“What about improbable things people claim to remember?”
“Of the stories that are told to FMSF… all the memories seem to be "recovered" using the same techniques. The same processes bring forth memories of past lives, space alien abduction, satanic ritual, incest, and a host of various kinds of abuse.” - FMS Foundation Staff, in the FMSF Newsletter. [1]
“Our question is: What makes the process of recovering repressed memories of incest different from the process used for past lives and extra-terrestrials? Why believe in one and not the other?” - FMS Foundation Staff, in the FMSF Newsletter. [2]
“Question… assumptions about the accuracy of long-repressed memories. Just because a person recovers vivid memories of abuse by space aliens does not mean that space aliens have invaded our planet. Just because someone recovers vivid memories of past lives does not establish the reality of such lives. Just because someone recovers memories of abuse during some sort of therapy does not mean that it really happened.” - Pamela Freyd, in the FMSF Newsletter. [3]
Refutation
Citations
[1] FMS Foundation Staff. (1993, February) What do Memories of Ritual Abuse have to do with FMS Foundation Newsletter. 2(2), 2.
[2] FMS Foundation Staff. (1992, June) Domains of Recovered Memories. FMS Foundation Newsletter. 1(6), 1.
[3] Freyd, Pamela. (1992, July) Dear Friends. FMS Foundation Newsletter. 1(7), 1.
[4] Banaji, M. R., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1996). The Ordinary Nature of Alien Abduction Memories. Psychological Inquiry, 7(2), 132–135. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0702_3
[5] Yuko, Elizabeth. (2017, September 12). American Cult: 5 Spiritual Groups That Went Too Far. Rolling Stone.
[6] Brocklehurst, Steven. (2018, June 27). Children of God cult was “hell on earth.” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-44613932
[7] False Memory Syndrome Foundation. (2013, December 28). Frequently Asked Questions. Memory and Reality: Website of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. http://www.fmsfonline.org/index.php?faq=faq
[8] Woods, Emma. (2015). Home. Emma Woods Files. Information about the Research of Dr. David M. Jacobs of Temple University.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150518045036/http://ufoalienabductee.com/
[9] Boyce, N. (2012). The psychiatrist who wanted to believe. The Lancet, 380(9848), 1140–1141. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61655-9
[10] Piper, August. (1998, June). EINSTEIN WAS RIGHT! Or, A Few Thoughts on the Eve of the 1998 FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board Meeting FMS Foundation Newsletter. 7(5), 13.
[11] Miller, L. (2010, August 27). Remembrances of Lives Past. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/fashion/29PastLives.html
[12] Everson, Mark. (1997). Understanding Bizarre, Improbable, and Fantastic Elements in Children's Accounts of Abuse. Child Maltreatment. 2. 134-149. 10.1177/1077559597002002007.
[13] Cheit, R. E. (2014). The witch-hunt narrative: Politics, psychology, and the sexual abuse of children (pp. xx, 508). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931224.001.0001