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become more and more dependent on receiving his approval through obedient behavior. In
this way, ego functions that interfere with group functions are attacked and diminished. The
cult member becomes child-like and suggestible. Therefore, in order to continue to feel good
the recruit must continually be locked into an idealizing transference the cult leader, which
never ends and never is interpreted.
It was understandable how anti-social and/or narcissistic cult leaders will use suggestion of
childhood sexual abuse as a technique for further separating cult members from their
parents. It was harder to understand how well-meaning therapists could suggest this to
their patients. The suspicion is that some therapists are not aware of how much influence
they have over their patients. Only a very small minority of therapists consciously and
deceptively employs some of the techniques used by cult leaders. However, there is a
continuum of influence and, although therapists do not have the degree of influence over
patients that cult leaders have over their followers, all therapists should recognize that their
behavior and attitudes do have some degree of influence on their patients. Before this
concept is developed further, an historical overview of recovered memories will be explored.
Historical Overview of Recovered Memories
In the late nineteenth century, while working with his first patients, who were displaying
hysterical symptoms, Freud suspected that the causative factors for these symptoms were
sexual seductions from early childhood. When his patients reported recovered memories of
childhood sexual seductions, he believed them without qualification (Freud, 1893-1895).
However, in analyzing his own dreams, investigating children‘s behavior, and in gaining an
appreciation of the power of transference, it became clear to Freud that human behavior
was much more complex than he had originally believed. Freud began to theorize that
memory could be influenced by unconscious sexual and aggressive fantasies. He noted that
hysterical symptoms, like dreams, represented fantasized wishes and conflicts about these
wishes rather than only traumatic memories. Symptoms were based on psychic reality
rather than simply objective reality. Therefore, he considered the possibility that some—not
all—childhood memories were screen memories rather than being historical in every detail.
Freud developed the more complex theory that children have sexual as well as aggressive
feelings from early life and these basic feelings stimulate fantasies and, therefore, can have
an impact on memory. Freud never abandoned the idea that children could be, and often
were, sexually abused. However, Freud began to credit children with a complex mental
capacity by recognizing their ability to wish, invent, and fantasize, and he recognized that
this ability shaped and influenced memory (Freud, 1905).
Freud developed the seduction theory prior to his formulation of his ideas about
transference. As he developed his ideas about transference, he further was able to see how
transference reactions could influence historical reports. That is, he began to consider that
some of his patients, under sway of positive transference feelings, might unconsciously be
reporting material that they felt would please him and, therefore, give him the material for
which they felt he was looking. Along with this insight, Freud began to see transference
reactions as a defense against conscious awareness of intrapsychic conflicts. Therefore, for
Freud, identifying and understanding transference reactions became a central route along
with dreams, to gaining an understanding of the patient‘s true history. Unfortunately, many
in the mental health community viewed Freud‘s insights as an indication that all memories
of childhood sexual experiences were fantasies. There was a tendency for many clinicians to
look intrapsychically to the exclusion of outward reality. This attitude led to the mental
health community‘s virtual abandonment of victims of childhood sexual abuse.
One of the positive outgrowths of the feminist movement in the ‗70s and ‗80s was the
exposure of the reality of spousal and child abuse. Women talking to one another in groups
shared painful experiences of abuse. They demanded services for abused women and

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 37
children, (e.g., shelters for battered women, counseling for rape victims, and counseling for
victims of sexual and physical abuse) (Herman, 1992). The recognition that sexual abuse of
children is much more prevalent than had previously been acknowledged was a necessary
rectification of a problem that existed in the profession and in our society for many years.
Social work always has been a profession sensitive to environmental issues. In the late ‗70s,
as social work training incorporated the findings of the feminist movement, social work
students were trained by individuals concerned about abuse issues. After reports of abuse
had been discounted for decades, social workers saw the importance of believing children
and women who had been abused. In 1984, Masson wrote The Assault on Truth: Freud‘s
Suppression of the Seduction Theory in which he posited that Freud cowardly retreated from
his seduction theory because it was criticized by the medical community. This book was
cited by some social workers, among others, to assert that Freud was bowing to society‘s
need to deny the truth and discount women and children by disavowing his trauma theory.
By endorsing Freud‘s seduction theory these individuals moved from a more complex to a
more simplistic notion of the causative factors of mental illness (Saari, 1994).
The influence of the recovery movement in the mental health field was also felt in the
1980s. Kaminer points to the simplistic notions of the recovery movement (Kaminer, 1992).
Unfortunately, these simplistic notions gained more widespread appeal and credibility as
those ―in recovery‖ entered various mental health fields to become therapists. The recovery
movement encouraged the notions of victimization and regression by defining practically
everybody as survivors who should get in touch with their ―inner child.‖ Kaminer questions:
What are the political implications of a mass movement that counsels surrender of will and
submission to a higher power describing almost everyone as hapless victims of familial
abuse? What are the implications of a tradition that tells us all problems can be readily
solved, in a few simple steps—a tradition in which order and obedience to technique are
virtues and respect for complexities, uncertainties, and existential unease are signs of
failure, if not sin? The notion of selfhood that emerges from recovery ...is essentially more
conducive to totalitarianism than democracy, (p. 152)
Television talk shows and books gave victims of and leaders in the recovery movement a
widespread audience.
False Memories of Sexual Abuse
As a result of the events previously described, numerous traumatized victims of sexual
abuse felt less isolated and more understood. However, the terrain was fertile for the
development of false memories of sexual abuse. Some clinicians became ―trauma
therapists,‖ experts on abuse. The work of Fredrickson influenced therapists who reasoned
fallaciously that one could presume that patients were sexually abused in childhood based
upon symptomotology. In her book, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from
Sexual Abuse, Fredrickson provided therapists with a checklist of aftereffects (Fredrickson,
1992). Entire clinical categories (e.g., depression, eating disorders, etc.) were interpreted
as symptoms of abuse. Fredrickson also described specific methods for retrieving memories
of sexual abuse, which included guided imagery, dream work, journal writing, body work,
hypnosis, art therapy, and rage work (Fredrickson, 1992).
The theories of the trauma therapists had a great influence on their patients. The patient‘s
initial idealizing transference reactions, seeing the therapist as an all-knowing expert, gave
the therapists tremendous power over patients. As with the cult leaders, if the idealizing
transference was never interpreted, patients were kept in a childlike, dependent position.
The traumatist‘s ―suspicion‖ of sexual abuse, based on a variety of symptoms, often was
expressed in the first session with a patient who had come to therapy with no such memory
of abuse. This early diagnosis often was supported by self-help books, such as The Courage