Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Therapy
by Corydon Hammond, PhD, past President of the American
Society for Clinical Hypnosis:
I will suggest to you that these people [sceptics] are either,
one, naive and of limited clinical experience; two, have a kind
of naivete that people have of the Holocaust, or they're just
such intellectualizers and sceptics that they'll doubt everything;
or, three, they're cult people themselves. And I can
assure that there are people who are in that position . . .
There are people who are physicians, who are mental health
professionals, who are in the cults, who are raising transgenerational
cults ... I think the research is real clear: We
got three studies, one found 25 percent, one found 20 percent
of out-patient multiples [multiple personality disorders]
appear to be cult-abuse victims, and another on a specialized
in-patient unit found 50 percent.
In some of his statements, he seems to believe that satanic Nazi
mind control experiments have been performed by the CIA on
tens of thousands of unsuspecting American citizens. The overarching
motive, Hammond believes, is to 'create a satanic order
that will rule the world'.
In all three classes of 'recovered memories', there are specialists
- alien abduction specialists, satanic cult specialists, and specialists
in recalling repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. As is
common in mental health practice, patients select or are referred
to a therapist whose specialist seems relevant to their complaint.
In all three classes, the therapist helps to draw forth images of
events alleged to have occurred long ago (in some cases from
decades past); in all three, therapists are profoundly moved by the
unmistakably genuine agony of their patients; in all three, at least
some therapists are known to ask leading questions - which are
virtually orders by authority figures to suggestible patients insisting
that they remember (I almost wrote 'confess'); in all three,
there are networks of therapists who trade client histories and
therapeutic methods; in all three, practitioners feel the necessity
of defending their practice against more sceptical colleagues; in all
three, the iatrogenic hypothesis is given short shrift; in all three,
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