Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment

243 Pages·1995·12.1 MB·English

by  Colin Ross

Colin A. Ross, MD
mSqtanic
Rltual
Abuse
PRINCIPLES OF
TREATMENT
With an Afterward by Elizabeth F. Loftus
Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment
Colin A. Ross, MD
Afterword by Elizabeth F. Loftus
In recent years, the subject of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) has incited widespread
controversy, focused primarily on whether or not such abuse actually occurs.
Much like child sexual abuse, SRA was initially dismissed as an isolated or even
imaginary phenomenon. Although there is increasing evidence that ritual abuse
does take place, clinicians working with individual patients cannot be sure
whether they are dealing with fact or fantasy. Dr Colin Ross, an expert in the
treatment of dissociative disorders, has encountered more than three hundred
patients with memories of alleged Satanic ritual abuse. In this book, he provides
a well-documented discussion of the psychological, social, and historical aspects
of SRA and presents principles and techniques for its clinical treatment.
Although Dr Ross has found no evidence of a widespread Satanic network,
he is open to the possibility that a certain percentage of his patients' memories
may be entirely or partially historically accurate. In treatment, he recommends
that the therapist adopt an attitude hovering between disbelief and credulous
entrapment.
Dr Ross has encountered memories of SRA primarily among people who suf-
fer from multiple personality disorder, and the principles of treatment he out-
lines here focus on such individuals. Treatment is described in terms of both
general principles and specific techniques, with case examples. Ross's recom-
mendation that the same interventions be used regardless of the percentage of
memories that are historically accurate bridges the gap between clinicians who
adopt a 'believer' stance and those who take a false-memory stance.
This is the most detailed and comprehensive account of SRA from a clinical
perspective available to date. As reports of SRA continue to escalate, it will be a
valuable resource for all practising therapists and psychiatrists.
DR COLIN ROSS is director of the Dissociative Disorders Unit at Charter Behav-
ioral Health System of Dallas and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at
Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He is the author of The Osiris Complex:
Case Studies in Multiple Personality Disorder, published in 1994 by University of
Toronto Press.
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COLIN A. ROSS, MD
Satanic Ritual Abuse:
Principles of Treatment
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1995
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-2857-8 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-7357-3 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ross, Colin, 1950-
Satanic ritual abuse
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-2857-8 (bound). ISBN 0-8020-7357-3 (pbk.)
1. Ritual abuse victims - Rehabilitation.
2. Multiple personality - Treatment. 3. Satanism -
Rituals. I. Title.
RC569.5.R59R681995 6i6.85'82 C95-93i425~3
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publish-
ing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.
Contents
PREFACE vii
Part I: The Historical and Social Background
1 Secret Societies throughout History 5
2 The Psychology and History of Satan 18
3 The Malleus Maleficarum and the Catholic Inquisition 34
4 Non-Satanic Cult Activity in North America 47
Part II: Satanic Cults Today
5 Five Levels of Satanism 61
6 Satanism and Multiple Personality Disorder 73
7 Alternative Hypotheses of Ritual Abuse 90
Part III: Therapy of Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivors
8 How to Recognize Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivors 103
9 General Principles of Survivor Therapy 119
10 Treatment Techniques for Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivors 145
Part IV: Society's Response to Satanism
11 Extremes of Skepticism and Denial 179
12 Future Directions 195
Afterword by Elizabeth F. Loftus, PhD, University of Washington 203
REFERENCES 211
INDEX 219IN
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Preface
Satanic ritual abuse was a topic unknown to most people in North
America as recently as ten years ago. Since then Satanic cults have been
the subject of countless media reports, of which about five hundred are
listed in a bibliography by Linda O. Blood entitled Satanism and Satan-
ism-Related Crime: A Resource Guide (1989). When I saw my first case of
apparent Satanic ritual abuse in 1986,1 had never read a book or article
on the topic; heard any mental-health professional mention such a case;
or been to a lecture, workshop, or seminar on the subject. Since then,
two academic collections of essays on Satanic ritual abuse have been
published (Richardson, Bromley, and Best, 1991; Sakheim and Devine,
1992), the Journal of Psychology and Theology has devoted a special 1992
issue to Satanism, the Journal of Psychohistory has devoted a special 1994
issue to cult abuse of children, and The New Yorker has published a major
two-part article on Satanism, in the 17 and 24 May 1993 issues (Wright,
X993a/ i993b). Additionally, dozens of conferences and workshops deal-
ing with Satanic ritual abuse have been held throughout the United
States and Canada.
Personally, I have had clinical contact with about three hundred
cases of multiple personality disorder (MPD), now officially renamed
'dissociative identity disorder' (American Psychiatric Association,
1994), in which the person had memories of involvement in a destruc-
tive Satanic cult. In about eighty of these cases, I have had consider-
able direct involvement, as a therapist or attending physician, and in
