Michelle Remembers

She wrote in the book, there is always something more left to say.

For the thread of the recovered memory movement that formed part of the satanic panic. You can trace that back to a book from 1980 called I think Michelle remembers.

Yeah, 1980 and this was a, by the way, I was on the cover of a Christian magazine in the 1980s.

It was just like dropping a bomb in the midst of this, everybody.

So everyone was transitioning from, who can we start pointing at and persecuting now that we've decided the cults are okay and we're going to stop deprogramming them?

And this book comes in the midst of that in 1980 and it's a book about a woman named Michelle and her therapist Lawrence Pasder. Yeah, he wrote it.

You can trace that back to a book from 1980 called I think Michelle remembers.

So this book Michelle remembers, it was just like dropping a bomb in the midst of this, everybody.

And this was a, by the way, I was on the cover of a Christian magazine in the 1980s.

It was a book about a woman named Michelle and her therapist Lawrence Pasder. Yeah, he wrote it.

And he helped her uncover repressed memories of being ritually satanically abused or satanic ritually abused in the 1950s in Vancouver.

For the thread of the recovered memory movement that formed part of the satanic panic. You can trace that back to a book from 1980 called I think Michelle remembers.

Yeah, 1980 and this was a, by the way, I was on the cover of a Christian magazine in the 1980s.

So this book Michelle remembers, it was just like dropping a bomb in the midst of this, everybody.

it's a book about a woman named Michelle and her therapist Lawrence Pasder.

Yeah, he actually ended up marrying her and he coined the term ritual abuse. It lies directly at his feet.

So in 1980, a psychologist named, named Lawrence Pazder published a book about his wife and former patient, Michelle Smith,

So, okay. And Michelle Remembers is, basically, the claim she's making is that she became the victim of a satanic cult for several months during 1955 when she was a five-year-old.

She was imprisoned by them. She, like had all these recollections of being tortured in houses and mausoleums and cemeteries of being raped and sodomized with candles of being forced to shit on a Bible and on a crucifix of seeing babies and adults murdered.

Michelle Remembers was a hugely influential book.

So in 1980, a psychologist named, named Lawrence Pazder published a book about his wife and former patient, Michelle Smith, which, you know, if your wife is a former patient as a therapist, you might not be a great therapist.

So what we have in 1980 is a situation where evangelical Christian paranoia over the devil and the black arts leaps over and starts to infect mainstream society.

Michelle Remembers was a hugely influential book.

It was treated as gospel by a terrible number of people and it actually became a standard textbook for social workers in the United States.

So in 1980, a psychologist named, named Lawrence Pazder published a book about his wife and former patient, Michelle Smith,

detailed a childhood of horrific occult sex abuse.

Pazder claimed to have used hypnotic regression therapy to help his wife uncover buried memories of abuse at the hands of the Church of Satan.

She was imprisoned by them. She, like had all these recollections of being tortured in houses and mausoleums and cemeteries of being raped and sodomized with candles of being forced to shit on a Bible and on a crucifix of seeing babies and adults murdered.

The whole idea of repressed memories, which now we got, we're laying a lot of groundwork here, so let's talk about the fucking idea of repressed memories comes from.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Michelle Remembers because it's a book that like defies description, you know?

It's a book that I think says a lot about how irrationality, uh, but can, can be foundational to a lot of people's fundamental beliefs about how the world works.

Then there was the 1980 book called Michelle Remembers, and it was co-written by a therapist and his female patient. It discussed his brilliance in uncovering her memories of childhood satanic abuse. And it was a bestseller.

The two of them divorced their partners, married each other and laughed all the way to the bank, I guess.

There's this really depressing documentary about it, and it shows just how insane they were. The patient's sister said in the documentary that she believes Michelle is she's living in hell. The story haunted their family for years.

She said, you know, we pretend we're a family, but there's always that feeling of like, how could you do the damage you did by telling the story that wasn't true?

This begins in 1980 with a book called Michelle Remembers, which was written by a woman and her psychiatrist. And this introduced this idea into public consciousness that you could have been abused for years by your mother, who was a Satanist, and not remember any of it until the psychiatrist hypnotizes you.