VAGARIES OF MEMORY

Corydon Hammond, Ph.D. published an article in the Fall 1993 Bulletin of the Psychological Hypnosis Division of the American Psychological Association. In the article, he complained that he had been "misrepresented in the media (e.g., Prime Time Live) by producers apparently wishing to promulgate an FMS point of view, as well as by a radical FMS spokesman." Hammond proceeded to explain that he holds a balanced middle ground when it comes to belief in satanic ritual abuse memories. "Where there is so much smoke, may there not be some fire?" he wrote. Dr. Hammond's complaint that he has been misrepresented by an FMSF spokesperson (unnamed) is a very serious one. We checked our records. The following comments by Corydon Hammond were transcribed from a videotape of a hypnosis workshop at Parkwood Hospital, Atlanta Georgia, March 2, 1991:

"...I will suggest to you that those people [deniers of satanic cults] are either, one naive and of limited clinical experience; number two have a kind of naivete that people have of the holocaust; or number two they're just such intellectuallizers and skeptics that they'll doubt everything; or number three they're cult people themselves and I can assure that there are people who are in that position...There are people who are physicians, who are mental health professionals who are in the cults, who are raising trans-generational cults...I'll tell you why I think more of it has come out. I think more of it has come out because for the first time about six years ago professionals who treat severe trauma cases started getting together for the first time at the international MPD meetings and comparing notes...[I had a patient whose] grandfather had been sent out from Nazi Germany in the mid 1930's to New York expressly to help spread the cult to America. They were involved in kidnaping children...There are transgenerational cults passed down from parent to child through the generations...I think the research is real clear: we got three studies, one found 25%, one found 20% of outpatient multiples appear to be cult-abuse victims, and another on a specialized inpatient unit found 50%. I believe that we'll probably end up finding about a fourth of outpatient multiples are cult-abuse and if you're in a specialized unit it may go as high as 50% and they're usually some of the more severe difficult cases. But I also believe that we're treating too many of them. That's a cruel terrible thing to say. But I believe that quite a few of them that we're treating are still involved in cults and that we should not be treating them if they are. And it is a danger to them and a danger to us...And I know of patients where I've consulted on cases -- I only treat four cult victims myself but I consult in cases all around the country and I know of cases where people have revealed things in therapy...at one point a part [i.e. an alternate personality] revealed something she shouldn't and she was severely tortured because of that, to teach her not to do that in the future...Some of it is in very organized groups with interstate communication and who use a very very systematic brainwashing that comes out of experimentation from Nazi doctors and experimentation in the intelligence community with mind-control research and involves medical technology and is very very sophisticated. And is systematically done from early early childhood to produce multiples and continues through and into adulthood with periodic reinforcement truly trying to produce Manchurian Candidates...In fact, I know of cases where this has occurred where the Mafia likes to use cult people as hit people because they can have one personality who will come out and do it, go to another city and perform a cult blood-cleaning and have no emotion about it, come back and everybody has amnesia for it. And it's the perfect ideal situation...They're drugged up. They're already entrained in a certain state of consciousness and then if they don't agree and go along with something and say 'Yes,' like 'if you get angry at anyone in the cult you will hurt yourself. Do you understand?' And one patient said, 'Yes, but I don't want to.' And they then violently shocked her with electrodes to her head and her inner vagina. Then they repeated it. 'Do you understand?' Phrase good: she understood. 'Yes.' Then go over it again. 'And you will hurt yourself by cutting yourself with a knife. Do you understand?' 'Yes.' 'I don't believe you.' Zap! Go over it again. 'Yes!' Then they go onto something else. Then having these repetitive conditioning sessions. Now you picture that happening to a five-year-old, a sweet little five-year-old kid. And a six-year- old, a seven-year-old, an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old. You know, when you got total control of them, they're highly dissociative person, you've got them a whole lot longer than anyone has a prisoner of war and you're using all that kind of mind-control technology from intelligence research that isn't even available to the public and other kinds of things, you can have a powerful influence on people...I haven't had to be involved with reporting to the police. But, yeah, I think you have to be careful, because, I have a situation where a cult-victim who I had seen and then somebody else had seen, basically because somebody prominent in the cult works in the medical center where I work and she had bumped into him and didn't want to keep coming to the medical center so she starting seeing somebody else. She finally fled Salt Lake and we put her in treatment with somebody in Southern California. And she had come back on one occasion to identify people for her previous therapist and I. And identified some names that were part of a larger body of information that we gave to three investigative agencies. And one of the people I trust that we gave it to. The other two should be very legitimate investigative agencies, police agencies, in the state. Three weeks later -- she had a part, or parts rather, that were still cult-involvement with cult allegiance, that would call and tell them where she was and her address and phone number after she left. And so they had already picked her up several times. And they came by and basically kidnaped and picked her up for a few hours and tortured her. And told her before they said we're going to kill you. This time they said, 'We should kill you but we'll let you do that to yourself.' And then they said, 'We know that you've been giving information to Cory,' and they named me by name in Southern California and revealed information that had only been passed on to three police agencies. So I think you have to be careful with the police agencies..."

Corydon Hammond, Ph.D. is immediate past president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis. The current president is Dabney Ewin who has just published a piece in which he tells how he was able to recover memories of the 14th day of his life.

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