and hypocrisy. To deny that the girls were acting as prostitutes because 'we are not charging but we expect people to show their thanks and their appreciation and they ought to give more for love than if we charged them' is an unacceptable form of special pleading....

Lord Justice Ward also cited the doctrinal support of pedophilia and other illicit sex:

The meaning [of Mo Letters pertaining to sex] is perfectly clear. Berg advocates the enjoyment of this new freedom to engage in sexual activity with whomever one desires regardless of the age of that person or the closeness of the relationship to that person subject only to such restraint as is encapsulated in the admonition that the activity must be engaged in love and that is to say ‘without endangering anyone, or harming anyone, or infringing on anyone else’s freedoms and other rights,’ quoting from the original Law of Love....

He found the practice of FFing injurious to minors:

I also find it disturbing that The Family cannot see that the practice of FFing was harmful to minors. Such harms arose from these matters: -- (a) The children were exposed to explicit literature…; (c ) I am satisfied that the ‘Jesus Babies’ [kids conceived out of ff-ing] suffer from the knowledge that their father is unknown to them and that they had no contact with their father....

Furthermore, he found The Story of Davidito and other cult literature bordering on child pornography, and powerful evidence of sexual abuse of children:

If that picture [i.e., the depiction of Ricky Rodriguez’ daily life] is accurate, then it gives some idea of the sexual ethos of the place--the couple engaging in sexual activity in the pool and the nanny and her boyfriend having sexual intercourse in the bed in the boy’s presence. It gets worse....

I have no doubt from the context of the book as a whole that what Sarah was required to kiss was his [Rodriguez’s] penis....

Taking the gloves off, Lord Justice Ward commented on a videotape of pedophilic activity taken from the Philippines and placed into evidence:

Video number 5 is the ‘Love Video.’ It shows young children dancing, two girls together, scenes of masturbation and sexual intercourse or simulated sexual intercourse, a testimony from a girl called Joan admitting that she masturbated....

Let’s stop it there, shall we?

As I said, Lord Justice Ward conducted a thorough investigation, and thus gave many more examples than this. But by now, I think it should be abundantly clear that he found numerous instances of legal infractions, flight from prosecution and, most important, abuse of children.

So, in the case of Mrs. T. v. the Family, whom do you think Lord Justice Ward found for, and why?

I’ll give you a hint: it followed an increasingly predictable pattern happening all over the world.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: Raids

2011-05-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

(Ahem!) As I was saying...

Around 15 May 1992, police took custody of 120 Family of Love children after a raid on six houses located on the outskirts of Sydney, New South Wales and Melbourne, Victoria.*

The Australian government had planned the raids since the spring of the previous year after consultation with child psychologists, and assistance from law enforcement officials in the United States and Spain. The cult had raised police suspicion in November when one colony completely vanished twenty-four hours after a visit from Community Services Victoria (CSV). Later investigation gave them reason to believe that children were living in slave-like conditions, frequently separated from their parents, and left to fend for themselves in the case of such (sometimes serious and chronic) ailments as cerebral palsy.

The Australian raid heralded, and in many ways typified a new era of legal prosecutions against the Family of Love, mostly due to its policies concerning children. Around the world, police and social service agencies saw something not quite right about a group of children who were always forced to smile, almost always transient, with little education and often separated from one or more parent. In these raids, police found incriminating cult literature, from Mo Letters on sexual policy to instructions to children not to tell strangers about the cult’s sexual beliefs lest they receive punishment.

Other raids followed in such places as Mexico, Spain and France, and elsewhere. But I would like to focus on two specific legal actions.

Figure 1. Children sleeping in a Buenos Aires compound

The first happened when, at 2:00am, police simultaneously raided ten family colonies in Buenos Aires (Argentina) on 1 September 1993.

The raid had been a long time in coming. In 1987, member Ruth Frouman fell ill to breast cancer. The Family of Love considered her affliction a “Biblical punishment,“ and consequently excommunicated her. Frouman wanted to leave with her children, then in Buenos Aires, but the cult refused to let them go. After her death in 1991, Frouman’s relatives pressed the case. Finally Judge Julio Campora ordered the children to appear before his court. But the Family of Love had been dissing court dates since the 1970s, as New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz noted in his investigation of them. So, when they didn’t appear this time, Argentina authorities took 137 kids into protective custody, and arrested ninety-eight adults in the process.

