Don shook her hand, unembarrassed, and introduced both of us. “If you and I decide to work together, Vic may help with some of the background checking.”
Wiell stood back to let us pass in front of her into her office. It, too, was designed to put us at ease, with a reclining chair, a couch, and her own office chair all covered in soft green. Her diplomas hung behind her desk: the MSW from the Jane Addams School of Social Work, a certificate from the American Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, and her Illinois license as a psychiatric social worker.
I perched on the edge of the recliner while Don took the couch. Wiell sat in her office chair, her hands loosely crossed in her lap. She looked like Jean Simmons in Elmer Gantry.
“When we saw you on Channel Thirteen the other night, I immediately realized you had a very powerful story to tell, you and Paul Radbuka,” Don said. “You must have thought about putting it into a book before I called, hadn’t you?”
Wiell smiled faintly. “Of course I’ve wanted to: if you saw the whole program, then you’re aware that my work is—misunderstood—in a number of circles. A book validating the recovery of blocked trauma would be enormously useful. And Paul Radbuka’s story would be unusual enough—powerful enough—to force people to pay serious attention to the issue.”
Don leaned forward, chin on his clasped hands. “I’m new to the subject—my first exposure came two nights ago. I’ve been cramming hard, reading a manual on hypnotic suggestion, looking at articles about you, but I’m definitely not up to speed.”
She nodded. “Hypnosis is only one part of a total therapeutic approach, and it’s controversial because it isn’t understood very well. The field of memory, what we remember, how we remember, and maybe most interestingly why we remember—none of that is really known right now. The research seems exciting to me, but I’m not a scientist and I don’t pretend to have the time to follow experimental work in depth.”
“Would your book focus exclusively on Paul Radbuka?” I asked.
“Since Don—I hope you don’t mind my using your first name?—Don called yesterday, I’ve been thinking it over; I believe I should use some other case histories, as well, to show that my work with Paul isn’t—well, the kind of fly-by-night treatment that Planted Memory therapists like to claim.”
“What do you see as the book’s central point?” Don patted his jacket pocket reflexively, then pulled out a pen in lieu of his half-smoked cigarette.
“To show that our memories are reliable. To show the difference between planted memories and genuine ones. I began going through my patient files last night after I finished work and found several people whose histories would make this point quite strongly. Three had complete amnesia about their childhoods when they started therapy. One had partial memories, and two had what they thought were continuous memories, although therapy unlocked new insights for them. In some ways it’s most exciting to uncover memories for someone who has amnesia, but the harder work is verifying, filling in gaps for people who have some recall.”
Don interrupted to ask if there was some way to verify memories that were uncovered in treatment. I expected Wiell to become defensive, but she responded quite calmly.
“That’s why I earmarked these particular cases. For each of them there is at least one other person, a witness to their childhood, who can corroborate what came up in here. For some it’s a brother or sister. In one case it’s a social worker; for two, there are primary-school teachers.”
“We’d have to get written permission.” Don was making notes. “For the patients and for their verifiers. Witnesses.”
She nodded again. “Of course their real identities would be carefully concealed, not just to protect themselves but to protect family members and colleagues who could be harmed by such narratives. But, yes, we’ll get written permission.”
“Are these other patients also Holocaust survivors?” I ventured.
“Helping Paul was an incredible privilege.” A smile lit her face with a kind of ecstatic joy, so intense, so personal, that I instinctively shrank back on the recliner away from her. “Most of my clients are dealing with terrible traumas, to be sure, but within the context of this culture. To get Paul to that point, to the point of being a little boy speaking broken German with his helpless playmates in a concentration camp, was the most powerful experience of my life. I don’t even know how we can do it justice in print.” She looked at her hands, adding in a choked voice, “I think he’s recently recovered a fragment of memory of witnessing his mother’s death.”
“I’ll do my best for you,” Don muttered. He, too, had shifted away from her.