How we know false memories exist (and no, it's not because the FMSF says so!)
Often when someone tries to debunk alter programming conspiracy theories, someone will respond saying that it’s been disproven that therapists can implant false memories, and that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was full of bad actors who wanted to cover up real abuse.
Personally, I’ve never really relied on the work of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, because I’ve never felt the need to. I associate with many people in mystical and occult communities, some of whom earnestly believe they have past life memories, some of which are demonstrably non-factual. After you encounter enough people who sincerely believe they lived in places that never existed, fought wars that never happened, and followed religions that didn’t exist, “not all memories reflect factual events” just becomes common sense.
One of the easiest ways to demonstrate non-factual memories is to look at the ancient astronaut hypothesis and the New Age beliefs that incorporate it, then look at the people who believe they have past life memories that confirm these things. This post by historian Spencer McDaniel explains the origins of the ancient astronaut hypothesis, and I recommend that you read it.
If you didn’t read it, here’s the important thing to know right now: Some people believe reptilian aliens have been controlling the world since ancient times. However, the “evidence” that allegedly supports this has been cherry picked, distorted, and misrepresented. Furthermore, the conspiracy theories about reptilian aliens are based on antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Now, here are a few examples of people reporting past life memories:
I've collected more examples of impossible past life memories over here. (Many of the ones in this post describe extremely violent acts.)
Clearly, the things they describe could not have happened, and these people are mistaken in their belief that they represent factual events.
These people believe they have experienced real past life memories because they have been taught poor epistemology by people who position themselves as experts. Supposedly, recalling information that you have no conscious recollection of learning in this life is a sign you have had a past life. However, a study on those who believe in past lives suggests that many who believe they have past lives simply forgot where they initially learned certain information.
Some claim that true past life memories will be more vivid or emotionally charged than ordinary dreams or random thoughts. On the surface this might seem reasonable, but in truth a link between vividness/emotionality and factuality has never been established. And when we can find people having vivid, emotionally-charged dreams about fighting reptilians, we can see for ourselves that it’s not actually in indicator of factuality.
There are many well-evidenced reasons a person can have upsetting dreams or daytime thoughts. Stress and trauma can contribute to nightmares and cause or worsen intrusive thoughts. Dreams and intrusive thoughts can be informed by movies, books, news media, and things we’ve heard about. They can also exaggerate on things we’ve experienced. You can have a vivid and terrifying nightmare about being trapped in a falling Ferris wheel without ever having experienced that kind of thing yourself. You can vividly imagine severely injuring someone without ever having harmed a single person. Your brain can just think of things.
Deborah David, a woman who eventually realized the doctor treating her for alleged satanic ritual abuse was a quack, wrote on how her therapist essentially gaslit her:
Now a person asks you if you have seen a bear on a candy cane and you will probably say no, because you know you haven't seen such a thing in reality. But suppose this person insists you saw a bear on a candy cane. Suppose you are vulnerable at the time. Suppose the person insists this took place though you are questioning the reality of seeing a real bear on a candy cane. Suppose you are given an explanation (repression/dissociation/splitting etc.) as to why you do not remember seeing a bear on a candy cane. Suppose this is being told to you over and over again by someone you have put your trust in. Suppose you are thinking about it so much, constantly being told it did happen that you start to see bears and candy canes in your dreams, which become more and more strange and involved. Suppose along with a person telling you that indeed you did experience seeing a bear on a candy cane you are given material to read that tells you other people have also seen a bear on a candy cane and not remembered it. Suppose too, that you soon are meeting people who tell you of the bears they have seen on candy canes which they also did not know about until recently. Suppose you are told you have to recover seeing even more bears on candy canes so you will be well.
...
Well, you did experience seeing a bear on a candy cane in your minds eye of pictures, you have visualized it, it is there and now you believe it is memory, indeed it really took place. What is happening to your reality? Could you continue to distinguish reality from dreams, from visualizations, from fantasies, from what you were being told? In fact, what becomes of your reality, do you still have one?
...
You soon ask if you are crazy, could you be making it up, are you lying? And you are told, "you are not crazy" "you are not lying" they believe you and know you are not lying, they even tell you they know it happened and it is real. You are told, "you're not making it up, someone would not make up something like that" "your body feels the fear doesn't it, you can't make that up."
In another page describing her experiences, she wrote:
In the practice of "repressed memory therapy" it is perfectly correct to tell a patient they were abused even if they say, "No, I was not sexually abused." The therapists can then insist that it is true and the only reason being that I didn’t know it happened was because it was so terrible that I didn’t want to remember it. It is a practice where the things that I said which were not within the diagnosis and assumptions of the therapist are labeled as denial and being difficult. It then becomes the job of the therapist to insist that indeed the abuse took place and if I wanted to get well I would have to come out of denying the abuse happened and accept it as a fact. It is a practice where every time I would question the reality of such abuse taking place I was told to trust him for he knew it happened to me. I was told parts of me would continue to say it didn’t happened because these parts didn’t want to accept it.