It didn’t take more than superficial glance, even at that ungodly hour, to affirm the authorities’ suspicions that the children were mistreated. They found the children sleeping in cramped conditions (Fig. 1). But what shocked the cops more than anything else was the children’s demeanor. As chief investigator, Commissioner Juan Carlos Rebello, told the Sunday Times:

They seemed like Martians, autistic. They were living in compartmentalized cells and answered questions like automatons. Whenever one of them tried to say something, another would look at him and he would fall silent, terrified.

Moreover, he found specimens of the Family’s DO and DFO literature, including those related to childhood sexuality. There was also a mountain of eyewitness testimony from former members, who could honestly say that they were separated from their kids. Even more interesting: the presiding jurist, Judge Roberto Marquevich, disclosed to the press that police had seized a videotape of a man having sex with his prepubescent daughter, along with a cache of weapons.

This particular case intrigued conspiracy researcher Alex Constantine, for it came almost two months before the death of River Phoenix. He felt that these two events were connected. Perhaps, Argentinian prosecutors would request his testimony. After all, he was famous, and had admitted, in the aforementioned Details article, his own indoctrination into sex at the age of four. It’s not as though he could go back and contradict public statements he had given earlier. For this reason, Constantine considered the notion that someone might have taken a hit out on Phoenix.

I’ll table my own feelings about Constantine's speculation for a second. But to give you a preview, assassination wouldn’t be my first guess (or my second, for that matter).

In short, it’s not Constantine’s most compelling argument as it relates to the Family. Nevertheless, the second part of Constantine’s hypothesis does merit serious attention. Namely the state of the investigation itself. You see, despite copious evidence of child abuse, and despite the painstaking six-year investigation that led to the raids, Commissioner Rebello had legitimate cause to worry that justice would not prevail.

____________________

*The exact number of children taken differ from source to source. I’m going with the low end. Other figures claim 121, 128, or other figures.

Pardon the Interruption, but…

2011-04-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

…meatspace concerns have the lion’s share of my attention right now. I’ll be back in cyberspace shortly. Although I may be a bit slow getting to your pages, I will check in from time to time.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: Neither Rest nor Relaxation

2011-04-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

A number of things began to come to a head for the Children of God as 1977 came to a close. Berg had had it with the intramural squabbles among his assistant leaders, who were beginning to rival him in authority. Claiming that they had become “too dictatorial,” and chastising them for dragging their feet on such things as FF-ing and other sexual policies, David Berg fired his top 300 officers (known collectively as 'The Chain'), and on 18 February 1978 rechristened the cult ’The Family of Love.’ Berg referred to the change as Reorganization Nationalization Revolution (RNR). A month later, Berg clarified the nature and scope of the changes in a Mo Letter titled “Happy Rebirthday--RNR Rules!” (DO, February 1978). Among other things, he instructed:

TRY TO GET AWAY FROM BEING CALLED THE 'CHILDREN OF GOD' where the name is not helpful nor legally necessary….

AS OF REBIRTHDAY, FEB. 18, THE CHAIN’s [the 300 leaders directly under Berg] FIRED and need to find new jobs….

EACH HOME SHOULD HAVE AN IMMEDIATE NEW ELECTION or reelection of local Servants no later than February 18.…

EACH LITNESSER WILL NOW BUY HIS LIT….

ALL LIT CASH IN ADVANCE--NO CREDIT!….

FFERS NO LONGER NEED FISHERMEN, ONLY FISHERWOMEN! An experienced girl FFer with each trainee group or group of trainees--Then the Fish will pay all the bills! Don’t tell me you can’t afford to FF!--You can’t afford not to!--Read the Book of Ruth!

NO MINIMUM AGE FOR FFERS!--unless sex is involved!--Then they must be of legal age for sexual involvement, usually at least 21 to 23, depending on the state or country. Watch out!….

PREGNANCIES FROM SEX OR FFING need no longer be considered as obligations to marry as before. Some have felt free to help each other for fear it might require marriage if pregnancy occurs. That’s optional….

