We all returned to the living room just as the “Exploring Chicago” logo came up on the screen. The show’s regular announcer said they had a special program for us tonight and turned the stage over to Beth Blacksin.
“Thank you, Dennis. In this special edition of ‘Exploring Chicago,’ we have the opportunity to follow up on the exciting revelations we heard earlier today, exclusively on Global Television, when a man who came here as a boy from war-torn Europe told us how therapist Rhea Wiell helped him recover memories he had buried alive for fifty years.”
She ran a few segments from Radbuka’s speech to the convention, followed by excerpts from her own interview with him.
“We’re going to follow up on today’s extraordinary story by talking to the therapist who worked with Paul Radbuka. Rhea Wiell has been having remarkable success—and started remarkable controversy, I might add—with her work in helping people get access to forgotten memories. Memories they’ve usually forgotten because the pain of remembering them is too great. We don’t bury happy memories so deep, do we, Rhea?”
The therapist had changed into a soft green outfit that suggested an Indian mystic. She nodded with a slight smile. “We don’t usually suppress memories of ice-cream sodas or romps on the beach with our friends. The memories we push away are the ones that threaten us in our core as individuals.”
“Also with us is Professor Arnold Praeger, the director of the Planted Memory Foundation.”
The professor was given due face time to say that we lived in an era that celebrated victims, which meant people needed to prove they had suffered more terribly than anyone else. “Such people seek out therapists who can validate their victimization. A small number of therapists have helped a large number of would-be victims remember the most shocking events: they begin recalling satanic rituals, sacrificing pets that never even existed, and so on. Many families have been terribly damaged by these planted memories.”
Rhea Wiell laughed softly. “I hope you are not going to suggest that any of my patients have recovered memories of satanic sacrifices, Arnold.”
“You’ve certainly encouraged some of them to demonize their parents, Rhea. They’ve ruined their parents’ lives by accusing them of the most heinous brutality—accusations which can’t be proved true in a court of law because the only witnesses to them are your patients’ imaginations.”
“You mean the only witness besides the parent who thought he was safe from ever being found out,” Wiell said, keeping her voice gentle as a contrast to Praeger’s sharp speech.
Praeger cut her off. “In the case of this man whose tape we just watched, the father is dead and can’t even be summoned to speak on his own behalf. We’re told about documents in code, but I wonder what key you used to break the code? And whether someone like me would get the same result if I looked at the documents.”
Wiell shook her head, smiling gently. “My patients’ privacy is sacrosanct, Arnold, you know that. These are Paul Radbuka’s documents. Whether anyone else can see them is his decision alone.”
Blacksin stepped in here to draw the conversation back to what recovered memories actually were. Wiell talked a little about post-traumatic stress disorder, explaining that there are a number of symptoms that people share after trauma, whether it’s from battle—as soldiers or civilians—or experiencing other fragmenting events, like sexual assault.
“Children who’ve been sexually abused, adults who’ve been tortured, soldiers who’ve endured battle, all share some common problems: depression, inability to sleep, inability to trust people around them or form close connections.”
“But people can be depressed and have sleep disorders without having been abused,” Praeger snapped. “When someone comes into my office complaining of those symptoms, I am very careful about forming an opinion of the root cause: I don’t immediately suggest he’s been tortured by Hutu terrorists. People are at their most dependent and vulnerable with psychotherapists. It is all too easy to suggest things to them which they come ardently to believe. We like to think that our memories are objective and accurate, but unfortunately, it’s very easy to create memories of events that never took place.”
He went on to summarize research on planted, or created, memories that showed how people were persuaded they had taken part in marches or demonstrations when there was objective evidence that they’d never been in the city where the demonstration was held.