Transing ChildrenTrans activists in academia: Study with "multiple flaws" corrected after it touted medical surgeries to the media. Updated findings now show no proof of benefit from gender reassignment surgery

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[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

edit2: I was vastly uninformed on this topic, sorry. This is probably a better article. https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/aaas04/freydpr/index.html

TLDR: People forgetting their childhood trauma for years is a real thing. Therapists mistakenly using hypnosis to have people "recover" memories they don't have, happened and was harmful but is STILL a debate within academia.

edit: I am reading this article on it, you might find it interesting as well.

Holy hell, this is disturbing.

https://psmag.com/.amp/social-justice/dangerous-idea-mental-health-93325

[original answer]

Well, I don't know what he means about "multiple personality"-- maybe Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which used to be referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder (DID), might be what he is referring to. There are a few psychologists who don't believe it exists, but I am not sure whether he is one of them.

But, about "repressed memories"-- there was supposedly a movement of therapists who tried to pressure their clients into believing that they had been sexually abused as children and had "repressed" their memories of it-- basically gaslighting people into believing they were sexually abused. Saying stuff like "All your problems are due to sexual abuse." tried to use techniques that were NOT scientifically proven to help clients "recover" memories. I do not know how common this was. I KNOW that at least one bad outcome of this was that some therapists were just like, "Anyone who comes out and says they were sexually abused, is making it up". But, tbh I have not done tons of reading on it and have been meaning to. If anyone else knows more I'd be curious to hear.

[–]artetolife 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I don't believe therapists were deliberately gaslighting their patients, they thought repressed memories were a real thing that could be uncovered with hypnosis and other techiques that are now debunked, because in reality people will dream up all kinds of bizarre shit under those conditions.

[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Ah okay, interesting. I think there are actually some therapists out there still using this stuff, though...

edit: using techniques that don't work, to be clear.

[–]artetolife 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Maybe, but back then there was also a moral panic over 'satanic ritual abuse' that fuelled that whole DID phenomenon and that doesn't exist anymore.

[–]haveanicedaytoo💗💜💙 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh god... I read "We Believe The Children" it has to be the best book on satanic panic. My favorite part was when the defense lawyers got the children to admit that actor Chuck Norris, the city attorney of LA, and the presiding judge also molested them.

https://www.amazon.com/We-Believe-Children-Moral-Panic/dp/1610392876

I highly recommend it!

EDIT - I was scrolling through my copy of the book just to verify some facts, and I'd forgotten how much content there is in here about the repressed memories fad of the 80's. This is a must-read for everybody. You will not believe the level of stupidity of these adults and the horrors these poor children ended up going through.

[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Well, DID still exists-- although in very small numbers. Several general-population surveys have put it at less than half a percent of the population.

Satanic ritual abuse though, yeah. That moral panic does not exist anymore.

[–]PassionateIntensity 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

There isn't very good evidence DID really exists. There are psychologists who believe it does and specialize in it, and there are psychologists who don't.

https://www.garygreenbergonline.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Psychiatric_Times_-_When_Psychiatry_Battled_the_Devil_-_2013-12-06.pdf

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/saving-normal/201401/multiple-personality-mental-disorder-myth-or-metaphor

The field doesn't seem to have changed much. Too many political or sensationalized fad diagnoses. It pains me to say that because so many people are legitimately mentally ill and need help, but get enabled or harmed more by psychiatry. Some of the same doctors like Diane Ehrensaft who never suffered any consequences for pushing Satan Panic are now transing toddlers.

[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There isn't very good evidence DID really exists. There are psychologists who believe it does and specialize in it, and there are psychologists who don't.

No, evidence indicates otherwise. DID exists. The first article you linked did not even claim that DID does not exist, it was talking about the Satanic ritual abuse movement and how Multiple Personality Disorder was overdiagnosed-- which indeed it was. Both the articles you linked are talking about the fad of DID-- the social contagion phenomenon, similar to that of the transgender one we're seeing now.

Evidence supporting the existence of DID:

  • DID patients can be reliably and validly diagnosed with structured and semistructured interviews, including the Structured Clinical Interview for Dissociative Disorders–Revised (SCID-D-R)54 and Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule (DDIS)55,56 (reviewed in Dorahy et al. [2014]).14 DID can also be diagnosed in clinical settings, where structured interviews may not be available or practical to use.57

  • DID patients are consistently identified in outpatient, inpatient, and community samples around the world. 12,37–45

  • DID patients can be differentiated from other psychiatric patients, healthy controls, and DID simulators in neurophysiological and psychological research.58–63

  • DID patients usually benefit from psychotherapy that addresses trauma and dissociation in accordance with expert consensus guidelines.64–66

source: https://journals.lww.com/hrpjournal/fulltext/2016/07000/separating_fact_from_fiction__an_empirical.2.aspx

DID is a rare disorder that arises only in individuals who have undergone severe and repeated trauma in early childhood. This is yet another parallel between DID and transgenderism: Pretenders may come and go, but just because pretenders may latch on to an easily-abused concept, does not necessarily mean that the concept itself is false. This is the same with transgenderism, too: Saying that DID isn't real because there was a fad where people faked having DID, is parallel to saying transsexualism isn't real because a bunch of people are faking being trans. (Of course, some people do think transsexualism is fake, but that's another discussion.)

Now-- whether or not the DID diagnosis would actually be better described as a subtype of another disorder, such as schizophrenia or BPD, has been up for debate in the field for a while. This paper compares DID patients to BPD patients, for example, and they have a lot of overlap, although a few interesting differences as well. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4579511/

I know it might seem like splitting hairs to debate this but this does actually exist and affects a tiny segment of the population. Like I said, there's been a handful of research articles that have surveyed the general population for DID, and found 0.5% on average or so. (Edit: I have links to these research papers as well, if you're curious, they're somewhere in my email.)

Some of the same doctors like Diane Ehrensaft who never suffered any consequences for pushing Satan Panic are now transing toddlers.

That is just. So beyond fucked up. Wow.

edit: spelling, added a couple words to clarify

edit2: Also, the second article did not provide evidence suggesting that DID does not exist, and is missing some factual information-- for example, MPD was reframed and altered but still continued as DID, and the article confusingly suggests that it "disappeared, to one day rise again". It did not disappear, but it started getting diagnosed WAY less.

[–]haveanicedaytoo💗💜💙 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The parts you crossed out are actually true, except that I don't believe it was a malicious case of therapists knowing this person hasn't been abused but is trying to convince the person anyway, it was more like they already believed the person was abused, so they were just trying to help the person realize it (which is of course bullshit because you are a therapist not a psychic, you can't just 'have a feeling' that someone was abused and then roll with it.)

Edit - and yeah thanks to this, for a while no one wanted to believe anyone with repressed abuse memories, there was a sense of 'they're all making it up,' and 'how could you not remember that?' It was a really sucky time for people who actually had repressed memories.

[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

except that I don't believe it was a malicious case

Yeah, that's why I edited it out, because that seems to be incorrect.

(which is of course bullshit because you are a therapist not a psychic, you can't just 'have a feeling' that someone was abused and then roll with it.)

Completely agree. There has been a lot of research demonstrating that therapists often conflate their # of years of experience, with their judgment capability. They are just as prone to mistaken heuristics and human biases as anyone.

yeah thanks to this, for a while no one wanted to believe anyone with repressed abuse memories, there was a sense of 'they're all making it up,' and 'how could you not remember that?' It was a really sucky time for people who actually had repressed memories.

Yeah that upsets me.