Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 9 | Courage to Heal Pt. 1
Matthew and Julian sit down for the first of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement—which played a central role in validating Satanic Panic testimonials.The basic premise of The Courage to Heal, by creative writing instructors Ellen Bass and Linda Davis, is that memories of childhood abuse, especially child sexual abuse, can be recovered and articulated by survivors who are given the proper space, tools, and validation. The book explores how this be facilitated within the context of journaling, writing poetry, and writing memoir, and what the therapeutic benefits of full confessional articulation can be.While countless people affirm that this book was a lifeline during a time in which recovery resources for child abuse survivors were rare, there are substantial problems with the book's method, claims about memory, dodgy sources, and endorsement of outright Satanic Panic propaganda. Show NotesControversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome FoundationThe Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual AbuseTruth and reconciliation Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions Why The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List | HealthyPlaceCreating Hysteria 25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014
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Welcome, everybody, to Swan Song series number nine, The Courage to Heal, part one.
Julian, we're back singing the Swan Song, getting close to the end here.
We have had a lot of appreciative comments on this series, and then one or two saying, I'm getting some teal swan fatigue, which I think is totally understandable.
So, how are you holding up?
Just in general, with everything we cover, it does happen that every four or five months I just get leveled by the stuff that definitely happened toward the end of last week.
It can be emotionally exhausting and mentally preoccupying.
When I notice that's happening and I realize it, if I rest and change gears for a while, my appetite predictably returns.
I'm really quite proud of what we've done with this series, mapping out the historical and perhaps cultural and literary and cinematic features of this time period that gives rise to Teal Swan and other influential figures of her generation.
It's like we're in the We're exploring the roots of spiritual influencer culture and how that sort of turns into conspirituality.
So, yeah, I would say, I'm not sure if someone's feeling fatigue with it, I respect that and I understand it.
I'm just not sure it's so much about Teal Swan because we've been excavating so many of the underlying tunnels.
Yeah, and turning now today, we are going to cover the form, the content, and the impact of an extremely influential book in this zone that was first published in 1988.
I don't have sales numbers for it.
I have a source who wasn't able to track them down as of the time of recording, but I'll post them to the show notes when I get them.
I can say that in the Sort of, you know, buzz around the work that people will say that hundreds of thousands of lives have been changed.
One of the authors in her preface to the fourth edition released in 2008.
She says that this has changed millions of lives.
So, it has sold in a big way, which it would have to for four editions, including a much revised 20th anniversary edition in 2008.
You have to wonder what the percentages would be on those unknown numbers, right?
So that if it's changing millions of lives, What percentage of the people who read it had their lives changed?
And then what does that translate into?
Does that mean tens of millions of copies have sold?
Oh, right.
Supposedly, yeah.
Unless everyone who reads it has their life changed by it.
Yes, for good or ill, right?
Yeah.
As we'll see.
As we'll see.
So, we should say off the top that all of the standard trigger warnings are on high alert for this episode because we'll be talking about some very difficult things because we're reporting on a very difficult book.
Now, the authors are Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.
Uh, The Courage to Heal was not a standalone text.
In 1990, Davis also published The Courage to Heal Workbook, which provides step-by-step guidance in memory mining and disclosure of experiences of child sexual assault.
Both authors were, at the time of publication, creative writing instructors.
Both authors still work as creative writing instructors.
The basic premise of The Courage to Heal is that memories of childhood abuse, especially child sexual abuse, can be recovered and articulated by survivors who are given the proper space, tools, community, and validation.
And the book explores how this can happen and be facilitated within the context of journaling, writing poetry, and writing memoir, and what the therapeutic benefits of full confessional articulation might be.
In the words of one reviewer of both books, writing in the American Psychological Association Journal in 1991, quote, as the Bible for many recovering alcoholics is one day at a time, I believe that one or both of these books will become the Bible for recovering child sexual abuse survivors.
Perhaps the book already has.
Let me just underline this.
You're saying the Courage to Heal proposes that creative writing is a reliable method for uncovering repressed child sexual abuse memories.
That's big on the face of it.
I want to also make sure we clarify here, when you said step-by-step guidance in memory mining, that's your phrase, not It is.
It is.
Mining is my phrase.
I mean, the practice or the discipline that emerges in relation to books like this is called recovered memory, right?
I want to tread really carefully with this episode because at least two things are disturbingly true at the same time when we're talking about this book.
So, number one, without a doubt, countless people, mostly women, describe this book as having powerful positive impacts on their lives.
They describe finding it at a time in which they were trying to make sense of the shameful and traumatized after-effects of familial abuse.
They describe it relieving loneliness, providing validation, and holding out the promise of a community and eventually a society in which the internal and external taboos against speaking the truth of one's condition seem to finally lift.
I've got one anonymous reflection from a colleague I'm going to get to at the end of part two, where what they say is that, quote, I think this book saved lives, unquote, because it was a lifeline for those who believed they were alone and because it dropped into their lives at a vulnerable time when no other resources were available or even conceivable.
And in the case of this colleague, it dropped into their lives.
at a transitional moment before they were able to access licensed therapy.
Now, here's the second thing that's true about this book.
Bass and Davis created a doorway between the needed and legitimate psychotherapy of recovery and the stressful and feverish realm of exaggeration that can lead to moral panics.
They are writing instructors, let me underline that, not mental health practitioners or forensic psychologists.
And if you are looking for the most impactful story or poetry because that's your job as an instructor to help people develop such things, you may find yourself promoting versions of events that reflect your desires more than they reflect reality.
And acting out of the rigid ideological assumption that the memories of their students and mentees must be accurate, Bass and Davis fated their book to equalize all stories and relativize all evidence.
And the result is the simultaneous promotion of resources that present wildly different standards of integrity, including the braiding together of New Age and Buddhist self-help literature with books like Suffer the Children by Judith Spencer, which is firmly in the category of Michelle Remembers.
Unfortunately, when criticized for their inclusion of satanic ritual abuse as a category they were helping people remember truly in detail, they kind of doubled down, but not with any evidence that ritual abuse or satanic ritual abuse was real, but with the insinuation that those who asked for evidence may themselves be attempting to cover up the reality of satanic ritual abuse.
Oh wow, well this is where we see how, even with the best of intentions, one can, through a sort of flawed epistemology and identification with a message that you're spreading, sort of lean into that telltale cultic and conspiracist style of arguing, right Matthew?
It's kind of that Kafka trap where If someone questions the evidence for a core belief that you're promoting, then that's actually evidence that the belief is true and that perhaps the person asking really has, you know, loyalties to sort of keeping the lid on this, keeping the cover up in place, which is really disturbing and wild.
You know, I had not remembered this, that there's a legitimizing and a kind of I don't know, sort of sharing of some kind of legitimacy or mainstream sense of holistic or integrative mental health by being associated with Buddhist texts and self-help texts and that whole field where you have people like Jack Kornfield, for example, becoming quite popular.
