RC AND WORKING ON EARLY SEXUAL MEMORIES -
A PERSONAL REFLECTION
Introduction
I practiced Re-evaluation Counseling for several years. Some of what I learnt was very good. I learnt to understand my emotions better, I learnt good listening skills, and I learnt about how oppression works in the world, and how to change it. The benefits, to both my personal life and my work as a teacher, have been substantial.
However other things I did in Re-evaluation Counseling were detrimental, and one of these was Working on Early Sexual Memories (or ESM as it is called in RC jargon). RC theory holds that society as a whole has distresses about sex that hurt everybody as children, and that continue to effect our lives as adults even if we are not aware that we are affected. These distresses need to be "discharged". Everybody doing RC is encouraged to "work on ESM" (although not during the introductory fundamentals classes). However some people are encouraged to spend more time doing it than others. Lesbian and gay people are encouraged to do a lot of it; in fact it is impossible to be involved in the gay liberation part of RC without doing ESM.
What does "Working on ESM mean"?
I was first introduced to ESM work at a lesbian workshop. I had been doing RC for a year at this time. The workshop lasted for a weekend, and three or four times during this weekend we had to stand in a group of four people called an ESM support group. In turns, we each had to answer the question "What is your earliest memory of connected with sex in any way?" We were told to answer with the first thing that came into our heads, even if it was not connected with sex, even if we thought it was not true. Once we had described a memory the counselor would ask us to fill it out a bit more, they would ask questions such as "What can you see? Can you hear anything? (Note the use of the present tense here) How old are you? Is there anybody else in the room? After we had described the situation we then scanned it for "distress", the aim being to "discharge" it. If there was someone touching us for example, the counselor might tell us to shout at that person to go away, or to hit them. There are lots of ways one does it in RC but when I started doing ESM the fashion was to pretend the counselor was someone from your childhood and to repeatedly hit them on the upper arm until you burst into tears.
Some people counsel for years about their earliest memory about sex and never remember anything. This is still counted as "releasing distress" however and one is not supposed to give up. But I have always been blessed with a vivid imagination and my mind went wild. At the beginning of the weekend I had no early memories connected with sex, and by the end I remembered being sexually abused. Listening to other people's memories of abuse in my support group aided this process. After the workshop was over, in order to make sense of this memory, I joined a support group of people who were "working on sexual abuse". In fact they were all working on incest memories and I soon started to do so too.
A very quick progression then, from "earliest memory connected to sex in any way" to sexual abuse, to incest.
The effects of working on ESM
People are suppose to notice all sorts of improvements in their lives when they start working on ESM. If I was an anthropologist I would say that "working on ESM" is a kind of initiation rite that makes one feel part of the RC community. The process is painful but the aftermath is going to be wonderful. I looked for improvements in my life and therefore found them. Most of the people I admired in RC were working on ESM, and I now felt part of them, no longer a beginner.
In my personal life however, I became very disoriented. I began to get memories of being sexually abused as a child continually. I wasn't able function at work or at home. I was desperate and naturally sought help within the RC community. There wasn't any. I was told that sexual abuse memories were not a big deal, that I shouldn't "counsel outside my session" and was supposed to stay "in present time" until the next support group meeting in two weeks time. I felt inadequate because I couldn't measure up to these standards but my situation was so acute that I sought crisis counseling with a professional therapist outside RC. I continued therapy only until I was able to "stay out of my distress" between RC sessions and then returned to full time RC.I felt guilty that I had had to see a therapist because RC didn't approve of therapy, but in fact I knew several other people who did the same thing.
There is a strange paradox about RC theory on ESM. On the one hand distress around sex is supposed to effect all areas of our lives, like "the icing on a cake" that covers everything. On the other hand sexual abuse is not an issue that one should make a fuss about. It happens, you discharge and clean it up, and it's gone. A desensitizing process goes on in ESM support groups and workshops. One listens to and tells horrific stories for a set period of time, then one "comes back to present time" by blithely saying what one is looking forward to and playing a silly game or singing a song. Although the process is called "re-evaluation counseling" there is in fact no space allowed for re-evaluation of the experiences just recalled and no time given to reflect upon them. I was once told that wanting to spend time by oneself at a workshop was distress. I found that continually flicking backwards and forwards between a horrific past and a superficially happy present numbed my feelings. I was unable to respond emotionally when I heard about sexual abuse in "the wide world". This is called "not getting restimulated".
I now think that is a normal human reaction to be upset or "restimulated" when one hears that someone one cares about has been sexually abused.
