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remarkable success—and started remarkable controversy, I might
add—with her work in helping people get access to forgotten memories. Memories
they’ve usually forgotten because the pain of remembering them is too great. We
don’t bury happy memories so deep, do we, Rhea?”
    The therapist had changed into a soft green outfit
that suggested an Indian mystic. She nodded with a slight smile. “We don’t
usually suppress memories of ice-cream sodas or romps on the beach with our
friends. The memories we push away are the ones that threaten us in our core as
individuals.”
    “Also with us is Professor Arnold Praeger, the
director of the Planted Memory Foundation.”
    The professor was given due face time to say that we
lived in an era that celebrated victims, which meant people needed to prove
they had suffered more terribly than anyone else. “Such people seek out
therapists who can validate their victimization. A small number of therapists
have helped a large number of would-be victims remember the most shocking
events: they begin recalling satanic rituals, sacrificing pets that never even
existed, and so on. Many families have been terribly damaged by these planted
memories.”
    Rhea Wiell laughed softly. “I hope you are not going
to suggest that any of my patients have recovered memories of satanic sacrifices,
Arnold.”
    “You’ve certainly encouraged some of them to demonize
their parents, Rhea. They’ve ruined their parents’ lives by accusing them of
the most heinous brutality—accusations which can’t be proved true in a court of
law because the only witnesses to them are your patients’ imaginations.”
    “You mean the only witness besides the parent who
thought he was safe from ever being found out,” Wiell said, keeping her voice
gentle as a contrast to Praeger’s sharp speech.
    Praeger cut her off. “In the case of this man whose
tape we just watched, the father is dead and can’t even be summoned to speak on
his own behalf. We’re told about documents in code, but I wonder what key you
used to break the code? And whether someone like me would get the same result if
I looked at the documents.”
    Wiell shook her head, smiling gently. “My patients’
privacy is sacrosanct, Arnold, you know that. These are Paul Radbuka’s
documents. Whether anyone else can see them is his decision alone.”
    Blacksin stepped in here to draw the conversation back
to what recovered memories actually were. Wiell talked a little about
post-traumatic stress disorder, explaining that there are a number of symptoms
that people share after trauma, whether it’s from battle—as soldiers or
civilians—or experiencing other fragmenting events, like sexual assault.
    “Children who’ve been sexually abused, adults who’ve
been tortured, soldiers who’ve endured battle, all share some common problems:
depression, inability to sleep, inability to trust people around them or form
close connections.”
    “But people can be depressed and have sleep disorders
without having been abused,” Praeger snapped. “When someone comes into my
office complaining of those symptoms, I am very careful about forming an
opinion of the root cause: I don’t immediately suggest he’s been tortured by
Hutu terrorists. People are at their most dependent and vulnerable with
psychotherapists. It is all too easy to suggest things to them which they come
ardently to believe. We like to think that our memories are objective and
accurate, but unfortunately, it’s very easy to create memories of events that
never took place.”
    He went on to summarize research on planted, or
created, memories that showed how people were persuaded they had taken part in
marches or demonstrations when there was objective evidence that they’d never
been in the city where the demonstration was held.
    A little before eleven, Blacksin cut the argument
short. “Until we truly understand the workings of the human mind, this debate
will continue between people of