the rest I have been a participant in consultation or in group therapy.
In none of these cases has the reality of the memories been objectively
verified, and in several of them collateral history has proven that
patient claims of Satanic ritual abuse were false. I did not seek verifica-
viii Preface
tion beyond the level of usual clinical history-taking because that is
not my role and because I have not had the available resources or
expertise. The patients cite the remoteness of the events in time, fear,
and lack of resources as the reasons for not pursuing objective verifica-
tion of their memories.
In order to understand this troublesome topic better, I began attending
workshops on Satanism and talking to colleagues; I also began to read
the available literature, and noticed that it had several peculiarities I had
never before encountered in my professional reading. For one thing, as is
evident from the references in this book, the literature on Satanic ritual
abuse comprises more books than journal articles. Usually, in the profes-
sional literature dealing with mental-health subject areas, the reverse is
true - articles far outnumber published books.
The second peculiarity I noticed, both at professional meetings and in
my reading, was an extreme polarization of opinion. Despite the dearth
of scientific or empirical literature, strongly worded views were
expressed at both ends of the continuum, which ranged between firm
belief in the reality of Satanic ritual abuse memories and skepticism
about the truth of any of those memories. The reality of Satanic ritual
abuse did not appear to be a subject of debate in any serious sense, and
seemed, rather, to involve believers and skeptics speaking from precon-
ceived, ideologically driven positions. Discussion focused on whether
such cults really exist, which is a reasonable starting-point, but had no
context and seemed to be conducted in a historical, anthropological,
clinical, and law-enforcement vacuum, with little or no organized data
to provide a foundation.
The books I read tended to fall into one of four categories: case-studies
(Feldman, 1993; Marron, 1988; Mayer, 1991; Smith and Pazder, 1980;
Spencer, 1989; Stratford, 1988; Terry, 1987; Warnke, 1972; Wright, 1994);
books written from a fundamentalist perspective (Brown, 1987; Bubeck,
1991; Cooper, 1990; Larson, 1989; Michaelson, 1989; Passantino and Pas-
santino, 1991; Schwarz and Empey, 1988) or a twelve-step perspective
(Ryder, 1992); and journalistic treatments (Blood, 1994; Hicks, 1991;
Johnston, 1989; Kahaner, 1988; Lyon, 1988).
Although these books contain a great deal of useful information, they
are limited in so far as they discuss a small number of cases from a sin-
gle-case perspective or tend to be contaminated by the ideological biases
of their authors. In none of this literature did I find a comprehensive
context for thinking about the problem of Satanism. Realizing that an
adequate discussion would have to be grounded in detailed knowledge
Preface ix
of the clinical reality of ritual abuse cases, I sought in vain for a compre-
hensive study of such cases. The case descriptions tended to be brief,
vague, or skewed by the biases of the authors, and none exhibited ade-
quate psychological depth.
Similarly, in searching for a book that placed Satanic ritual abuse in a
historical context and provided scholarly discussion of the history of
known destructive and human-sacrifice cults, and secret societies, I
found no single work that contained what I was looking for. Addition-
ally, I was unable to locate a history of Satan that brought theological
and cultural knowledge to bear on discussions of contemporary Satan-
ism. It seemed to me that several indispensable contexts were absent
from much of the discussion of Satanic ritual abuse, and that, without
these contexts, the ungrounded, unprofitable, and polarized debate was
likely to continue. Finally, and most important for my clinical work, no
sufficiently detailed discussion of how clinicians can treat Satanic ritual
abuse cases was available in the literature.
In deciding to write this book, I saw the necessity of correcting the
contextual deficiencies but was also aware that I am not qualified as a
theologian, historian, expert on non-Satanic cults, or anthropologist to
the degree that is required for the task. Dealing adequately with the
complex subject-matter in the first section of this book would require a
PhD in three or four different disciplines, an achievement far beyond the
grasp of any single individual. Nevertheless, background reading com-
pleted, I set out to write a book that would provide a context sufficient
for the clinician's needs. I try to do one main thing in this book: to estab-
lish that good clinical work requires a balanced perspective, free of the
limitations imposed by adherence to either end of the ideological contin-
uum. Such a perspective acknowledges that, while there is no evidence
of a widespread secret network of Satanic ritual abuse, it is possible that
a certain percentage of Satanic ritual abuse memories are historically
accurate, or contain accurate elements.
Within the limitations of our current knowledge, no one can measure
with any factual accuracy the extent of organized Satanism. It is my
opinion that many of the Satanic ritual abuse memories described by the
patients I treat are confabulated and comprise things that never actually
happened. However, I am cautious in this opinion because I cannot
know for sure that it is correct. I assume, for the sake of discussion, that
10 per cent of the content of such memories could be historically accu-
rate and based on distorted recall of childhood participation in small
Christian cults; small, isolated groups of Satanists; deviant elements of