OUR CHILDREN BELONG TO THE FAMILY and to all of us, and we are all their parents and they are all our children, so no “unwed” mother need fear for herself nor her children. Several of our children call every adult in the Home ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’, and that’s as it should be….[emphasis original]

The above new rules clarified Berg’s vision to his membership. Whereas males participated in FF-ing before RNR, he intended this practice almost exclusively for females. Moreover, he wanted children to engage in the practice. Although he forbids actual “sex” in flirty fishing, from the context of this and other cult literature one has to interpret that word as actual intercourse (as opposed to oral sex and masturbation--after all, by rules, the group considered only these three activities as FF-ing). In effect, though, we see Berg taking more direct control over the group by eliminating self-willed middlemen (or middlepersons).

Berg also wanted to distance the group’s identity from the negative publicity it had so far accrued under the name Children of God. From here on out, when possible, they were to be known as the Family of Love.

Like trying to grip a handful of water better by making a fist, Berg’s attempt to assert greater authority in many respects caused him to lose parts of his flock. Many members had begun to leave on their own, if they weren’t already excommunicated. Their reasons varied, of course. We can guess that some of the first generation simply missed living a “normal system” life. Many, however, cited specific aspects for leaving. Some parents hated the separation from their biological offspring, whom the cult said belonged not to them but to leadership. Others couldn’t stomach Flirty-Fishing and other sexual policies of the group. A number of parents also began to hear rumors about the sexualization of the young, and feared that their own kids were subjected to abuse.

Then still, others objected to the strict enforcement of tithing. Berg demanded that everyone give 10% of their income before taxes. In some countries, the tax base for even modest incomes was 50%. Say if a couple, through busking, litnessing and ff-ing scraped together $10,000 for the year--a decent, livable wage for the 1970s--and had to pay 50% in taxes (or $5,000) on top of a tithe ($1,000), then living on $4,000 a year each could pose quite a challenge. Of course, in countries with high tax rates, they could enjoy the benefits of the national infrastructure and social services. Then again, if the cult decided to then move them to another place with a lower tax base, and fewer services, then they’d be SOL.

Moreover, because of legal pressures, Berg saw the advantages of not looking so much like a cult in various countries (especially, in the US). One way to do this would be to make homes more nuclear. Of course, if families lived on their own, they might become less inclined to tithe. Berg must have sensed this, for in 1979 he reformed the tithing policy, allowing for family units living by themselves in the “outside world” to determine the amount they could afford to give. Each family had to apprise the group of their income monthly using an Independent Report Form. Obviously thinking that a little bit of revenue from these folks beat nothing at all, Berg nevertheless continued to give IRF’ers the hard sell about the benefits of actually tithing. In a Mo Letter titled “IRFERS BEWARE” (DFO, published March 1980), Berg blamed a female follower for her own rape and murder on the grounds that she would have been protected had she (1) consented to the rape and (2) paid a full tithe:

THEY OBVIOUSLY WEREN’T WHOLE-HEARTED OR TOTALLY SOLD OUT FOR THE LORD, or he could at least have been tithing. [He] had a good job, but was only an IRFer, not a tither. If they had at least been tithing or serving the Lord fulltime, they would have been more in the will of God, you know that. But obviously they’d taken an apartment near her relatives & gone back to System work & were only IRFing, only sending very little a month for the Lord’s work….

I’M SO CONVINCED OF THE JUSTICE & FAIRNESS & GOODNESS & MERCY & LOVE OF GOD, that I know good & well that a thing like that will not happen unless there’s mighty good reason for it! [emphasis original]

The more negative publicity came the cult’s way during the 1980s, the more they engaged in public relations to halt what they perceived as so much religious persecution. They publicly made statements ending ff-ing and prohibiting child sexual abuse. While they stressed that these were minor incidents from the past, we have good evidence (in terms of witness testimony, the cult’s own publications, videotapes and photographs) that both activities occurred after their supposed termination in 1987.

The 1990s brought turmoil to group leadership, as law enforcement agencies around the world exhausted their tolerance for the CoG/FoL. Someone would have to pay the consequences for the wanton exploitation of women as semen receptacles and surrogate mothers. Someone would have to pay the consequences for the flagrant violation of law that existed as cult dogma for the previous two decades. Someone would also have to pay the consequences for systematically abusing children through violence, sex and/or a combination of both.

