Podcasts/Sacred Tension-Grey Faction Evan AndersonMASTERED93cog

Grey_Faction_Evan_AndersonMASTERED93cog SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, therapist, satanic panic, memory, repressed memory, satanic ritual abuse, therapy, abuse, claims, recovered, podcast, presentations, conspiracy theory, long, happened, talking, iss, faction, multiple personality, idea SPEAKERS Stephen Bradford Long, Evan Anderson

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Stephen Bradford Long 01:01 This is sacred tension, the podcast about the discipline of asking questions. My name is Steven Bradford long and we are here on the rock candy Podcast Network. For more shows like this one, go to rock candy recordings.com In this episode, I speak with Evan Anderson, Director of gray faction. Gray faction is an educational and advocacy organization whose mission is to protect mental health patients and their families from dangerous pseudoscience and discredited therapies. Particularly in the area of so called repressed memories. We discuss the resurrection of Satanic Panic and modern culture and how mental health professionals are carrying on the harmful practices that helped spark the original Satanic Panic in the 80s. And by the way, we do discuss mental illness and sexual abuse in this episode. If you find these topics difficult right now, I ask that you take good care of yourself, and you might want to skip this one. But before we get to the episode, I have just a few pieces of housekeeping first, as always, I have to thank my patrons. They really are getting me through this difficult financial time and they are ensuring the long life of this podcast. So for this episode, I have to thank Melanie Mobius Audrey, Katherine Megan, gutter sniper and Victoria. Thank you so much. You are my personal Lord and Savior. It's also I have to thank my amazing discord community. So the vast majority of conversation about my work my podcast and my blog take place on my Discord server. And sometimes it isn't enough to just listen to a podcast sometimes sometimes you need community sometimes you need to be around like minded people. So if you would like to join my Discord server and engage in the conversation, there is a link in the show notes. I would love to have you on board. There are other ways to support this show. One of the best ways is to just subscribe wherever you listen, that tells our digital overlords that the show was worth recommending to others. But one of the best ways is to leave a five star review on Apple podcasts. So I'm going to read a five star review right now. gazella left this review amazing far reaching podcast. Thank you so much for the time you put into your podcast, you navigate so many topics and have wonderful guests. I joined TST just prior to the pandemic so I came across it. I've been remodeling my parents house by myself since August and your conversations have been so enjoyable, especially being by myself so much. Five stars. Well, that is an incredibly sweet review. I am so delighted that I can give you company while you remodel your parents house. Also, this show is sponsored by the satanic temple.tv The Satanic temple.tv is a streaming platform for Satanists and those who ally themselves with satanist if you find yourself interested in new religious movements, ritual, live streams lectures, Satanic Panic stuff, all kinds of interesting content is going on over at the satanic temple.tv And with my promo code sacred tension all caps no space you get your first month for free. Finally I have to welcome the newest member of the sacred tension team. Dante aka llama boy is my new intern he is a student in audio engineering and I will be training him in how to produce podcasts. So this episode is his very first that he edited for me and so if you like how this episode sounds, that is all Dante and I'm super proud of him and I'm looking forward to doing more episodes with them. All right, well, with all of that out of the way, I give you my conversation with Evan Anderson of gray faction. Evan Anderson, welcome to the show.

Evan Anderson 05:11 Thank you for having me.

Stephen Bradford Long 05:12 So you are the director of gray faction. And you know, I interviewed the previous director of grief action, along with Shelley's Blythe. So Sara ponto, Rivera and Ashley's Blythe, I think like three years ago, but that was back when I was still figuring out how to podcast. And so I was still figuring out sound quality and all of that stuff. And I wanted to bring you on to have a conversation again, about the work of grey faction, the ongoing work of grey faction, pseudoscience, Satanic Panic, satanic ritual abuse, etc. But before we get into that, could you just tell us some about who you are and the work that you do?

Evan Anderson 05:53 Sure. So I'm Evan Anderson, I've been the director of gray faction for about three years now, I have a background in psychology, I have both a bachelor's and a master's degree. In psychology, I've worked a little bit sort of in the social work field, including as a, as an outreach worker for people with severe mental illness in the Boston area. And around them was when I actually came across the Satanic Temple, I think I heard about or read about the pink mass first, I think that was my first introduction to DSD. But in any case, somehow or other, I learned about TSD and started looking into different lectures and stuff. And of course, if you look into TST lectures, it's only it's only so long before you come across gray faction. And some presentations that Lucien and Sarah have have delivered in the past. And right away, I was like, this is this is fascinating, I can't believe this is going on. And also a lot of the people that they talked about in these presentations who have been subjected to recovered memory therapy, and basically had their lives destroyed. I saw in my own clients with mental illness, a lot of similarities that these people that I, you know, sure it's a job. But I also obviously cared about those people quite a lot. And the idea of a basically careless, or sort of male practicing therapist, using them for their own ends, to fulfill their own conspiracy theories really kind of hit home for me. So I knew I had to get involved. So

Stephen Bradford Long 07:28 what is it that that gray faction does? And and well, maybe we should back up first and talk about the conspiracy theory of satanic ritual abuse and how that relates to the mental health field.

