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lb_leeMori: Okay, so apparently we CAN absorb information through audio... as long as the INTERNET isn't involved with it, a blazing distraction of "CLICK ME CHECK ME MULTITASK BADLY!" So putting on a cursed tape with which to time our work shifts of spot-blacking and page-formatting Xenogals Ashcan works out really well! And we took NOTES! :D Which we are posting here for our own convenience.
The first tape we listened to was the one labeled 3-D “Ritual Abuse: Evaluation & Treatment Strategies for Children and Adolescents,” by Kimball Ladien, M.D., at the Believe the Children First Annual Conference. After having listened to the whole thing, I STILL don't know what year it was made, only that it was probably before 1990, because it mentioned the McMartin preschool case positively. The conference took place in Illinois, probably Chicago, and it mostly seemed to be Illinois people.
The first tape we listened to was the one labeled 3-D “Ritual Abuse: Evaluation & Treatment Strategies for Children and Adolescents,” by Kimball Ladien, M.D., at the Believe the Children First Annual Conference. After having listened to the whole thing, I STILL don't know what year it was made, only that it was probably before 1990, because it mentioned the McMartin preschool case positively. The conference took place in Illinois, probably Chicago, and it mostly seemed to be Illinois people.
Okay, so uh, before I upload all my notes, I just wanna say, after I finished the tape and took the notes, I remember being kinda taken aback at how NOT bonkers Ladien seemed, since the Believe the Children group was infamous. But then I looked him up and found his website and it's really textbook conspiracy kookery, including how the 2020 election was stolen. I dunno if I was just not paying proper attention or if he went increasingly bonkers or what.
So, Lanier worked with Bennett G. Braun, an infamous multi therapist who went down the Satanic ritual abuse rabbit hole and kept getting smashed with lawsuits where his patients claimed he insisted they were multi and part of cannibal cults. Not long ago, I uploaded a textual transcription of a 1998 Dateline episode about one of these lawsuits, involving Patricia Burgus and her family. Braun seems to be a pretty cut-and-dry case of abusive therapist for multis; he kept losing and regaining his license until finally losing it for good in 2021. (He died in 2024.)
By his own account, Lanier mostly dealt with adult survivors. Most of what he talked about, I wasn't super interested in, because it focused on his Safe Haven idea, which he is still really hardcore about on his crackpot website. The part I found most interesting was his discussion of a patient he had, a 19-year-old black female multiple, since they're fairly uncommon in discussions of medical multiplicity. He studiously gives no name and very little details about her (which, good), but he does mention a lack of traumatic or violent background, despite growing up in the rural South. So: in my opinion, this serves as a record of a black multi with no history of abuse, and in the company of a guy who's really, really willing to see and find it.
This patient came to therapy because she'd suffered a head injury at work in some kind of altercation with a man (I don't remember if it's made clear how that happened), and she became afraid to return to work, had trouble sleeping, audiovisual hallucinations, and ended up hospitalized. After being run through various neurological tests and antidepressants, all with no effect, she ended up with Lanier. She was scared of hearing voices, and the voices she heard urged her to kill herself, had conversations, along with consistent names and voices. She also had visions of terrifying things. Lanier asked her to keep a journal of what the voices said, make a timeline--pretty usual multi stuff, and she apparently had multiple handwritings and conversations between voices in her journal. "Easy case," he said.
He continued with fairly run-of-the-mill multi PTSD stuff: teaching her relaxation exercises to stay grounded while dealing with the scary voices and visions. He asked her to make a "safe place," another very common thing. (I mean, it's the same shit we do in our "Headspace Discovery and Defense" essay!) She drew a "very beautiful, forested area with a mountain and what looked like a sun or a moon up above, river flowing through it, a very idyllic kind of setting. The problem was, she drew that one the left hand side of the page; on the right hand side, she drew a similar picture but there was [...] a full moon with a pentragram [...] in the tree in the forest, you could see a little body hanging off the tree." Her visions included a "black figure" and a "burnt man." This segued into the ritual abuse discussion, though to ME, a Southerner, a hanging body from a tree and a burnt man mean something very, very different. (Admittedly, I ain't never heard of no lynchers using pentragrams, though. I wonder if it's at all possible he saw some KKK symbol or something and reinterpreted it as a pentagram?)
He mentioned the idea of abuse as "communicable social disease," passed through individuals or generations, which is something I'm going to have to think about some more.
