GOD MOLECULES
David Biello’s “Searching for God in the Brain” discusses the neural circuitry involved in religious experience. Based on my team’s research, I believe that the body’s naturally occurring hallucinogenic molecules are a more fundamental cause of spiritual experience—whether that experience is self-willed or brought about by external means. The powerful hallucinogen DMT has been found in human blood, lung and brain. Clinical research we performed in the 1990s with DMT, which also occurs naturally in many plants, led us to propose a role for the brain-based compound in mystical states. The human body’s hallucinogens may also contribute to other cognitive effects, such as psychosis.
Rick Strassman
University of New Mexico
FAIRLY UNBALANCED
As a person who has lived with recovered memories for 17 years, I was initially interested in but ultimately disappointed by “Brain Stains,” by Kelly Lambert and Scott O. Lilienfeld.
The article lacks the perspective of an individual who has seriously considered the possibility of false memories but come to the conclusion that his or her own are not fabrications. Instead the authors quote research that is highly questionable—particularly the findings that showed that 100 percent of patients reported torture or mutilation and estrangement from extended families. From my own experience and from what I have heard from others, it is evident that the sampling was biased and does not accurately reflect all recovered memories.
Irresponsible therapists may create false memories, causing serious harm. This issue clearly needs to be addressed. But let us not determine, therefore, that there are no true recovered memories.
Eve Richardson
Toronto
I am writing to express my dismay at what I consider to be very biased writing in “Brain Stains.” The 1990s saw a huge push by some to debunk the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and the clinicians who treated DID patients. In response to that effort, many professionals endeavored to address the issues from a more balanced middle ground. Among other results from that decade was the book Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law, by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin and D. Corydon Hammond (W. W. Norton, 1998). Lambert and Lilienfeld would have benefited by taking advantage of the authors’ well-balanced presentation of the issue.
Instead your magazine has promulgated an inflammatory, biased presentation of traumatic memory therapy. I ask that you invite the response of other authors whose stance is seen as more balanced by mental health professionals such as myself.
Paul W. Schenk
Tucker, Ga.
LAMBERT AND LILIENFELD REPLY: Richardson and Schenk raise several intriguing issues but confuse the question of whether some recovered memories may be genuine (which was not the focus of our article and remains scientifically unresolved) with the question of whether suggestive therapeutic procedures can induce false memories and false identities in certain clients (which was the focus of our article and should, in our view, no longer be in scientific dispute). Moreover, in scientific terms, “balance” does not imply that the truth invariably lies between two extremes—the fact that some people believe the earth is round and others believe it is flat does not imply that the earth is oblong. Indeed, Harvard University psychologist Richard J. McNally and others who have carefully investigated widespread claims for the existence of recovered memories have found most of these claims wanting. Knowing that recovered memory therapies are potentially devastating, as in Sheri J. Storm’s case, it is incumbent on mental professionals to exercise extreme caution.
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Add CommentI was disturbed by the conclusion by David Pizarro that "Utilitarianism may, in the end, be the right moral theory." The decision whether to push one man onto a train track to save 5 men further down the tracks, is a deeper question than he apparently assumes. A person making such a decision is not deciding simply if 5 is greater than 1. He is deciding how bad will he feel if 5 die versus how bad he will feel if he pushes one man to his death. Now, this 'feeling' he is weighing is more than just some squishy sentimentalism. Pushing that one man is deciding to push the whole of human trust on the tracks. It is the fabric of human society which is being spent here to save those 5 workmen. After all, how could we function if we had to always watch our backs so as not to be sacrificed? These 'feelings' are there for a good purpose -- evolved from a system of trust and respect for each other which allows us to function successfully as a society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis whole VMPFC brain damage theory, I believe though, has offered a possible explanation why some people would prefer the good of the group over the individual in many political areas of our lives.
David Butler
Mission Viejo, CA
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough Richard McNally's book, "Remembering Trauma", has in no way prevented me from seeking therapy, it is an irritant to be told I don't exist!
Today, because I am at a point of great sadness over my crumbling facade of "happy childhood", Dr McNally's stupidity particularly irked me and I wrote this on Amazon.com .............
I have yet to decide whether Richard McNally ,although well educated,is congenitally stupid or an environmentally mediated victim of fullblown denial (hanging out too long with the FMSF crowd).
His arguments appear cogent and appealing, "common sense wise". However, arguing that 100,000s of people don't exist, does not make them cease to be !
Quote............
In 1977, scientists diving on the Gal�pagos Rift in Alvin made a discovery that shook the foundations of biology. They found oases of animals thriving in the sunless depths around hydrothermal vents. Instead of photosynthetic plants, chemosynthetic microbes comprise the base of the food chain at vents. They obtain energy from chemical-rich fluids generated by volcanic processes on mid-ocean ridges, the 50,000-mile (80,000-kilometer) undersea mountain chain that encircles the globe and marks the edges of Earth's tectonic plates.
Unquote
I wonder that Dr McNally spends SO much energy arguing that chemosynthetic microbes don't exist. They're actually just therapy- deluded photosynthetic plants.......... (although in real life, as opposed to his ivory tower world, memories returned BEFORE therapy in the majority of cases and it was the memories which caused the therapy, not vice versa).
Actually, A genius (tested at actual genius level of 180 IQ), Ron Davis "The Gift of Dyslexia" graphically depicted traumatic memory as a bell curve, with memory
on the vertical axis and stress /arousal on the horizontal. As stress levels rose, memory encoding improved ,right up to the top of the 'bell' ,but with increasing arousal
the organism was overcome and could no longer process what was happening..........memory encoding fell away and amnesia progressively resulted.
So simple yet so easy to comprehend and so "common sense" true for we who have experienced amnesia of abuse.
Ron observed the "black hole" (loss of memory) out there among the stars and tried to describe/understand it. Richard can't even see the "black hole", because he doesn't
look through a radio telescope, but spends books trying to explain why black holes don't exist.
Just by the way, he gives ammunition to those accused of molesting children that their victims are mendacious.