Dissociative Disorders, Satanic Cults, And Other Myths
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Just
as no one can accurately be classified as “mentally ill,” so
it would be equally erroneous to believe that anyone can be entirely sane
in the context of the world in which we find ourselves. “Madness” might
in fact be the ordinary condition of the average person in today’s
society, at least from the point of view of those who have freed themselves
from the collective insanity of our times. Such free thinkers, if they
attempt to share their point of view with others, naturally attract the
retribution of those who benefit from the perpetuation of society’s
crazy contradictions. Seth Farber says in Madness, Heresy, And The
Rumor Of Angels (1993), “An individual who awakes to the horror,
who wants to change the world, would inevitably feel a sense of mission,
a calling, as it were, to lead his fellow human beings forward. This is
inevitably interpreted by the mental health experts today as a sign that
he or she is ‘grandiose.’ His or her leadership claim
is invalidated by the guardians of the status quo, by the ‘mind police’.” Most,
if not all, people would not want to attract the attention of these “mind
police” and their men in white. It should come as no surprise
that so few people feel strong enough to denounce our society and
way of life as insane. Such an act of courage could have grave consequences.
Living
a lie, however, can be traumatic for a thinking, feeling individual. Those
who awaken to the horrors of modern life will naturally learn to dissociate
themselves from unpleasant aspects of their existence. As we mentioned
before, the dissociation reflex creates gaps in our awareness. However,
dissociation also has the affect of creating something in the mind that
could be called a separate, unconscious personality. This unconscious person “sees” everything
that our conscious minds omit from the record that we keep of everyday
experience. Like Dr. Jekyll, we may steadfastly deny the existence of this
Hyde who must endure all of the horrors which our conscious mind refuses
to acknowledge. Nevertheless, we all have unconscious as well as conscious
habits, thoughts, and reflexes. Why not unconscious personalities or even “characters” as
well? On the pervasive nature of the split personality Martha Stout
in The
Myth Of Sanity (2001) tells us that, “In our world, our usual
everyday world, a significant portion of the general population is composed
of switchers, people whose personal histories include severe trauma, underestimated
abuse or some other grim situation that has taken them beyond simple dissociative
absences, into the realm of dissociative identity disorder. That we do
not commonly understand this fact is due mostly to a natural, safety—seeking
wish not to see, along with a mistaken cultural belief that all people
with dissociative identity disorder openly call themselves by dozens of
different names, and tend to be housed in locked wards.” As we learned
in the previous section, terms like, “dissociative identity disorder” (DID)
are loaded metaphors because they attempt to confer disease status onto
states of mind. A better term would be “split personality,” since
everyone can sometimes act out of character. Some are just better at hiding
their “Hydes” than others.
Martha
Stout explains in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) how the split
personality phenomenon is a survival mechanism that the mind uses
to deal with extreme forms of trauma: “People with DID, acknowledged or not, have usually
survived the unsurvivable—whether they remember it or not. They did
not fail to thrive and so perish in childhood, as one might reasonably
have expected, nor did they commit suicide in adolescence, another bitterly
common result. No, they divided themselves, and they survived; and the
fact that they survived, and in many cases survived well, probably means
that as a group they tend to be, by their original nature, people who have
exceptional gifts.” By virtue of having survived the horrors
of life in the 20th century, we all must possess such gifts. Lest
our readers doubt that they themselves might not be the only person
living inside their own minds, let us quote the definition of DID
as provided by Martha Stout in The
Myth Of Sanity (2001): “In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders IV, ‘dissociative identity disorder’ (diagnosis
number 300.14) is defined as the presence of two or more distinct identities
or ego states, ‘each with its own relatively enduring pattern of
perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self,’ in
an individual for who at least two of these ego states recurrently
take control of behavior.” Note the chilling detail
that a memory lapse also occurs when a person switches from one
ego state to another. Thus, our conscious minds may not be aware
of the time periods in which the “other,” primarily
unconscious, personality takes over.
Individuals
diagnosed with DID exhibit obvious signs of switching ego states.
The rest of us may be capable of hiding the existence of our alter
egos from ourselves as well as from others. The split personality phenomenon
may even explain the origin of the phrase, “The Devil made me
do it.” Anyone who has ever momentarily “lost control” or
acted without thinking, as a reflex, knows the meaning of this phrase
on some level. The “Devil” in the saying really represents
our own unconscious selves, the part of ourselves that our conscious
egos repress and deny but which comes out anyway, often with irresistible
force. The implications of this idea lead us to the next pitfall on
our list: “Satanic
Cult” stories.
On
the subject of demonic possession, Martha Stout says in The Myth Of
Sanity (2001) that, “When religious exorcisms are performed
upon those believed to have been possessed by Satan, these rites almost
certainly involve individuals with DID, perhaps primarily so.” Here
the link between accusations of “witchcraft” and diagnoses
of “insanity” becomes quite a bit more substantial. Medical
historian Gregory Zilboorg unwittingly reveals “mental illness” to
be a hobgoblin of the same order as “witchcraft” when
he writes (as quoted in The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974)): “Not all
accused of being witches and sorcerers were mentally sick, but almost all
mentally sick were considered witches, or sorcerers, or bewitched.” In
other words, the idea of mental sickness has now taken the place
of witchcraft hysteria. Psychiatrists have replaced priests of the
Holy Inquisition, and drugs have replaced exorcisms (at least in
most cases), but the basic principle remains the same. Whether we
call them witches or nut cases, the labels are little more than an
excuse to persecute those who exhibit unacceptable behavior in the
society they inhabit.
