Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse

Herein is the lecture by D.C.Hammond, originally entitled "Hypnosis in
MPD: Ritual Abuse," but now usually known as the "Greenbaum Speech,"
delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and
Multiple Personality, Thursday June 25, 1992, at the Radisson Plaza
Hotel, Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia.

Sponsored by the Center for Abuse Recovery & Empowerment, The
Psychiatric Institute of Washington, D.C. Both a tape and a transcript
were at one time available from Audio Transcripts of Alexandria,
Virginia (800-338-2111). Tapes and transcripts of other sessions from
the conference are still being sold but -- understandably -- not this
one. The transcript below was made from a privately made tape of the
original lecture.

The single most remarklable thing about this speech is how little one
has heard of it in the two years since its original delivery. It is
recommended that one reads far enough at least until one finds why it's
called "the Greenbaum speech."

THE GREENBAUM SPEECH of D.C.HAMMOND'

We've got a lot to cover today and let me give you a rough approximate
outline of the the things that I'd like us to get into. First, let me
ask how many of you have had at least one course or workshop on
hypnosis? Can I see the hands? Wonderful. That makes our job easier.

Okay. I want to start off by talking a little about trance-training and
the use of hypnotic phenomena with an MPD dissociative-disorder
population, to talk some about unconscious exploration, methods of
doing that, the use of imagery and symbolic imagery techniques for
managing physical symptoms, input overload, things like that. Before
the day's out, I want to spend some time talking about something I
think has been completely neglected in the field of dissociative
disorder, and that's talking about methods of profound calming for
automatic hyper-arousal that's been conditioned in these patients.

We're going to spend a considerable length of time talking about
age-regression and abreaction in working through a trauma. I'll show
you with a non-MPD patient -- some of that kind of work -- and then
extrapolate from what I find so similar and different with MPD cases.
Part of that, I would add, by the way, is that I've been very sensitive
through the years about taping MPD cases or ritual-abuse cases, part of
it being that some of that feels a little like using patients and I
think that this population has been used enough. That's part of the
reason, by choice, that I don't generally videotape my work.

I also want to talk a bunch about hypnotic relapse-prevention
strategies and post- integration therapy today. Finally, I hope to find
somewhere in our time-frame to spend on hour or so talking specifically
about ritual abuse and about mind-control programming and brainwashing
-- how it's done, how to get on the inside with that -- which is a
topic that in the past I haven't been willing to speak about publicly,
have done that in small groups and in consultations, but recently
decided that it was high time that somebody started doing it. So we're
going to talk about specifics today.


In Chicago at the first international congress where ritual abuse was
talked about I can remember thinking, "How strange and interesting." I
can recall many people listening to an example given that somebody
thought was so idiosyncratic and rare, and all the people coming up
after saying, "Gee, you're treating one, too? You're in
Seattle"...Well, I'm in Toronto...Well, I'm in Florida...Well, I'm in
Cincinnati." I didn't know what to think at that point.

It wasn't too long after that I found my first ritual-abuse patient in
somebody I was already treating and we hadn't gotten that deep yet.
Things in that case made me very curious about the use of mind-control
techniques and hypnosis and other brainwashing techniques. So I started
studying brainwashing and some of the literature in that area and
became acquainted with, in fact, one of the people who'd written one of
the better books in that area.

Then I decided to do a survey, and from the ISSMP&D [International
Society for the Study of Mulptiple Personality and Dissociation] folks
I picked out about a dozen and a half therapists that I though were
seeing more of that than probably anyone else around and I started
surveying them. The interview protocol, that I had. got the same
reaction almost without exception. Those therapists said, "You're
asking questions I don't know the answers to. You're asking more
specific questions than I've ever asked my patients." Many of those
same therapists said, "Let me ask those questions and I'll get back to
you with the answer." Many of them not only got back with answers, but
said, "You've got to talk to this patient or these two patients." I
ended up doing hundred of dollars worth of telephone interviewing.

What I came out of that was a grasp of a variety of brainwashing
methods being used all over the country. I started to hear some
similarities. Whereas I hadn't known, to begin with, how widespread
things were, I was now getting a feeling that there were a lot of
people reporting some similar things and that there must be some degree
of communication here.

Then approximately two and a half years ago I had some material drop in
my lap. My source was saying a lot of things that I knew were accurate
about some of the brainwashing, but it was telling me new material I
had no idea about. At this point I took and decided to check it out in
three ritual-abuse patients I was seeing at the time. Two of the three
had what they were describing, in careful inquiry without leading or
contaminating. The fascinating thing was that as I did a
telephone-consult with a therapist that I'd been consulting for quite a
number of months on an MPD case in another state, I told her to inquire
about certain things. She said, "Well, what are those things?" I said,
"I'm not going to tell you, because I don't want there to be any
possibility of contamination. Just come back to me and tell me what the
patient says."

She called me back two hours later, said, "I just had a double session
with this patient and there was a part of him that said, 'Oh, we're so
excited. If you know about this stuff, you know how the Cult
Programmers get on the inside and our therapy is going to go so much
faster.'"

Many other patients since have had a reaction of wanting to pee their
pants out of anxiety and fear rather than thinking it was wonderful
thing.

But the interesting thing was that she then asked, "What are these
things?" They were word perfect -- same answers my source had given me.
I've since repeated that in many parts of the country. I've consulted
in eleven states and one foreign country, in some cases over the
telephone, in some cases in person, in some cases giving the therapist
information ahead of time and saying, "Be very careful how you phrase
this. Phrase it in these ways so you don't contaminate." In other cases
not even giving the therapist information ahead of time so they
couldn't.

When you start to find the same highly esoteric information in
different states and different countries, from Florida to California,
you start to get an idea that there's something going on that is very
large, very well coordinated, with a great deal of communication and
sytematicness to what's happening. So I have gone from someone kind of
neutral and not knowing what to think about it all to someone who
clearly believes ritual abuse is real and that the people who say it
isn't are either naive like people who didn't want to believe the
Holocaust or -- they're dirty.

full article
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/greenbaum.htm