Urban legend and ritual abuse

As well as the concept of urban myth or legends you may have come across the notion of folk devils or moral panics, where analysis and research appear to indicate that what people accept as reality or the cause of something, is due to other factors of a sociological or anthropological kind. This work is clearly important because it's easy to fall into a belief system that we actually know something whereas it is something we have come to believe.

Some people attempt to track the path of beliefs or trends in a similar way to the approach of aetiology in ascertaining the development and spread of disease, and it can make fascinating reading! But like any 'scientific' method, much depends on the information being processed and what is not taken into sufficient consideration. Again this can be a natural process, or it can be engineered by people with a vested interest, financial or otherwise, or it can be part of a denial system - perhaps because it is simply too hard to believe, or it's inconvenient to try to fit it into other parts of our belief. There is a dissonance and we'd have to change other beliefs we hold dear.

Then there's 'splitting' which is a concept used in psychoanalysis to describe a developmental stage, or it can describe a process where for instance a group splits in its opinions or behaviour. This can be a natural process as part of the group's development or process, or it seems that one or more individuals act as a catalyst and set things off. Here's a tip from a group course I did where I raised this issue because it was on my mind: To get the situation into a non-splitting one, move things into a more introspective ('depressive') mode so that people accept more responsibility for themselves and take others into consideration; then you can get people really angry at you - and move things on.

The point of mentioning this is also to draw in the fact that our political and legal systems are largely adversarial with expertise and rhetoric, propaganda and denials along the way. What can happen then is a split on a large scale.

What we believe will naturally hinge on the sort of people we are, the sort of individual experiences, and the setting or situation now. We also need to take into consideration beliefs that are around at the time, and beliefs that are being projected. This can happen with literally anything.

Here I am touching on urban legends or myths and what are sometimes called moral panics, and more particularly on ritual abuse and what is said about it. I'm not going to call it satanic ritual abuse or SRA. To my mind it's XRA for extreme ritual abuse. For whatever reason, a belief system, an addictive need, a paraphilia, sadism, a fetish or what-have-you, some people engage in practices designed for their own needs. That means other people get induced or forced into activities they either don't want or can't avoid. And that means there's a power-thing going on.

More problems arise with a wider airing, and people tend to take up positions to try to fit everything into one category or another:

It did happen (because I believe the survivor or expert)
It didn't happen in case 'A' so throw out all cases (i.e. a claim that it never happens)
It happens but only as part of pornography, sadism, paraphilia

And so on. You get the drift.

I have a 'what if' kind of mind and take that into consideration when making up my mind, because I know how easy it is to follow a train of thought up blind alleys. I'll mention some useful books in passing here and continue below:

'Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism & Ritual Abuse' by David K. Sakheim & Susan E. Devine

'Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right' by Sara Diamond

'Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social & Political Considerations' editors Randy Noblitt & Pamela Perskin Noblitt

'The Secret World of Cults: Inside the Sects that Take Over Lives' by Jean Ritchie (Chapter 12)

'The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse Beyond Disbelief' by Sara Scott

- - - - -
Continuing here:

Writing in 1991 around the beginning of the 'satanism scare' Jean Ritchie, mentioned above, gave an excellent outline of the rise of interest in the phenomenon - and the ensuing likely backlash of disbelief.

'Out of Darkness' contains a selection of writings looking at various aspects of this phenomenon, and you could read the first two chapers 'The History of Satanic Religions' by Martin Katchen, and 'Satanic Beliefs and Practices' by Martin Katchen & David Sakheim.

Chapter 3 is' Alternative Hypotheses Regarding Claims of Satanic Cult Activity: A Critical Analysis' by George B. Greaves

Also by Martin Katchen is a chapter in 'Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century' entitled 'Interrelated Moral Panics & Counter-panics: the Cult Brainwashing Panic and the False Memory/Ritual Abuse Moral Panic' which is a summary of social history and movements, beliefs and systems.

See too a book by Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins 'Misunderstanding Cults' dealing with differing attitudes towards the phenomenon of cults or new religious movements/NRM's, and hypnosis, brainwashing etc.

Go to the section of this Blog entitled 'Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting' for some links on cults and groups in general.