• In total there are 0 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 0 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 736 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 2:38 am

Chapter 9: Therapy

#136: Feb. - Mar. 2015 (Non-Fiction)
User avatar
Interbane

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 7203
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 12:59 am
19
Location: Da U.P.
Has thanked: 1105 times
Been thanked: 2166 times
United States of America

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

ant wrote:Jesus Christ. Cant anyone disagree with HOW Sagan chooses to make a point?

I know because he's a scientist he's like a prophet but jeez.
You are more than welcome to disagree with him, and I'm allowed to disagree with you. What it seems you're after is the freedom to be disagreeable without being challenged about it. I agree with a lot of what's said, and with a lot of the stuff you say, but it's the stuff that I disagree with that motivates me to post. There's a sort of selection bias at play between us and sparks always fly. I think I'm too often inflexible, and that makes my posts irritating. I really am sorry about that.

Regarding the choice of false child abuse accusations, it's because he's using an association that is likeliest to be made by the widest audience. The abuse cases where memory was altered were sensationalized, as you mentioned. A lot of people will make the connection because of that. You're right to question whether or not he studied the actual cases, or gleaned the data from media. But I don't think you can fault the reasoning behind his decision, especially if there is truth to the claims of altered memory.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
User avatar
Penelope

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
One more post ought to do it.
Posts: 3267
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:49 am
16
Location: Cheshire, England
Has thanked: 323 times
Been thanked: 679 times
Gender:
Great Britain

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

Interbane:

But the point to take home with you is that when you rely on your memory, you could be setting yourself up for failure. So skepticism toward your own memory isn't a bad thing.
Oh, I see. Well I am very skeptical about relying on memories because look at what happens when people witness a road traffic accident for instance. Most of us will remember it wrongly in some respects. Also if two or three people describe one thing occuring a fourth will agree with them.....even if he wasn't going to.....because he questions his own ability. There is a film of some people planted in a crowd, and asked a simple arithmetic question - they ask six people who give the same wrong answer and the seventh who isn't a plant - though obviously hesitant - will also repeat the wrong answer. I get all that, Interbane.

Of course, here, in this chapter we are talking about retrieved memories which are alledged to be hidden in the sub-conscious. Now, when you start messing about with sub- conscious memories of course you get all sorts of wrong data. I mean, we get our imaginations mixed up with our real time anyway.

I don't think Sagan needed to make such a big thing about this point is all.

OK, so far he has pointed out that we cannot trust our eyes because our vision might be an hallucination and neither can we trust our ears because we might be having an auditary hallucination. We cannot trust our memories, which to me is the most obvious and it didn't need all of those unpleasant anecdotes.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
User avatar
Penelope

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
One more post ought to do it.
Posts: 3267
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:49 am
16
Location: Cheshire, England
Has thanked: 323 times
Been thanked: 679 times
Gender:
Great Britain

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

Interbane wrote:

I'm not so sure on this point either. Although, I don't know how to discuss without offending you.
Thankyou. I appreciate your consideration. Just for the record.....I am only offended if people call me rude names because I don't agree with them. Because, that is bullying.

The thing I hate most is being patronised......I get really snotty when I go to the doctor or any sort of expert and they talk to me as though I have reached my second childhood - which happens a lot when you reach my age. If I feel I am being patronised I turn into a witch.

I like it here on booktalk because you lot NEVER patronise me.. :-D
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

From the chapter:

"It would be astonishing if a significant number of patients who present themselves to alien abduction therapists had not been so abused [sexually], perhaps even to a large proportion than in the general population"

This is all fine and dandy.

Where's the evidence for this claim, Mr. Scientist?

I dont doubt much of this but when I hear bald claims i want to see the data that backs it up empirically.

I wish the Prophet would have given specific citations/references to studies that back claims like this one.

As an example, when the Prophet claimed that countless hundreds of thousands were burned as witches, the first scholarly study I looked at (see my post about it) states something much different based on available evidence.

I dont doubt the witch trials. But I am skeptical of outlandish claims made by non historians.
Including those made by celebrity cosmologists like the Prophet Sagan.

Thanks
User avatar
Taylor

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Awesome
Posts: 959
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:39 pm
14
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 422 times
Been thanked: 589 times

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

For me it was a vexing challenge reading this chapter, particularly after reading the comments in this thread, It has been a difficult task connecting the two together. Carl Sagan seems to be asking the Psychiatric Associations and the reader to exorcise greater skepticism towards claims of alien abduction, and false sexual abuse. Additionally CS provides information about satanic cults and their creepy aspects, also a fair amount of statistics covering the rape of woman and especially children. It all gets convoluted in the presentation of repressed memories versus implanted memories. There is a lot going on in this chapter that hides what I think is a lost point, To quote Carl Sagan " Both sexual abuse therapists and alien abduction therapist spend months, sometimes years, encouraging their subjects to remember being abused. Their methods are similar, and their goals are in a way- the same - to recover painful memories, often of long ago. In both cases the therapist believes the patient to be suffering from trauma attendant to an event so terrible that it is repressed." His quote, is to me, the entire context of the chapter, At that time there was not as Ant's link to the APA tells us, enough research into the many aspects of the human psych. From what I gather after reading this chapter plus this thread and various related topics available via google, the diagnostic techniques of the time were not prepared for the onslaught of the many variations of modern mental trauma, whether real or imagined.
Last edited by Taylor on Mon Feb 09, 2015 9:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Taylor

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Awesome
Posts: 959
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:39 pm
14
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 422 times
Been thanked: 589 times

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

I did not read the chapter as a case of CS comparing the different experiences some people dealt with as being equal to each other in terms of heinous severity, but rather as an inability on the part of the medical experts to customize treatments on an individual basis. Its possible for treatments to be standard, where as trauma can be unique.
User avatar
Penelope

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
One more post ought to do it.
Posts: 3267
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:49 am
16
Location: Cheshire, England
Has thanked: 323 times
Been thanked: 679 times
Gender:
Great Britain

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

Sorry, I posted the same thing twice - so deleted.
Last edited by Penelope on Tue Feb 10, 2015 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
User avatar
Penelope

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
One more post ought to do it.
Posts: 3267
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:49 am
16
Location: Cheshire, England
Has thanked: 323 times
Been thanked: 679 times
Gender:
Great Britain

Re: Chapter 9: Therapy

Unread post

Taylor wrote:

Carl Sagan seems to be asking the Psychiatric Associations and the reader to exorcise greater skepticism towards claims of alien abduction, and false sexual abuse.
It is Carl Sagan's book and so it is up to him, I suppose, what criteria he uses to uphold his arguments. But surely a lesser degree of skepticism should be used in cases of claimed sexual abuse.

Alien Abduction allegations:

1. More than likely are not true as there has not been any evidence returned as proof that these have ever happened.

2. Mostly they would be dealing with adults, who though traumatised, are better able to come to terms with whatever happened to them.

3. The experience only affects the person themselves and not to any large extent their families.

Child Sexual Abuse

1. Are most often true allegations and there is plenty of proof in the shape of cigarette burns, bruises and the results of starvation etc. There are no doubt false allegations, and false memories, but there are plenty of only too true cases.

2. Mostly they would be dealing with children who can be injured for life or often die from the experiences.

3. The experience affects the whole family and often the whole community.

It is vital that children who report abuse should be believed. Not so vital that an alien abductee be believed.

If CS is correct and psychiatrists use the same methods to retrieve memories of alien abuse as those to retrieve sexual abuse, and he accuses them of asking leading questions, then there is something intrinsically wrong with the system.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Rafael Sabatini
Post Reply

Return to “Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark - by Carl Sagan with Ann Druyan”