Evan Anderson 07:47 Yeah, so the idea of satanic ritual abuse really took off in the 80s, primarily in the United States, but it also spread to some other countries as well. The idea was that there was this widespread fear beginning in around 1980, that there were these sort of ubiquitous satanic cults abducting children and abusing them in these bizarre rituals, including cannibalism, blood drinking, infant sacrifice, animal sacrifice, all sorts of horrific stuff. And that, you know, basically, these members of these satanic cults existed in every neighborhood around the country. And they were basically hiding in plain sight. So they had infiltrated every sort of institution in society, the police, the FBI, schools, daycares everything. And that's how they were getting away with their crimes they were they were in positions of power, so that they could cover it all up. And that's the reason there was absolutely no evidence for any of this. So there were there were all these sort of court cases that sort of brought in these satanic ritual abuse elements into the case and eventually kind of fell apart that kind of whole, the whole panic as a whole fell apart once it was realized that there's not too much not any evidence really at all for the satanic cults. And it took quite some time for that, to for that to come about. And you know, in the meantime, there were people going on these talk shows claiming to have been victimized by satanic cults, there were therapists going on claiming to have patients victimized by these satanic cults, and not helping at all were these people going on claiming to be former high priests of the Church of Satan who Yeah, we did all these things, by the way, type of thing. So really, there was a lot going on, but that's kind of the general overview of the satanic ritual abuse hysteria, which is usually called the Satanic Panic. Yeah. And

Stephen Bradford Long 09:38 you know, it devastated people's lives. It was a multi Nash it was an international thing, you know, it went through England went through Canada, you know, and, and I think what's so scary about the Satanic Panic looking back on it is The way in which it had institutional support, right, the way in which it got into government, it got into these really venerable institutions, and had the power of these institutions behind them behind it. And that that, I think, is what's scary about it. And now, but while it might not have that same degree of institutional power, Satanic Panic, delusions, have gone just went underground, right, they went underground, and it's still being practiced. And I and I would actually be interested to hear your perspective on this, I think we're seeing something of a resurgence of panic stuff, like with Q anon and so on. Maybe not with the same, maybe not with the same level of institutional power. But we now have Q anon people in Congress, you know, we now have Q anon people in the government, we hone in some on the work of gray faction, and also maybe maybe explain the relationship of gray faction to the Satanic Temple, you know, how does, how does gray faction fit within the context of the Satanic Temple?

Evan Anderson 11:13 Sure, so great faction is a campaign of the Satanic Temple and in some ways that actually predates tst. So Lucien had been doing a lot of this work, you know, getting back to like 2005, maybe even earlier, he had started going to some of these mental health conferences where the satanic ritual abuse stuff was being talked about, where you could buy a literal tinfoil hat and, and enjoy it and still enjoys some institutional approval, which, which we can get into. But that's, you know, the, the gray gray faction and its relationship to TST. Basically, we're dedicated to ending the ongoing Satanic Panic in the mental health field. And there is this sort of resurgence now in a very prominent way, the Satanic Panic never really ended, it just kind of went underground. So a lot of the people that were around for the Satanic Panic, who, in many ways, kind of were architects of it, whether intentionally or otherwise didn't lose, their licenses didn't stop practicing, didn't even necessarily change their tune on a lot of this stuff. They kept promoting it and their conferences kept, you know, having this this network of colleagues, where they all kind of support each other in this stuff and continue to see patients and continue to recover memories that support this Satanic Panic hysteria.

Stephen Bradford Long 12:34 So you just talked about recovered memory. And so let's let's discuss the key components here of Satanic Panic, because there are some key practices that these clinicians use. And there are some key claims, pseudo scientific, and conspiratorial claims that are really damaging. So talk some about the central claims and practices of Satanic Panic, I guess you could call I guess you could call it like a worldview or a methodology, Satanic Panic methodology, Satanic Panic, conspiracy thinking or whatever it is, you know, name some of those key components and why they're so it's

Evan Anderson 13:24 not just the therapy. It's a it's a lifestyle for some of these people.

Stephen Bradford Long 13:28 Yes, exactly. It's a religion. You know, I was actually just and we'll get to this in a bit. You know, I was reading the leaked conversations from the ISS TD that you sent me. And it sounds. I was like, This sounds like a religion. This sounds like not all religion is bad. You know, we're religious. We're Satanists. But it sounds like a dangerous religion. It sounds like a delusional religion.

