You Must Be Dreaming

This is a great book. Really fascinating. Entertaining and thought provoking. A page turner. Highly recommended.

I re-read this book recently, together with Jules Masserman's "Sexual Allegations and Social Turmoil". I had been convinced by it when it first came out but in view of recent studies of false memories and Richard McNally's "Remembering Trauma" doubts now arise. It is very well written - far better than Masserman's book. Reading it this time I concluded that Noel's recovered memories of childhood [physical] abuse were obviously [not real]. She was duped again. Masserman was his own worst enemy. His line of defense was "if Jules Masserman does it, it had to be right" accompanied by grandiose parading of his credentials. He denied ever taking female patients out on his boat after having admitted to it under oath. I was not impressed by the fact that the accusations against him were multiple. This happened in the Barbara Kelly Michaels case and the Salem Witch Trials. It does not, in fact, look as if any court was ever convinced of the [physical contact] allegations, but his treatment methods were so far out of line as to constitute malpractice. It's as if he considered such a mundane matter as keeping a record of administering sodium amytal injections beneath him. He behaved as if he were still in the sixties, when prominent psychanalysts dominated psychiatry and there was no such thing as evidence-based practice.

Wow -- great book. The author goes to a very eminent psychiatrist for emotional and marital problems. At first it seems the doctor is just "controlling," demeaning, and manipulating her life. He also starts giving her the barbituate Sodium Amytal during office visits, which he claims will help her remember past hurts. After 18 years and $100,000 of treatment, she comes out of an Amytal session earlier than expected with the doctor raping her. How will this life-long intimidated woman respond, especially when a number of those she turns to are sure she must have imagined or "dreamed" the rape, and an equal number are afraid to cross the famous psychiatrist? A compelling story of a woman whose early life history set her up for continuing domination and abuse by the psychiatrist she turned to for help.