One person not paying any consequences at all was one David Moses Berg. He died peacefully on 1 October 1994 in Costa da Caparica, Almada (Portugal), never so much as spending a day in court (much less a minute in prison) for the cult’s criminal activities.

After his death, Berg’s lover, Karen Zerby, assumed leadership of the cult, along with her leader-approved boyfriend, Steven Kelly (left). Under the alias Peter Amsterdam, Kelly took over Michael Sweeny’s position as Berg’s second-in-command after Michael left the cult in 1979.

As its leaders, Zerby and Kelly would have to shepherd the cult through some rather turbulent times, as all the deeds of their founder would come back to haunt the cult, while their own past actions would exact their karma personally upon them.

The Loving Children of an Ungodly Father: I Fought the Law and…I Won!

2011-04-12T07:16:00.000-07:00

Parents of Children of God members began to organize early on in the 1970s, and in 1973 finally got New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to ask then-State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz to investigate the “extent of the various activities of the organization known as Children of God as its activities affect the public peace and safety.”*

The Lefkowitz report noted a number of suspicious activities, some prosecutable (e.g., kidnapping, tax fraud), some not (e.g., brainwashing--a legal activity, at least in 1974 New York). They had a number of witnesses, including fourteen ex-members, thirty-four parents, six members who responded to subpoena, and a number of people who had direct contact with the group. They also had documentary evidence in the form of films, Mo Letters, and other cult publications. The problems they encountered stemmed from the lack of cooperation with anyone associated with the cult, and the group’s ability to move key witnesses in and out of the country.

David Berg made clear early on, in various publications and sermons, that the CoG would not recognize any legal authorities. He practiced what he preached almost immediately. In September of 1969, after police arrested twenty of their numbers during anti-war protests, the cult put up $34,000+ dollars in bail to secure their release. They then spirited them away to undisclosed locations. Because police could not locate the offenders (among them Berg’s sons Jonathan and Paul), the only thing they could do was keep the bail money and try them in abstentia.

The CoG would come to rely upon this tactic quite a bit in the future, especially after the cult went international. If US authorities wanted to investigate or question a cult member, the cult could quickly spirit her or him away to a distant location, most likely in another country. If authorities tracked them down to a specific colony/compound, other members could stall them, saying something like “We don‘t know who you‘re talking about. We never heard that name [which was quite possible, since everyone in the cult had an alias],“ or simply “We don‘t know where she/he is.” Meanwhile, the targeted person had ample time to escape from the back. And Berg felt quite justified using the stall-and-evade ruse, as he noted in a Mo Letter titled “Public Relations” (DO, 24 November 1971):

YOU MUST NOT INTERFERE WITH AN OFFICER WHO COMES WITH A MENTAL WARRANT—or you're in legal trouble! You can ask to see the warrant, make sure who it's for, and while you're stalling, someone else can inform the disciple involved, who then has a perfect right to run out the back door if he wants to! A mental warrant is not a warrant for arrest for a crime—so if he's supposed to be so crazy, who would blame him for running! This procedure has been very successful on a number of occasions! The tricky one is where they get the disciple away from you first on a supposed visit, and produce the warrant and the officer later when they have him alone! He can still try to run if he wants to—and certainly no officer's going to shoot him for that!—The parent wouldn't let him! [emphasis original]

From 1971, Berg made himself quite scarce, despite the fact that supporters had a difficult time contacting him. As the 1974 New York State Attorney General’s Office report stated, when addressing the matter of trying to figure out the cult‘s net worth:

Because Berg and members of his Family have been residing in Europe for the past several years, further efforts to obtain evidence of their net worth have been abandoned as an exercise in futility. Testimony of a large contributor that he had travelled to Europe in order to meet Berg and was unable to do so because Berg was always ‘moving about’ and not available, caused him to become disenchanted and to devote himself to ‘doing everything possible to expose these people’ for the irreligious libertines they have become.

Among other things, the Lefkowitz report determined the means by which the cult got money, and how they kept up with as much of it as possible. As expected, they got money from members, from member parents, from selling Mo Letters on the street, and from local merchants. Interestingly, the AG’s Office also notes that as early as 1974, the cult had received substantial donations from “businessmen,” who had donated as much as $75,000 to the group after they “flattered” him. Note that this coincides with the advent of FF-ing in late-1973.