Evan Anderson 13:51 Absolutely. So the lifeblood of the Satanic Panic is a pseudoscientific form of therapy, are really a category of therapy called recovered memory therapy. So the idea is, if you're traumatized severely enough, and maybe bizarrely enough, or you know, in a in a repeated fashion, your personality can sort of fracture and split into separate identities. And so there might be like a host personality. But then there's all of these altars. And the idea is that these altars each hold separate traumatic memories, in this example of satanic ritual abuse, and in order to access those memories and learned what happened, which these practitioners believe to be sort of the key factor in helping these people is, first figure out what happened to them. And you know, in that way, you integrate all of the personalities by integrating the memories. Now, the idea that something traumatic can happen to you and not only do you forget it, but you're actually calm Just slowly sort of suppressing or repressing memory of it is not something that you know, enjoys widespread scientific validity. But the idea is that a therapist has to utilize hypnosis or other methods to access those, those repressed memories, and figure out what happened to you. Now, this is the lifeblood of the Satanic Panic. Because without it, there wouldn't there wouldn't be a Satanic Panic at all people will go into therapy with things that pretty much all of us experience at some point in our lives, depression, anxiety, that sort of thing. But a therapist might be, if they're what we call a conspiracy therapist, they'll suspect that there's more to the story, there's more going on, you're not just struggling with work and life things, you actually had a much more traumatic childhood than you remember. And the therapist has to utilize these methods to uncover what happened to you and figure out what they think is the real story. So this is where the satanic ritual abuse stuff comes in. They basically hold this idea that the abuse was so bizarre, so severe that you can't consciously remember it, because to remember, it would be extremely debilitating. And in almost every case, this is the only evidence of the sort of satanic ritual abuse stuff is the recovered memories. Now, we know that recovered memories are false. In many cases, in probably all cases, there's there's some, some question there about whether recovered memories can be can be legitimate, or, you know, corroborated. And so far, there's, there's not much of a reason to think that but in any case, we know that you can recover false memories, people have recovered memories of alien abduction, or of living past lives, or have actually completely supernatural things like Jesus literally appearing before them. So we know that, you know, recovering memories is is a dangerous practice. And even if, in some cases, you know, recovered memories can be based on real events. And again, there's not there's not any evidence to suggest that that's the case. But even if it were, it remains, it remains true that the practice of recovered memory therapy is extremely dangerous.

Stephen Bradford Long 17:08 So to recap, there are several key components of what makes a tannic panic and so I just listed them here in my notes, repair repressed memory. This idea that people can go through traumas so intense, that they repress it, and I guess what's so weird and wrong about this is that actually, the opposite tends to be true is like PTSD with PTSD is the exact opposite. You keep reliving it. Am I wrong about that? Like it makes no sense. And there's no evidence to back this up. Right. Right. And then the other component here is in order to, in order to surface those those memories of trauma. They use hypnotic regressive therapy is that the correct term hypnotic, regressive hypnotic therapy.

Evan Anderson 18:01 There's there's some different terms. And there's some different techniques also, like guided imagery, dream interpretation, and right of recovered memory therapy is sort of like, like an ideology, almost where you can utilize various forms of therapy. But if your goal is to recover memories, then that's recovered memory therapy, but it can be sort of applied in various contexts. So not just that hypnotherapy.

Stephen Bradford Long 18:25 So then, in addition to that, another key component is just claims of extravagant and bizarre and unverified abuse. And that's, that's kind of one of the pillars here that I see through this, and that I see in the modern ideations of this, like pizza gate and Q anon. just utterly outlandish and impossible claims of abuse. Right. unverified and, and, you know, extraordinary claims,

Evan Anderson 18:55 right. And in some cases, claims that are just very easily debunked, not only as a sort of common sense test where you're like, Okay, you know, this entire town of, you know, 1000 people was, was involved in this satanic cult, where it just doesn't pass the common sense test, but also where there's obvious sort of facts that, that dispute it. So for example, someone who claims that they were locked in, locked in a basement and subjected to a three month long, satanic ritual, but that person was in school during all of that. So things like that, things

Stephen Bradford Long 19:31 like that. And then And then the final component that I wrote down here is multiple personality. And so that's, you know, the idea that people suffer trauma so intense, that it fractures them, and it fractures their personality is like a defense mechanism. And, you know, I guess what's kind of sinister about this is that there is horrific abuse. Right, and and people and, you know, I think good and compassionate people have don't Want to discredit abuse? You know, we don't want to. We don't want to discredit people's experience of abuse and the reality is horrific abuse does happen. Absolutely. Usually. Usually within the the home, you know, usually usually it is an outsider's the vast majority, usually it's within the home, you know, and people do experience horrific abuse. And that's why that's why I wonder if this conspiracy theory is so sticky, because it it kind of preys on people's better angels. You know, we we want to hear people out, we want we don't want to discredit their pain and their trauma, and we want to believe victim. And that is, I think, why this is so malicious, and maybe why it stuck around for so long.