…
I wasn’t told that the so called "recovered memories" during the "guided imagery" and relaxation sessions were nothing more than visualizations enlisted from suggestions and the therapists’ expectations. I wasn’t told anything but that these abuse scenarios in my mind’s eye were reality. And as I continued to question the reality of such "memories," I was always drawn back to believe in the therapist as he knew what was best for me.
Perhaps not every therapist attempting to treat SRA is as pushy or domineering as Deborah David’s former therapist, but nonetheless, any environment where the people who are supposed to know things are encouraging people to uncritically accept any disturbing image that comes into their mind as a factual memory is a very dangerous one indeed.
We can see that bad methodology goes back to the very beginning of the SRA recovered memory fad, where Dr. Lawrence Pazder pushed his patient Michelle Smith into “remembering” alleged ritual abuse from a Satanic cult. The documentary Satan Wants You (available on Tubi) gives it to us straight from the horses’ mouths.
In the office, Michelle Smith would go into a trance:
SMITH: "Actually, it's beyond hypnosis; it's a method that Michelle had devised to go deep into her depths."
INTERVIEWER: "How had you devised this technique yourself, Michelle?"
SMITH: "It just came about in the atmosphere of Doctor Pazder saying to me, 'just go where you have to go. I'll be there with you.' I could then shut my eyes and then through breathing very deeply, go way down inside. It felt very much like falling over backwards into the dark. And that's where I began to find the memories."
Eventually, Smith began realizing that her memories weren’t adding up. Here’s a recording of one of their sessions when she expressed doubt to Pazder:
SMITH: Do you mind if I hang on to you?
PAZDER: No, I don’t at all. Just see if you’re willing to let yourself go back to there.
SMITH: I don’t know why I keep remembering different things. When it comes like this it’s almost like I’m making it up. Is it still a memory? Is it still more memory even if it doesn’t fit in?
PAZDER: It may not fit in until later.
SMITH: I can’t tell what’s real anymore! I couldn’t tell what was real. I couldn’t tell what was real.
If you don’t know a lot about the history of SRA investigations and recovered memory therapy, it’s easy to dismiss Pazder as just some unethical guy. But the reality is that for a good while, Pazder was regarded as THE professional authority on the alleged reality of SRA and the way therapists should treat it. (It was Pazder who coined the term “satanic ritual abuse”!) Every therapist who believes that Project Monarch/alter programming is a real thing is downstream from Pazder, no exceptions.
Pazder and Smith’s claims have very famously been discredited. Thorough investigations were made and not a single thing could ever be found to substantiate it. In fact, it was just the opposite. For example, Michelle appears in her school yearbook looking completely healthy during the time she was supposedly being starved and brutalized by the cult.)
I recommend watching Satan Wants You if you possibly can. You can also read this article from Skeptical Inquirer, or search DuckDuckGo for "Michelle Remembers debunked" to learn more.
Now of course, many therapists who claim SRA and alter programming are real claim they didn’t do anything to push their patients toward certain outcomes, and that their patients had no prior exposure to anything that could have influenced their memories. But the reality is that what therapists claim and what actually happened are sometimes two very different things. The book Michelle Remembers leaves out a lot of information that would have created reasonable doubt; for example, it claims that Michelle suddenly speaking French in the therapist office can’t be explained non-supernaturally; but in reality, Smith had studied French in school and had become proficient enough to converse with her French-speaking grandfather.
Now, I am not trying to argue that people who believe themselves to be alter programming survivors haven’t been abused. If anything, I would guess that the majority of them have been abused in some way, and often quite severely. Many of the alleged symptoms of alter programming and many of the alleged kinds of programs and alters are very real symptoms of trauma. But – and I want to emphasize here – they are symptoms that are well-established to be associated with ordinary, non-ritualistic abuse. This is a case of seeing hoofprints and thinking unicorns.
What I am worried about is that people who have experienced severe abuse and are suffering very real trauma from it are being pulled into something that will make their trauma much, much worse. The anecdotal reports I have so far from people who came to realize that they were being misled indicates that this is exactly what's happening.
If you need further reassurance that Project Monarch and alter programming are nothing more than conspiracy theories, I suggest reading my post How Project Monarch fails the "Six Ways To Debunk Any Conspiracy Theory" sniff test. If you would like to learn more about the real origins of these ideas in general, you can see my masterpost.
Finally, I want to say that I really hate the term “false memory syndrome,” because it suggests that something pathological is happening there when it’s not necessarily so. There is no such mental illness as false memory syndrome. There is being wrong because you relied on bad epistemology, probably because you never learned good epistemology or because you met someone who convinced you to suppress your critical thinking skills.