The term “Satanist,” in the mouths of frightened parents and
vindictive agents of the legal system, falls into the “witch” category
as well. After all, weren’t witches in the Middle Ages supposed to
have made pacts with Satan? Just as there may have indeed been people who
really did practice witchcraft in past centuries, so there exist people
today who claim the title of “Satanist” for themselves, or
who engage in “Satanic” practices (with or without advertising
the fact.) However, most self-styled Satanists simply adhere to an unpopular
philosophy of life or spiritual path. Belief in such a philosophy does
not make one a criminal. Conversely, a person doesn’t need
to be a Satanist in order to commit crimes. Nevertheless, those accused
of certain crimes tend to be slandered as devil worshippers, perhaps
as a way of making false accusations stick.
Child molestation
may be most common crime attributed to Satanists, or even more hysterically,
to “Satanic Cults.” Is the idea of
baby killing, blood drinking cults really necessary to explain the crime
of molestation? We read in Jeffrey S. Victor’s book Satanic Panic (1993), “There
is abundant research information about the sexual molestation of children
by adults. Police officers and child protection workers need to be guided
by that body of research, rather than by the rumors and fabrications presented
at police conferences on Satanic cult crime.” As the relatively
recent scandals concerning Catholic priests who molested children
in their charge ought to demonstrate, religion and morality do not
necessarily coincide.
Today’s
popular belief in covens of rabid devil worshippers who victimize
the innocent and unwilling may have originated, at least partly, in
the delusional stories told by individuals undergoing psychiatric drug
treatment and therapy. Jeffrey S. Victor explains in Satanic Panic (1993), “The
stories of Satanic cult torture told by people suffering from Multiple
Personality Disorder appear to be manifestations of their deep psychological
problems. The fact that many psychotherapists believe the stories, including
some who are eminent psychiatrists, is another example of therapists being
seduced and deceived by the fantasies of their disturbed patients.” The “cult
survivor” fantasies make for sensational headline news, garner attention
for mental patients as well as therapists, and provide justification for
the ever expanding powers of law enforcement officers. But doesn’t
it seem ironic that so many allegedly sane, upstanding members of
society believe the stories told by people who have been judged to
be mentally incompetent and are most likely being treated with psychiatric
drugs?
This
does not mean that ritual and cult abuse does not take place, for
it does. Children exposed to this sort of abuse naturally end up psychologically
damaged. The trouble is that once they are adults and have retrieved
these memories, they are disjointed and vague, so there is no real
weight that can be attached to these claims, especially because the
person claiming them is psychologically disadvantaged because of them.
Therefore ritualistic abuse remains a vague and shadowy category that
most people simply cannot fathom or take seriously.
If
you find yourself working with someone who claims a history of ritual abuse,
realize that sometimes these may be past life memories that are “bleeding
through” into the present lifetime. Many times this is the
case. Ritual abuse was far more prominent in the eras of the past
than it is now, and for some these wounds have carried over to this
life for healing and processing. In fact, many terrors of past lives
carry over into this one and require the attention of the client
and the spiritual counselor, so if you find yourself working with
these sorts traumas, try past life regression sessions and work with
them from that angle.
Here
I must insert a small anecdote from David Sakheim in Out Of Darkness (1992)
that draws a striking parallel between the ethics of 20th century
Satanism and the solipsistic errors of New Age dogma that we mentioned
previously: “It
is easy to trace an intellectual connection between La Vey, who popularized
Satanism as a sort of gestalt spiritual assertiveness training, and some
of the ideas of the human potential movement. The idea, popularized by
Esalen founder Will Shatz and later by Werner Erhard, that there were no
victims, that all people place themselves in whatever position they find
themselves, and therefore are ultimately responsible for whatever happens
to them, including victimization by others, was an outgrowth of the Human
Potential Movement. As Social Darwinism provided the intellectual support
for the robber barons of the 1900’s, so this notion provided the
intellectual support for the yuppies of the late 1970’s and early
1980’s.” Vestiges of this social “survival of the fittest” ideology
can undermine a healer’s ability to empathize with those who have
been harmed by negative experiences. As healers, we must curb the tendency
to blame the victim that our predatory, profit driven society has practically
hard-wired into the majority of its “successful” and “well-adjusted” members.
Acceptance
of a sick way of life and identification with the authority figures who
maintain the insanity of the status quo can make us crazy, or worse yet,
into someone who, like a corrupt psychiatrist, inflicts harm on others
under the protection of society’s laws. Though they would
probably not be accused of the crime of being “mentally ill,” oppressors
derive a perverse pleasure from “morally justifiable” cruelty.
Author Robert Lynd writes (as quoted in Satanic Panic (1993)): “There
is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is
an evildoer.” And as psychiatrist R.D. Laing once wrote (as quoted
in Madness, Heresy And The Rumor Of Angels (1993)): “Social
adaptation to a dysfunctional society may be very dangerous.” When
in doubt, don’t do it. The success of your healing process and
the effectiveness of your efforts to heal others may depend on your
ability to resist social corruption.