Evan Anderson 20:47 Absolutely. You know, it, it's a really test of how far are you willing to go to, to believe people who claim to be victims of abuse, there's no doubt that abuse occurs, horrific child abuse occurs, it's way too common. And we need to do a lot in that in that department. But when it comes to, you know, recovering memories of abuse, basically, the primary way that people argue against what we do, or try to denounce us is by saying that, you know, we're in denial of the extent of child abuse, that we just don't want to accept how bad things really are. But it's nonsensical, because the percentage of cases that involve recovered memories is so small, it's probably the very greatest, let's say it's 1%. Let's just say that I'm sure it's not. But let's say it's 1%. If we're in denial of the existence of child abuse, if that's our goal, what kind of denial is 99%? Acceptance, because we have no issue with the vast majority of cases that, you know, people claim to claim to be have been abused, they always remembered it, you know, we have no, nobody has any reason to doubt that necessarily, when people claim that, okay, but but given what we know about recovered memories, and false memories, and the propensity for this to happen, there is reason to be skeptical when these claims are based on recovered memories. So yeah, that's the only word called, you know, deniers of child abuse. But the reality is that that makes little sense. And in a way, a lot of these, a lot of these therapists are sort of, sort of in in denial, in a sense, because we often hear from people who had been abused as a child, and always remembered it, never forgot it, never repressed it, nothing like that. But then they go to see a therapist, and the therapist is, and we're talking specifically about this subsection of therapists, we obviously have no problem with therapists in general, with mental health care in general, just to make that clear, but people who have been abused go and see what we call a conspiracy therapist. And oftentimes, we see this over and over and over, it's not good enough for the therapist, they have to dig for more memories, they have to sort of convinced themselves and convinced their patient, that the abuse was far more severe, far more bizarre, and with far more episodes, and far more people than they remember. So in some sense, you know, you have people who are truly victims of abuse, who go into therapy, and, you know, end up with all of these false memories of abuse, which kind of muddies the water, right, if someone has, you know, 200, let's say memories of, of abuse that were, you know, recovered, it puts into question like anything else that they anything else that they claim with regards to abuse that happened during childhood, so they really muddy the waters and in some sense, they're in denial of, of the child abuse that actually occurs because oftentimes, it just isn't good enough for them.

Stephen Bradford Long 23:53 You know, I've had that experience I so if I may share some about my journey, I grew up in a charismatic, conservative Christian setting, and one of the things that they were really big on was, quote, unquote, inner healing. And a lot of that involves having demons cast out of people, quote, unquote, you know, a lot of that involves repairing memory and and inviting the loving presence of Jesus into traumatic memories and all that kind of stuff. But another component of this Wait, hold on, let me let the cat in. Because I just know that he will be banging on the door for this entire interview if I don't let him in. So one of the aspects of the inner healing thing was also repressed memory and I had that exact same experience, where where it's like it was never good enough. Like you couldn't just you couldn't just have trauma Ray had to have the most extreme and extravagant kind of trauma. And, yeah, it. And then when I raised concerns about this to people, to people who did this inner inner healing work, I was shouted down, right? And they said, so you don't believe people? So you don't believe people don't get abused? And I was like, No, of course I do. You know, and yeah. And you know that that was still when I was a Christian. That was years ago. I think that was like about 10 years ago now. But it's always stuck with me, of one of those kind of wake up moments that's always stayed with me. Before we move on, let's discuss some talks about the science of memory. And how recovered memory works. I mean, we probably don't fully understand that. But But what we know about memory, because I think a lot of people misunderstand the nature of memory. Yeah. So

Evan Anderson 26:03 one of the most important things is that memory does not work like a, like a videotape. Recorder, right? It's not a movie that you cannot pop into a DVD player and play back in, you know, and see something identical every single time memory is a reconstruction, every single time that you remember something, it's going to be slightly changed or even even massively changed. All of us have false memories. A great example, I think, is the Mandela Effect. Yeah. It still messes me up sometimes. The Berenstein Bears thing

Stephen Bradford Long 26:38 I remember speak speaking, speaking of which, I remember Nelson Mandela dying. Hmm. Like, I'm one of those people. Who was who would have sworn that Nelson Mandela had died up until his funeral. And then I was like, Wait, I thought he was already fucking dead. Like, I was one of those people who for some reason, was 100% Convinced that Nelson Mandela had died. Yeah,

Evan Anderson 27:04 it's very bizarre, but it's very common it is. So we have these false memories. And then we have the shared false memories, which is like, I don't know, people talk about parallel universes and stuff and whatever. And I'm sort of like, maybe there's something to that, because so many people are on the same page. But yeah, so yeah, false memories can and do happen to all of us. Often, oftentimes, they're not very consequential. But sometimes they are. When it comes to trauma, the science shows that the more traumatic something is, the more we're going to remember it. And you mentioned earlier PTSD, and that's a great example. It's an inability to forget what happened to you, it's intrusive thoughts about about what happened, you don't want to be thinking about what happened. But here it is, all of a sudden, you see something, or you smell something or whatever. And you're right back in the moment that that you were traumatized, they might wish that they could forget what happened to them. But they can't, that's sort of the science of traumatic memory. Now, there's more with like, something happens to you when you're extremely young, and you are too young to even form memories, you know, that's not repressing a memory, that's, you know, you're not probably even forming a memory in the first place. Or you're so young that you remember what happened, but you don't contextualize it or sort of categorize it in your mind as a traumatic event, because you might have just been so confused about what was going on. So you remember some strange things happening, but you're kind of like, you know, for a while you're, you know, you don't you don't know what it was? And then sometime you remember it, and you're like, oh, wow, that was a, you know, sexual abuse or whatever, right? That's not a repressed memory, either. It just recontextualize something, as you know, with an accurate understanding of what happened. And people do actually forget traumatic memories. It's not extremely common, but people will go periods of time, where they don't remember that something happened to them. But then suddenly, all of a sudden, they get a reminder. And oh, yeah, I forgot about that horrible thing that happened to me. That happens too. But that's not a repressed memory, because it immediately surfaces, right? There's nothing's forgotten memory. Exactly. There's nothing sort of pushing it down. Right? So when when we talk about repressed memories, and recovered memories, there's a lot of sort of conflation of all of these things. And an additional thing is sort of, say something traumatic happens that involves hitting your head, you might never form the memory of what happened at all. That's, that's extremely common, but oftentimes it gets conflated as a repressed memory, or maybe you you know, you formed a memory and later on you hit your head and then you forgot what happened. That's not a repressed memory, either. It's just you know, a concussion that you know, you'd lost the memory or whatever that happens all the time. So but the general idea is, the more traumatic something is the more persistent it is in your memory. You don't really forget it and you certainly don't repress them.

