The Third Cardinal Result: Precognition by Elvira's Foster Mother

The most important of my results is that Mollbeck repeatedly "knew" what Elvira had experienced, at a time when Elvira knew nothing about any such events. Mollbeck claimed that Elvira "had told her" what she "knew". And this is a deliberate untruth. Instead this pattern proves that Mollbeck invented and indoctrinated those narratives to which a minimum of 27 judges attributed the stamp of being authentic experiences.

We shall examine a number of themes. But first a kind of a prologue is necessary.

Even without a detailed examination it is easy to recognise in Elvira the typical features of false memory syndrome (FMS). Since a well-known incest therapist was involved, it was only natural to suspect her of being the indoctrinator. Nevertheless, systematic textual analysis showed that she was innocent, and that Mollbeck was the real recovered memory therapist.

The incest therapist may well have done much to consolidate the pseudo-memories. And we shall later see that she was playing a double game.

Scharnberg (1996, II, chapter 87) studied many indoctrinated allegations of sexual abuse made by pre-school children. One frequent characteristic was that the children might mix things up and get hold of the wrong end of the stick.

The primary reason for this characteristic is neither the age nor the immaturity of preschool children. What is crucial is that the content of the indoctrinated stories lie outside the experiential world of the children.

Hence, it is no bold hypothesis that the same characteristic might sometimes occur, when adults or teenagers are indoctrinated to recall things that lie outside their experiential world. Maybe we shall find this characteristic in some of Elvira's accounts. In the following chapters we will be taking a close look at a number of themes.

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Uppdaterad: 2009-11-19

Yakida