Getting money was one thing. Keeping it was another. The CoG incorporated in Texas as a religious organization, but the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) didn’t see them as one, and ordered them to pay their full share of taxes. That also disallowed deductions for people who donated money to them. Yet, the CoG still claimed to be a tax-exempt entity and registered charity when soliciting money. Technically, they weren’t lying. They had set up a subsidiary corporation, Youth for Truth, Incorporated (YTI). The IRS, unaware of YTI’s connection with the CoG, granted it tax-exempt charity status. Thus the CoG could launder all it’s money through YTI, and not pay a red cent in taxes.

In case you’re wondering, Lefkowitz sent a copy of this report to the IRS. Still, the CoG could have just as easily started another tax-exempt subsidiary.

Kidnapping became a serious issue within the cult, as disaffected members tried to leave, but found it difficult to do so without their children and/or spouses. Even if a parent went to court and won custody of a child, that didn’t mean the cult would comply with the order. A good example of this: Berg’s son Paul, and his daughter-in-law Sarah. After CoG members kept asking him about how to have sex with an expecting woman, Berg instructed Paul to demonstrate with Sarah, at the time over eight months pregnant. Paul said “Yes.” Sarah said “No.”

Of course, women weren’t really allowed to say no in the CoG. Paul forced her compliance by whacking her in the stomach with a two-by-four. This induced premature labor, which required the care of an outsider “system” hospital. Upon her release, cult members incarcerated her and the infant inside a trailer, outside of which they posted a guard. They also took her first child, Nathan, from her. When the guard left his station for an extended period of time, she escaped, with the baby, and walked over six miles to secure help. She obtained custody of Nathan in 1973, after Paul’s apparent suicide. But when she asked CoG attorneys to assist in returning him to her, they told her that the cult didn‘t know his whereabouts. By that time, of course, he could have been anywhere around the globe.

Even if an ex-member managed to escape with his/her kids, the cult would sometimes kidnap the young from the parent‘s residence. In 1976, Una McManus left with her two children. Although she had legal custody of them, her husband, then still in the cult, abducted the kids with the help of other CoG members. The kids were never returned to her, but instead grew up in the cult. Like Sarah Berg, she could practically do nothing as the cult shuffled her offspring from one country to the next, so that local leadership could repeatedly say, “We don’t know where they are.” McManus subsequently won a $1 mill. lawsuit against Berg and the CoG in 1979, partly because neither Berg nor any CoG representative showed up to contest it. Berg’s response?

She had joined the Family & claimed that it had harmed her irreparably, psychologically & blah blah, & she went to a System court & that stupid idiotic damn Satanic diabolical System judge awarded her the million dollars damages. Do you think I paid?--Of course not! They can't find me!--But I'd better never go to Ohio! ...

But just because I didn't show up in court to face this judge & this silly little girl who was suing me for a million dollars, the judge awarded her the decision & granted her the damages!--Which they'll never collect unless they can catch me, & then they won't collect it because I don't have it!--Ha!

In a nutshell, these examples demonstrated how authorities fared when investigating, charging or even trying to convict Berg and members of his group. Step one was to evade the law by stalling for time, escaping, and outright lying. Step two consisted of maintaining an aggressive horde of attorneys.

Some people have alleged that a Step 3 required pressure on authorities by important people acting as CoG patrons. Gov. Rockefeller’s investigation produced a report, but nothing else. A number of other investigations by the US Senate, as well as the states of California and Vermont, also failed to produce convictions, or even formal charges. But even if they wanted to arrest a CoG member for a crime, according to these authorities, there would probably not be a good chance of locating the individual(s), let alone bringing them to court and actually trying them.

Some believe that the investigations served only to mollify parents and concerned relatives of CoG members. Through FF-ing and other outreach ministries, the cult had found financial and legal support from very powerful people in government and media. As this particular story thread goes, the investigations were certainly half-hearted, with very little effort to follow through on them, or bring charges against the cult.

______________
*From the report submitted by Asst. Attorney General Herbert Wallenstein presented to Lefkowitz on 30 September 1974.