A wave of nausea washed over Sheri J. Storm when she opened the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on a February morning a decade ago and saw the headline:
“Malpractice lawsuit: Plaintiff tells horror of memories.
Woman emotionally testifies that psychiatrist planted false recollections.”
The woman in the article shared a lot with Storm—the same psychiatrist, the same memories, the same diagnosis of multiple personality disorder. At that moment, Storm suddenly realized that her own illness and 200-plus personalities, though painfully real to her, were nothing more than a figment of her imagination—created by her trusted therapist, Kenneth Olson.
Storm initially sought treatment from Olson because of insomnia and anxiety associated with divorce proceedings and a new career in radio advertising. She had hoped for an antidepressant prescription or a few relaxation techniques. But after enduring hypnosis sessions, psychotropic medications and mental-ward hospitalizations, Storm had much more to worry about than stress. She had “remembered” being sexually abused by her father at the age of three and forced to engage in bestiality and satanic ritual abuse that included the slaughtering and consumption of human babies. According to her psychiatrist, these traumatic experiences had generated alternative personalities, or alters, within Storm’s mind.
Storm is now convinced that her multiple personality disorder was iatrogenic, the product of her “therapy.” But years after the psychiatric sessions have ceased, she is still tormented by vivid memories, nightmares and physical reactions to cues from her fictitious past. Although she was told that the false memories would fade over time, she has had a difficult time purging these “brain stains” from the fabric of her mind.
Storm’s case is similar to those of many other patients who underwent recovered-memory therapy that revealed sordid histories of sexual abuse and demonic ceremonies. Although the scientific literature suggests that traumatic events are rarely, if ever, repressed or forgotten, this type of therapy was widespread in the 1990s and is still practiced today. Only after several high-profile lawsuits did the American Medical Association issue warnings to patients about the unreliability of recovered memories. Nadean Cool, the patient described in the newspaper story that turned Storm’s life upside down, filed one such lawsuit. Cool received a $2.4-million settlement after 15 days of courtroom testimony. Amid the heated controversy, the American Psychiatric Association discontinued the diagnostic category of multiple personality disorder, replacing it with the slightly different diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder...
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Scientific American Mind
Kelly Lambert and Scott O. Lilienfeld
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