Stephen Bradford Long 30:02 So let's name a few. I am noticing this idea resurfacing and popular culture and I started noticing this several years ago I started noticing it and Netflix movies like The keepers. I you know, my partner and I we love. We love true crime and horror and that kind of stuff. And so we were watching the keepers. And a major part of that is recovered memory and repressed memory. And then also the rise of Teal Swan and the to the, the I forget the name of her coat, but the teal club, the teal is the teal something Yeah, the teal can feel like I forget, I forget I forget the name of it. But you know, Teal Swan rose to prominence by claiming that she had been horrifically sexually abused by by satanist in Utah. And a really popular podcast that I listened to also started talking about repressed therapy, repressed memories and, and that kind of stuff. And so there it's like in the Zeitgeist and maybe this is an maybe this is a sampling fallacy. Like maybe I'm, I'm seeing it because I'm, it's in my psyche. And I'm looking for it. Maybe it was always there. So this is very anecdotal, of course, but I'm noticing it, I'm noticing it in our culture. So there was real What do you think of that? By the way? Do you think that's true? Do you think it was always there? Or is it? Is it more prominent now? Like, it's, it might be hard to get a sense of that,

Evan Anderson 31:47 it is hard to say? Because once you learn about this stuff, you kind of see it everywhere, exactly. Like it couldn't, it couldn't have all of a sudden just started popping up. Yeah, you know, started reading about it, but you know, it, it makes for a very popular, very appealing plot device. So there have been movies. Yeah, exactly. It's spooky. It's very mysterious. It's, you know, sort of esoteric in that, like, you know, you'd need this therapist to come in and, and, you know, it's like, sort of an unlikely hero that's going to, you know, figure everything out it. Yeah, it's a very popular plot device. And, you know, I've even watched movies and shows where that's an important aspect of it. And I just kind of like, hold my nose, I guess a little bit over it. Like Mr. Robot was, I think, a great show, but involves, you know, repressed memory stuff. I don't know if it's more common now than it was I don't have any real sense of that. But yeah, it's a very popular plot device. And I'm not surprised at all that it's that it's still, you know, kind of consistently used, and even in these sort of true crime, podcasts and shows and stuff. You know, I suspect it is more common than it used to be. But again, I don't really have any data to back that

Stephen Bradford Long 33:02 up. I would be interested to hear back from my listeners on this actually, like, Have you have you encountered instances and pop culture, films, documentaries, television, podcasts, et cetera, et cetera, where repressed memory, the concept of that is, is surfacing. I would actually be really interested in hearing back from my audience about that you can post it on the website, Steven Bradford long.com. Or you can share that in my Discord server, like I'd actually be really, really interested to hear that I so let's pivot now to this recent leak. That happened with ISS TD, which sounds like a really complicated sexually transmitted disease, I have to say, it kind of is like a, a very complicated longer than usual STD. So first, what is what is the ISS TD? Why do we care? Yeah.

Evan Anderson 34:00 So the ISS city was founded sort of at the height of the Satanic Panic, I believe it was in 1984. It was founded as the International Society for the Study of multiple personality and dissociation, I believe, and it was founded by, you know, largely people who were promoting the Satanic Panic hysteria in one way or another. It's this mental health organization largely founded by psychiatrists and some others. And they, you know, have had ever since they're founded, the annual conference, where they deliver presentations and talk about all this stuff. Throughout the years, they've kind of been consistently the sort of center of the ongoing Satanic Panic in mental health. Unfortunately, they provide not only do they provide a platform for people talking about satanic ritual abuse, recovered memories and all that stuff. This is sort of the Center for it. This is this is where you go if you're a therapist interested in this stuff, right?

Stephen Bradford Long 34:59 Yeah. It's the think tank for ritual abuse bullshit.