ESM and abusive counseling
Because of the sensitive nature of ESM, participants at an ESM workshop are open to abuse by unaware leaders. At one workshop I went to the leader suggested that a participant should give up taking asthma drugs for a weekend and counsel on the memories that came up whilst having an asthmatic attack. On another occasion a woman had come along to the workshop because she wanted to work on being gang raped as a teenager. The workshop leader said that a lot of her distress about the rape didn't come from the gang rape at all but from her earliest experience of sex, and made her counsel on that all weekend (even though she couldn't remember anything significant).
ESM and "attacks"
Because the effects of ESM are supposed to manifest in all areas of life, ESM becomes very convenient term for the RC hierarchy to manipulate. Someone who criticizes RC is called an attacker, and attackers are people who are "stuck in their distress" about ESM. I have been told that I needed to do more work on ESM when I challenged the policy that homosexuality is distress.
False Memories?
Because of the media hype around false memories, RC policy has had to alter its thinking about ESM slightly. When I started counseling on ESM it was assumed that the memories that a person was recalling had actually happened in reality. Now it is said that they may not actually be "true" and RCers are not advised to use a recalled memory as any kind of "evidence" that sexual abuse really occurred. It is not important whether it has really occurred or not. However counselors are still advised to try to recall their earliest sexual memory in order to "discharge" even if it may not have really happened.
I find this suggestion horrendous. Encouraging people to create what may be false memories is highly irresponsible. It is important for an individual to know if what they remember is correct or not. The RC goal of "discharge" has become more important than an individual's sense of self. I need to know my own history; there are surely better ways to work on old hurts than through the creation of false memories. I need to know if I can let a child be alone with the person that I remember abusing me. Or is it not supposed to matter? If anything happens they can just discharge it off afterwards?
As it is I don't know if the memories that I recalled whilst doing ESM were true or not. But I suspect more and more that they were not.
Invasive Counseling
Even if I have been sexually abused as a child, the way in which I have been encouraged to work on it in ESM is inappropriate. I once read that Harvey Jackins does not recommend hypnosis because it brings up memories that have been suppressed for a reason, because the person is not yet able to emotionally deal with them. The same could be said for ESM work. Asking someone repeatedly "What is your earliest memory connected to sex in any way?" can touch very deep sensitive things. It's like pressing on a nerve, all sorts of things can happen to the body, and all sorts of terrifying images can arise. So when a person in an ESM support group thinks that her counselor is attacking her, and breaks free of the group and runs outside into the street in front of a car (as happened at a workshop I was at) the problem is not that she lacks "balance of attention". It is that she has been physically invaded by being repeatedly asked to remember ESM.
If people want to counsel on ESM whilst doing RC that is their choice. But they should never be required or manipulated to do it. (And by saying that counselors will "re-emerge" faster if they do ESM, RC is manipulating them).
Irrespective of whether a memory is true or not, it is also invasive counseling to be required to "discharge" it. The client should not have to follow the direction of the counselor. They should not be told they have to hit pillows, or push people, or shout or cry. Counseling like this is crude. It implies that the body operates like a machine. Push a certain button and you will get a certain response. It is linear simplistic thinking. Real sexual healing is deeper than this and more holistic. If people want to explore sexual memories they should be allowed to proceed in their own fashion
ESM and the "wide world"
HJ is suspicious of the study of psychology, popular or academic. He has written that RC theory is free from the influence of psychology and he does not want distressed ideas from the "wide world" to come "creeping" into RC. When healing from childhood sexual abuse became a popular movement in the 1980's (with the publishing of books such as The Courage to Heal) RC took a stand against it, claiming that RC work on ESM was superior.
Whilst books such as The Courage to Heal place an emphasis on "confronting" one's former sexual abuser, RC placed an emphasis instead in seeing the human being behind the abusive pattern and loving them. And whilst such literature encouraged people to see themselves as "survivors" of sexual abuse (as opposed to victims) RC discouraged the use of such identities.
In these respects I think RC actually did have some valuable insight to offer. But in my case the situation was rather ironic. After two years of doing ESM I started to work on "giving up my identity as an incest survivor". An identity I probably never would have had if I had not done ESM!
* * * * * *
I stopped doing RC intensively a few years ago and stopped doing it for good a year ago. Even though I had stopped I still found it difficult to stop seeing everything in the world from an RC perspective and felt tortured by the thought that I was "stuck in my distress". When I found the Liberate RC site I didn't so much "discharge" as cry tears of relief for finally finding some opinions that matched my own.
A dedicated RCer, on reading this article, will conclude that I was practicing ESM incorrectly. The leader I had was stuck in distress; I should have been doing it in a bigger group, a smaller group, more often, less often. Maybe I got confused because I went to therapy as well, etc. My reply to this is that these details are not so important.
The real issue is that nobody should be placed in a position where they are required to remember, and "discharge" their earliest sexual memories in the hope of "re-emergence."
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