32 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling and Informative, August 22, 2004
This review is from: Cult and Ritual Abuse: Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America
Revised Edition (Paperback)
This is a carefully researched and reasonable look at a very volatile topic. The so-called experts at the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (founded by parents whose daughter, Jennifer Freyd, claims they molested her) would much prefer that you don't read this book, which includes evidence that a founding member of the FMSF board, Ralph Underwager, is an advocate of pedophilia. As the author discovers, ritual abuse is often not an act of random sadism, but the deployment of a long-proven technology that uses trauma to create dissociative states and alternate identities for the purposes of mind control and physical enslavement. Apart from a brief mention of the discredited author Mike Warnke, this is a highly credible work that deserves close scrutiny; abuse survivors should be aware that the content could prove triggering for them. Be prepared for dismissive responses from people who should know better and refuse to review any evidence that contradicts their views when you tell them that you are reading this. This is a subject that inspires impassioned screeds and debasement instead of debate. There are varied reasons for this, but fear of discovery on the part of practitioners in high places is definitely one of the them. The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska is good book to read as a follow-up.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important and understated gem that may change the way you understand the world, June 19, 2009
This review is from: Cult and Ritual Abuse: Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America
Revised Edition (Paperback)
This book is an absolute gem, bobbing along in a sea of ignorance, sensationalism and dogma. Why? The authors have undertaken a secular, dis-impassioned and, while fundamentally speculative, nonetheless rigorous, empirical examination of a contemporary phenomena both wide-spread and misunderstood.
This book is hardly a confirmation of the 1980's satanic panic which was fueled through sensationalist television and which reflected the worldview of the exploding fundamentalist Christian movement at that time which also included comical fears of backward masked lyrics in equally comical heavy metal music and the rather magical idea that Ozzy Osbourne, who middle-America has since come to love via his family's reality tv show, was encouraging disenfranchised teenagers to kill themselves through his music.
The message of this book is infinitely more disturbing. The authors make a compelling and empirical case for the hypothesis that the formal traumatization of children within nearly every religious, occult and esoteric organization is common, cross-cultural and dates back, at least, to ancient Egypt. The purpose of such traumatization, they argue, is to influence the personalities of children to form in such a way as to create split, multiple personalities. While the contemporary diagnosis of multiple personality disorder has often been associated with a small handful of particularly sensational cases (ie Sybil or Eve), the authors make a compelling argument that this practice is more closely allied with states of what is called "possession" that occur in the shamanic cultures of the Inuit, the JuJu religions of parts of Africa, within Catholicism, etc. It should be noted that the authors are entirely secular and seem to believe that "possession" is basically equivalent to the common psychological phenomena called "dissociation." Before you freak out -- they don't believe in demons or the devil and most certainly not anyone's actual possession by either.
The belief systems and accompanying formal practices and the social processes which comprise this practice often occur closer to the executive level of these religions and organizations. So that, for example, while nearly all Freemasons are probably about as dangerous as your average little-car driving shriner, there are good reasons to believe that a highly secretive, closely-guarded group at the top of the organizational structure maintains the Masonic connection to historical Western occult institutions, such as the 17th Century British Hellfire Club, a gentleman's club once visited by our own Benjamin Franklin, which provided a venue for kinky sex and which is well-documented to have practiced the "black mass," an inverted and sexualized version of the Roman Catholic mass. Pause there for one moment -- ahem, Ben Franklin may have participated in a Black Mass. Open your mind a bit -- things aren't what they seem...
This phenomena, wherein an organization or religion has a public structure and presence that forms its ideological and spiritual core while having a smaller and often radically different belief system hidden at its higher levels, usually unknown to the majority of followers, enables the practice of Ritual Abuse to continue today.
One of the most interesting sections in the book makes the interesting case that some of Freud's most famous patients reported being ritually abused, and that Freud considered the reality of this possibility but may have rejected it because it proved too insidious. Had he lived through so much genocide during the decades after his death, in which normal people came to commit incredible evil against their innocent neighbors, in Germany and Rwanda among others, how might Freud have responded to these same reports?
All of which of course sounds like a tin-foil hatted Conspiracy Theory, right? Unfortunately not, despite a tiny handful of probably bad eggs in the hundred books which comprise their bibliography (ie Mike Warnke), the authors' research is impeccable and includes a large number of sources published by the world's top academic presses. It should be telling that some very vocal critics of the book have roundly dismissed it through ad-hom attacks of one or two such sources.
This is a very limited summary. I recommend the book highly and I encourage you to read it with a very open mind. I want you to consider the possibility that the authors are completely wrong, not because it is likely you will reach that conclusion; because the argument is more than strong enough to hold up to the incredibly simplistic, sloppy and plebian arguments made by a very vocal few who have attempted to convince the larger public that multiple personality does not exist, that psychotherapists are dangerous charlatans, that large-scale "false" memories are common and that the Satanic Panic of the 1980's explains away the sweeping and compelling case in favor of the existence of Ritual Abuse.
I have read tens of thousands of books in my lifetime but I say - if you are convinced of the books hyothesis, I guarantee that this book is among a small handful that may radically change your own worldview and leave you with many, many more questions than you had before you read it.
And that, is always a good thing.
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