Evan Anderson 35:04 Exactly. And they even have a special interest group. They have several special interest groups, but they have one that was called ritual abuse, mind control in organized abuse Special Interest Group, which they recently renamed as a sort of, sort of white washing of, you know, the conspiratorial terms. They now call it the organized and extreme abuse special interest group. And it's their largest and most active special interest group that's as they admit, in a letter that we can talk about. But, and this is where the sort of most prominent of the conspiracy theorists or conspiracy therapists kind of hang out a share their ideas. Yeah, it's so the istd every year. So it's now known as the International Society for the Study of trauma and dissociation. Every year still, they have an annual conference. And we've been to some of these presentations. So we know what goes on inside. They're promoting satanic ritual abuse, they're promoting hypnotherapy, they're promoting Illuminati mind control, ongoing CIA, MK Ultra experimentation, all of that stuff. And not only are they doing it at a ostensibly legitimate mental health conference, but they're enjoying continuing education credits for these presentations. So just background on that, if you're a licensed professional in all sorts of different professions, every couple years or so you have to renew your license. And conditional on that renewal, you have to complete a certain number of continuing education credits. Basically, it's a way to show that you're keeping up to date with what's going on in the field, you're attending presentations, or even delivering presentations, you can get credits for that. And so, you know, organizations like the American Psychological Association, kind of, in a sort of removed way, oversee these these presentations to make sure that they're like legitimate and scientific and not you know, kind of kooky but of course, when we're talking about the ICD they are, but they still enjoy continued education accreditation from the American Psychological Association. So that is an example of the sort of institutional approval that that persists when it comes to the Satanic Panic.

Stephen Bradford Long 37:13 So I have the letter, the internal letter for ISS TD right here, and go ahead and talk about this letter. And, and what this reveals.

Evan Anderson 37:23 Sure. So this leak was basically a bunch of posts within discussion, basically a forum inside the istd, where members can discuss various things. And of course, it was just filled with threads promoting the most bizarre conspiracy theories that we know they believe, because we've seen what these people have written before we've seen what they've talked about at these conferences and everything

Stephen Bradford Long 37:47 it was, it was wild. And I I just have to like interject and say, it was fucking wild reading this shit because and reading those threads, because I consider myself pretty well versed in conspiracy theory and and I feel like pretty immune to crazy and even I was like, This is fucking crazy. This is nuts, you know? So yeah, go out. It is truly, it is truly, genuinely insane in the fact that they get public recognition from from quote, unquote, valid institutions is all the more terrifying. So anyway, go on.

Evan Anderson 38:21 So yeah, we like these, these messages. Anybody interested in in reading into the crazy can find these documents that we have that are publicly available. If you if you find a press release about this, which came out on December 14, you can find links to the documents and everything.

Stephen Bradford Long 38:39 And I will, I will link that press release in the show notes. So awesome. So in for this episode, if you just look in the show notes, whatever player you are on, I will post a link near the top of the show notes and you can read the press release and in that press release will be the link to the Dropbox, where all of these leaks are perfect,

Evan Anderson 39:01 in addition to all of the just abject insanity at these threads. The kind of big story was that the ISD Board of Directors sent a letter to the special interest group formerly known as the ritual abuse mind control organized the new special interest group basically saying they made the unilateral decision to change the group's name. And the reason that they did this or the primary reason was that they're facing additional restrictions on court presentations that will be approved for continuing education credit. So it appears that they were informed by their continuing education sponsor, who is basically a middleman between the ISS CD and sort of the the American Psychological Association, the Association of Social Work boards. Basically these these sort of institutions that oversee these various professions are sort of the end authority on continuing education credit. So the middleman has to kind of answer to them about course content, basically the the middleman here in this case See learning. So that's called the they're the continuing education sponsor. They basically instituted this rule where they let the ISSC know, they're not approving any presentations about mind control anymore. So for whatever reason, they picked mind control and not also ritual abuse. But basically to sort of maybe cover their tracks a little bit, the ICD decided to change this special interest group name to remove the reference to mind control. And also, you know, they informed all the ISS 30 members, that they could no longer deliver presentations about mind control. However, the letter makes it very clear that this is sort of just a shift in the facade, that they're making it appear that they're abandoning these bizarre conspiracy theories. But if you, you know, look at the, the, you know, they're they're very clear that the discussions on the forum aren't going to change, they're not going to be told to alter their presentations at all to remove references to mind control, for example, in an even one case, and one thread, someone preparing for the 2021 conference admits to removing the term mind control from the presentation title and description, but that, you know, they're not going to remove references to mind mind control from the presentation itself, which their continuing education sponsor probably has no no idea about them doing. So this sort of dishonesty of them sort of shifting terms a little bit and kind of covering their tracks to make them appear legitimate is not new at all. They've done it kind of on several occasions, but we kind of have caught them red handed and doing it this time.

Stephen Bradford Long 41:40 So there is one particular line in this internal letter that I found particularly interesting, it reads the ISS TD is working towards becoming a c e accredited provider with APA and a s WB. So that we will have more autonomy and control over the approval sessions for CPE credit of our events, that's basically a very boring way of saying, We're doing this to try to to to gain more autonomy and power so that we can keep doing the bullshit that we're doing. Like is that basically what they're saying in that line?