Some of the audience members are DEFINITELY the kind of people who call the cops over D&D signs in yards. Talk of "what if SRA survivors get triggered," which... buddy, plenty of us traumatized by Christianity, but you don't see folks pearl-clutching over the bathtub Marys all round here.
There was a fair amount of talk about Bennett Braun, so I'm definitely going to have to dig into his horrible kookbat ass. And he'll come up way more in the second tape I give notes about.
So, Lanier worked with Bennett G. Braun, an infamous multi therapist who went down the Satanic ritual abuse rabbit hole and kept getting smashed with lawsuits where his patients claimed he insisted they were multi and part of cannibal cults. Not long ago, I uploaded a textual transcription of a 1998 Dateline episode about one of these lawsuits, involving Patricia Burgus and her family. Braun seems to be a pretty cut-and-dry case of abusive therapist for multis; he kept losing and regaining his license until finally losing it for good in 2021. (He died in 2024.)
By his own account, Lanier mostly dealt with adult survivors. Most of what he talked about, I wasn't super interested in, because it focused on his Safe Haven idea, which he is still really hardcore about on his crackpot website. The part I found most interesting was his discussion of a patient he had, a 19-year-old black female multiple, since they're fairly uncommon in discussions of medical multiplicity. He studiously gives no name and very little details about her (which, good), but he does mention a lack of traumatic or violent background, despite growing up in the rural South. So: in my opinion, this serves as a record of a black multi with no history of abuse, and in the company of a guy who's really, really willing to see and find it.
This patient came to therapy because she'd suffered a head injury at work in some kind of altercation with a man (I don't remember if it's made clear how that happened), and she became afraid to return to work, had trouble sleeping, audiovisual hallucinations, and ended up hospitalized. After being run through various neurological tests and antidepressants, all with no effect, she ended up with Lanier. She was scared of hearing voices, and the voices she heard urged her to kill herself, had conversations, along with consistent names and voices. She also had visions of terrifying things. Lanier asked her to keep a journal of what the voices said, make a timeline--pretty usual multi stuff, and she apparently had multiple handwritings and conversations between voices in her journal. "Easy case," he said.
He continued with fairly run-of-the-mill multi PTSD stuff: teaching her relaxation exercises to stay grounded while dealing with the scary voices and visions. He asked her to make a "safe place," another very common thing. (I mean, it's the same shit we do in our "Headspace Discovery and Defense" essay!) She drew a "very beautiful, forested area with a mountain and what looked like a sun or a moon up above, river flowing through it, a very idyllic kind of setting. The problem was, she drew that one the left hand side of the page; on the right hand side, she drew a similar picture but there was [...] a full moon with a pentragram [...] in the tree in the forest, you could see a little body hanging off the tree." Her visions included a "black figure" and a "burnt man." This segued into the ritual abuse discussion, though to ME, a Southerner, a hanging body from a tree and a burnt man mean something very, very different. (Admittedly, I ain't never heard of no lynchers using pentragrams, though. I wonder if it's at all possible he saw some KKK symbol or something and reinterpreted it as a pentagram?)
He mentioned the idea of abuse as "communicable social disease," passed through individuals or generations, which is something I'm going to have to think about some more.
Some of the audience members are DEFINITELY the kind of people who call the cops over D&D signs in yards. Talk of "what if SRA survivors get triggered," which... buddy, plenty of us traumatized by Christianity, but you don't see folks pearl-clutching over the bathtub Marys all round here.
There was a fair amount of talk about Bennett Braun, so I'm definitely going to have to dig into his horrible kookbat ass. And he'll come up way more in the second tape I give notes about.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-17 12:03 am (UTC)Reminds me of My Grandmother's Hands (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-author-speaks/201709/my-grandmother-s-hands).
no subject
Date: 2025-10-17 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-17 01:58 pm (UTC)I'm maybe a fourth of the way through and got stuck due to not enough resources available. So I get it.
It's available from the library, but I ended up getting a copy because I knew I needed more time than a library loan would allow for.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-17 02:40 am (UTC)For the pentagram, if this drawing was of visions of unclear meaning, it's possible there was some unconscious mixing of memories of lynching or the impact of growing up with fear of lynching with stories about Satanic rituals or witchcraft?
no subject
Date: 2025-10-17 02:52 am (UTC)So I guess if you already see multiples as created by The Babyeating Pedophile Satanic Cult, folding Qanon in is just common sense.
Mori: THAT IS ENOUGH TAPES FOR ME TONIGHT! Yech!