Is she now, or has she ever been… a feminist? read a certain book? self harmed?: The BFMS wanted to know.

The Telephone Information Sheet for the BFMS British False Memory Society has just been published online via a link on X. It appears that, amongst other things, the people who were felt themselves to be wrongfully accused were asked if their accuser was a feminist or not

Telephone information sheet for the British False Memory Society

They were also asked if the ”accuser” was religious, self harmed or had an eating disorder. They were asked a mysterious question about CTH. I couldn´t figure out what this was at first, but then I worked out that it stood for, ”Courage to Heal” , which was a book that they thought brainwashed people into having false memories of abuse.

It was also a bit disconcerting that they were gleaning information about hospital units and previous mental health hisotry, given they simultaneously asserted that their accusers had NO mental health history prioir to being brainwashed.

No such questions seem to have been asked about ther person claiming to be accused.

This information has been kindly placed online by a former advisory member to the BFMS

It´s attached to an article he has written claiming that,

 ”It should be remembered that the debate is not actually a war that is harmful in of itself—that was just a metaphor of a fierce debate that sometimes got personal between the debating sides”

Well if I remember right, it was the False Memory people who started the ´war´ analogy.

But why did the BFMS need to collect this kind of personal information in order to have a ”fierce debate”?

The article is by Felstead and Patihis and is called the British False Memory Society: Caseload and details by year (1993 onwards). It¨s published by the British Psychological Society in a journal called Legal and Criminal Psychology

The ”Archives for the Unexplained” in Norrköping

Inside the Archives for the Unexplained in Norrköping AFU

About a month or so ago I visited the ”Archives for the the Unexplained” in Norrköping, Sweden. (AFU. )This place used to be called the UFO Archive but now it deals with all things ”unexplained” and therefore they have changed their name. Their cataogue is available online and I¨d seen they had copies of the FMSF (False Memory Syndrome Foundation) newsletter and the BFMS ( British False Memory Society). So I was kind of curious.

Things to do with UFOs are not normally part of my world, so going there felt quite weird to be honest. I was a bit nervous too.

But I needn’t hve been, because the archivist called Anders and the other volunteers thay worked there made me feel very at home and I was offered coffee and doughnuts as soon as I came in the door. I told Anders I wanted to see some BFMS newsletters and followed hum down into the cellar to retreive them.

” We have more of the American ones” he explained.

”No thank you, I can see them online, I’d just like to look at the British ones”

We could have been discussiing cookbooks. It was so refreshing for me to be talking in a neutral way about thiings that have given me so much pain.

So we brought the newsletter up to the table with the coffee and doughnuts and looked through the contents. There was lots of interesting stuff there but for now I¨ve just put a few photographs at the end of this blogpost.

As I was leaviing Anders asked me where I was from as he couldn¨t place my accent. Was I from former Yugoslavia or Bosnia? That suprised me as most people can tell I’m British was soon as I start talking Swedish. But he hadn¨t made that connection. And therefore I realised he hadn¨t made any connection between me and the BFMS newsletters.

And with that it felt like some kind of string connecting me to the BFMS had been cut. I was no longer bound in some way. I had this strange feeling in my hands: It was as if yellow puss was flowing out of them, like they had been infected in some way. And that infection was now gone.

And then when I left the archive I signed their visitors book in my own name – without hiding behind a psuedonym.!

I also took some pictures of the river that flows through Norrköpng so I’m putting them here too

Tales from a false memory roadshow

A continuation of my previous blog at THE FALSE MEMORY TROPE COLLECTION – Page 2

One morning in early 1993 I opened a letter and read that I had something called False Memory Syndrome. Ironically I remember exactly where I was at the time, standing at a 45 degree angle next to the cooker in the kitchen looking out at the trees opposite.

I was used to getting letters from family members accusing me of being a terrible person – but this was on another level. The letter also said that there was no way I could remember things that had happened younger than a certain age -which was kind of weird because I had never told anyone that I had.

I was later told I was part of an evil cult, had been brainwashed and had also brainwashed others.

Being told you have a false memory from the people who you share your earliest memories with is a very weird experience. My life hasn’t been the same since – but it has been interesting and I have stories to tell about the people who claim that the memory of others is false. So welcome to a False Memory road show.