Michelle Remembers
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| Author | Lawrence Pazder & Michelle Smith |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | published as an autobiography, since discredited |
| Publisher | Pocket Books |
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Publication date
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November 1, 1980 |
| ISBN | |
Michelle Remembers is a book published in 1980 co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife) Michelle Smith. A best-seller, Michelle Remembers was the first book written on the subject of Satanic ritual abuse and is an important part of the controversies beginning in the 1980s regarding satanic ritual abuse and repressed memory. The book has subsequently been discredited by several investigations which found no corroboration of the book's events, while others have pointed out that the events described in the book were extremely unlikely and in some cases impossible.
Michelle Remembers chronicles Pazder's therapy in the late 1970s with his long-time patient Smith. In 1973 Pazder first started treating Smith at his private psychiatric practice in Victoria, British Columbia. In 1976 when Pazder was treating Smith for depression (related to her having had a miscarriage), Smith confided she felt that she had something important to tell him, but could not remember what it was. Shortly thereafter, Pazder and Smith had a session where Smith screamed for 25 minutes non-stop and eventually started speaking in the voice of a five-year-old. Over the next 14 months Pazder spent over 600 hours using hypnosis to help Smith recover alleged memories of Satanic ritual abuse that occurred when she was five in 1954 and 1955 at the hands of her mother (Virginia Proby) and others, all of whom Smith said were members of a "Satanic cult" in Victoria.
The book documents Smith's memory of events recovered during therapy, documenting the many satanic rituals she believed that she was forced to attend (Pazder stated that Smith was abused by "the Church of Satan," which he states is a worldwide organization predating the Christian church). The first alleged ritual attended by Smith took place in 1954 when she was five years old, and the final one documented in the book was an 81-day ritual in 1955 that summoned the devil himself and involved the intervention of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Michael the Archangel, who removed the scars received by Smith throughout the year of abuse and removed memories of the events "until the time was right." During the rites, Smith was allegedly tortured, locked in cages, sexually assaulted, forced to take part in various rituals, witnessed several murders and was rubbed with the blood and body parts of various murdered babies and adults.
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