Evan Anderson 42:17 Absolutely. Yeah, they're they're saying that they're getting rid of the middleman. They're, they're getting rid of their continuing education sponsor, as soon as they obtain their own continuing education, sponsorship approval from APA as web and anyone else. Now, they actually already have as web approval, I don't know when they obtained it, but I recently looked it up. And they sometimes since that letter, and a few days ago, they've obtained approval from a US web. So you know, our, our task now is to prevent them from becoming a continued education sponsor with with APA. And then

Stephen Bradford Long 42:49 once they do that, they can basically do whatever the fuck they want, yes, with, I mean, within reason, within reason, with Linda,

Evan Anderson 42:57 however, it doesn't necessarily, it might not necessarily be a good thing for them. It could be in the short term. But you know, as long as we're able to attend to these conferences, and can let the APA know what's being talked about inside of it, not only are these things being talked about at issb conferences, but the continuing education, sort of the responsibility for the presentations and reaching continuing education approval is also in the ICC these hands now if they obtain that approval. So that's kind of a double whammy a little bit where in the short term, it's great for them to have that autonomy over their own presentations. And what qualifies for credit, but longer term, it's probably not going to

Stephen Bradford Long 43:41 last Yeah, that makes sense. So how does mind control fit into this? Like that? That's one thing we haven't covered yet. Like, you know, memory, recovered memory, multiple personality claims of bizarre abuse, repressed memory therapy. We've covered all that. How the fuck does mind control fit into this?

Evan Anderson 44:02 Yeah, it's all sort of unified in, in what's called the Green bomb speech. So illusion knows much more about this than than I do. I've read the speech, but I don't recall you know, some years ago,

Stephen Bradford Long 44:16 how can how can we find how can we find this speech? Is there a way I can link to it in the show notes there's

Evan Anderson 44:21 a YouTube video that we have on our on our YouTube channel, great factions YouTube channel, which goes over this. I don't remember if that goes over the speech in full, but also, I think you can just Google it, and it comes up. I think there's like archived copies in various places. But this was a speech delivered by I believe he was a psychiatrist named de Corydon. Hammond, who basically you know, the gist of it is that there's this there was this Jewish Nazi doctor who came over from Germany.

Stephen Bradford Long 44:52 Pause Yeah. Wait, a Jewish Nazi doctor.

Evan Anderson 44:59 Yeah. Okay, love i Yeah, there's just all right. And that came over and I guess, shared his his techniques for creating mind control victims, basically the idea is, is that these groups, so the satanists, the CIA, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, which oftentimes for a lot of these people, they're all the same people, they kind of all have their own little spin on the conspiracy theory, or you know, who the perpetrators supposedly are. But it involves, you know, all these various usual perpetrators when it comes to conspiracy theories that these groups use torture based mind control. So not only are, you know, these strange rituals being done, the purpose of these rituals is to what they call program people into for use later on. It's like a Manchurian Candidate kind of thing. They brainwash people into becoming sort of their own automatons, right? Were they the sort of Illuminati or whatever can call on them later on to go and do their do their dirty work? Yeah, so you know, assassinate people, or whatever the, you know, the Illuminati needs, I guess. But, you know, this idea that with the torture comes the programming, you can trigger the programming with a certain word or something like that. And the person just becomes this sort of hypnotized robot ready to do whatever you want them to do. It could be recruit more victims, it could be, you know, commit some, you know, political sort of murders or something like that. That's really the idea. So is this like, kind of grand sort of unified conspiracy theory that pulls together the satanic ritual abuse, the CIA, MK Ultra mind control all of this stuff? And of course, it goes back to back to the Illuminati.

Stephen Bradford Long 46:55 So the reason one of the reasons why this is so dangerous, is, you know, let's just say, I find myself having a difficult year, I go through a breakup, I'm depressed, overworked at my job, what have you, and I decide to go get some therapy, I look up a therapist online, I booked that therapist, I go into their office and start having therapy with them. And I would have no way of knowing whether that therapist believed this stuff or not, and would end up pushing it on me. Right? And so you could end up leaving your therapy sessions with a head just full of delusion, and and very confused and very conflicted, because you go in, you know, needing help resolving whatever is going on in your life or talking through stuff or, you know, whatever. But you leave with like, these deeper, darker secrets, like, oh, there was, there's actually something more, it's actually there's actually something darker, there's something deeper, and that's what actually needs to be resolved. And that is incredibly destructive to people like that, that can destroy lives.

Evan Anderson 48:15 Absolutely, it does. And it has destroyed lives. Yeah, we hear from people all the time, who this has happened to. And the basic pattern is, yeah, like you said, you, you know, you're someone who, for whatever reason, are looking into getting a therapist, and you might do a little bit of searching on Psychology Today, for example, to see who's near you who's available, who takes your insurance, that sort of thing. They don't advertise that they're like proponents of satanic ritual abuse, necessarily. There are certain key words that some of them use that that are sort of red flags. And we have a how to find a therapist page on our website, also, that can help people look out for some of these signs. But yeah, you won't necessarily know until you're until you're there. And if you don't know what to listen for. If you don't know that they're, you know, digging around for memories of what happened to you, or, or you don't know that that's dangerous for them to do, then you can easily fall for this. And yeah, we hear from people all the time who go in for these normal sort of human symptoms of mental illness that all of us experience at some time or another and they end up believing their childhood was far more horrible than it was and they end up completely isolated from from their family, oftentimes from their friends as well. They often end up completely dependent on their therapists for everything. They mentally deteriorate in a horrible fashion, they often become suicidal, and they often lose a ton of money, people's insurance will stop covering these sessions, or the therapist doesn't accept insurance. So you're privately paying, and you go up to, you know, two hour long therapy sessions a week plus group therapy, and whatever else. It's horrific to see what happens to a lot of these people they, you know, go in looking for help with a simple thing, and they end up far far worse. than they were before. Yep.

