Vunch asked:

> you are alarming in your claim of wild and dangeorus theoriizing.
>     What
>    are you referring to?
>
R. Koenigsberg asked:

>   Why would one experience  theorizing as "dangerous?"
>
>           That would be a psychoanalytic question.
>
>
 Let me start with the dangerous way the concept of "repression" has
been used in recent years.

The mid 1980s to mid 1990s saw a small epidemic of women who were told
by their therapists that they suffered from repressed memories of
childhood or infant sexual abuse. Celebrities elbowed each other aside
to report their recovered memories to the media (Roseanne Barr remembers
being abused at six months of age). The psychoanalytic concept of
"repression" was the cornerstone of this idea, and many psychoanalysts
were prominent in this movement. Psychoanalysts were very active in
writing theoretical explanations of how memories were repressed. There
was a conference in 1993, I believe, in which psychoanalysts from the
William Alanson White Institute (colleagues of Stephen Mitchell) really
laid the repressed memories of sexual abuse on thick, preparatory to
opening up their own "trauma center.".
I know that most psychoanalysts were dubious about this idea and
particularly critical of the iatrogenic methods to recover memories
which were used, but there was only the most minor criticism coming from
the psychoanalytic world.  That old horror, empirical research based on
a positivistic model, showed how therapists can create false memories.
Recently, brain imaging and microbiological studies have also shown how
memories are reconstructions, easily susceptible to later events and
suggestion. The matter wound up in the courts, as therapists requested
that patients sue their parents. This led to parents suing their child's
therapist. Courts had to decide who could be considered an expert
witness (Daubert). Almost all states opted for the use of  expert
witnesses based on  methodological rigorous research, so often demeaned
on this list, as opposed to experts who wanted to base their expertise
on "clinical experience". The courts became highly dubious about
patients suing their parents for childhood abuse when there was no
corroborative evidence, and parents began to win big settlements against
therapists
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of families, were broken up because
the way the psychoanalytic concept of repression was used. I think that
"dangerous" is an appropriate term to describe what happened.

After that came repressed memories of abuse by satanic cults, patients
who were supposed to have had dissociative identity disorders with (in
many patients) literally thousands of alters.

Howard