Stephen Bradford Long 50:01 And you know, I've I've watched this happen in the Christian setting. And I've, I've watched people develop that kind of unhealthy dependency on their quote unquote therapist, and I've watched. Yeah, and it, it's really, really sad and really destructive. You know, I had a friend who went through this, back when I was in college. And she said, she started to believe that she was just way more messed up than she actually was. If she told me that she had multiple personalities, she would, quote unquote, hear different voices in her head telling her to do different things. And I pushed back, why didn't push back, but I asked her to clarify like, Oh, what do you mean by that? And what she said was, I was like, so do you hear them audibly? And she said, No, they're internal. And I was like, Okay, well, can you tell me more about that? And she said, Well, this, they just, you know, I just have like this a running verbal narrative in my head. And I, that's all you know, I just have this running verbal narrative, I hear words, you know, internally thinking about different things different, you know, desires, different, so on and so forth. And I was like, that's just being a human. That's just being a person. That's just an internal dialogue. And the more she talked, the more I realized, this really wasn't anything pathological. This really wasn't any. I was, like, I hear voices all the time. They tell me to eat an entire fucking pizza, when I showed it. Like, like a welcome to the human condition, like internal dialogue. Yeah. But but, you know, what had happened was the person she was working with, had taken normal human experiences, and pathologize to them. And, and encouraged her to reframe these diff, just the internal dialogue that she had as evidence of extreme family abuse. And that's, that's when I just turned on this shit really hard. That's when I feel like my eyes were really opened. And, and she, she experienced relief. When I talked to her about this. She was like, You mean, I'm not crazy? And I'm like, No, you're just human. Yeah, you're just human, I have that. We all have that. to varying degrees. That's normal. But you know that. And I had my own experience with this, because I went through ex gay therapy, which is a whole other conversation that we don't need to get into right now. But you know, an ex gay therapy, people, the narrative was, you are gay, because you were sexually abused? Yeah. Usually by someone close, right. And it's like, I was told that so many times, that I started to believe it. And it estranged me for my family. It estranged me and it never happened. And it destroyed so many of my relationships. So this stuff really, really is evil, it really is very, very destructive. And ruins lives.

Evan Anderson 53:34 Absolutely. And the tendency to see these people in positions of authority, really knowing what they're talking about knowing what they're doing, and having your best interests in mind is sort of the default, right? We want to believe people licensed by the state are providing good therapy and know what they're talking about. Even if we're kind of like, in the session, were kind of like, I don't that's kind of weird to me, but Okay, I'll go along with it. You know, the the sort of white coat startup phenomenon where these are the experts, right? Who am I to question the experts? Well, when you realize that sometimes they do not have your best interests in mind. Sometimes they even if they think they're doing the right thing. Sometimes they're not when you realize that that kind of, you know, sort of a light bulb goes off. There's a lot of bad therapy out there. And unfortunately, these sort of institutions that are supposed to be policing, this sort of thing, like the state licensing boards aren't doing it, they aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're not protecting the public. They're protecting their licensees. And this has made all the worse by the fact that there's a severe mental health shortage of therapists, there are people who cannot go and don't even have a therapist available that takes their insurance or whatever. There are people who can't afford it. There are just therapists that can't take on new clients, good therapists that can't take on new clients. It's really a tragedy. And if you do find a therapist, even if you do take the step to Do look up their license online, which you can do in any state can look up and see if they've had a disciplinary action taken against them by the licensing board. Even if you do take that sort of extra step, which probably almost nobody does, it doesn't mean that they haven't done anything wrong. Just because there's nothing there, plenty of these therapists that we're talking about, have never been disciplined have never been investigated, maybe even have never even had a complaint filed against them. Because again, we're talking about people in positions of authority over you know, vulnerable mental health patients and clients who believe that you know, that their therapist has their their best interests in mind when unfortunately, sometimes they don't. It's really a tragedy all around. Yeah,

Stephen Bradford Long 55:43 it really is. And for people who are interested in finding the work of gray faction and maybe reaching out if they have any experiences or if they're interested in learning more, where can they do that?

Evan Anderson 55:56 Absolutely. So our website is gray faction.org There's a contact us form that actually goes straight to straight to my email. So I will absolutely see it I read every email that we get even if it's hate mail. So yeah, feel free to contact me that way. Absolutely. If you've if you've experienced something like this, please feel free to share in confidence I'm not going to go and post your email in public or anything like that. We are contacted by lots and lots of people all the time and we we rarely actually you know, share their story but we are always interested in hearing from people we want to learn more about what's going on about how to stop it and yeah, so feel free to get in touch.

Stephen Bradford Long 56:36 Very good. Well this has been a great conversation and maybe we can do this again sometime.

Evan Anderson 56:41 Absolutely. I would love to Thanks for having me on my pleasure.

Stephen Bradford Long 56:44 Well that is it for this show. The music is by the jelly rocks and eleventy seven you can find them on iTunes Spotify or wherever you listen to music The artwork is by Rama Krishna Das and this show is written produced and edited by me Steven Bradford long and as always Hail Satan and thanks for listening

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