THE GREENBAUM SPEECH
Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse
Herein is the lecture by D.C.Hammond, originally entitled “Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse,” but now usually known as the “Greenbaum Speech,” delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality, Thursday June 25, 1992, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia.
Sponsored by the Center for Abuse Recovery & Empowerment, The Psychiatric Institute of Washington, D.C. Both a tape and a transcript were at one time available from Audio Transcripts of Alexandria, Virginia (800-338-2111). Tapes and transcripts of other sessions from the conference are still being sold but – understandably – not this one. The transcript below was made from a privately made tape of the original lecture.
The single most remarklable thing about this speech is how little one has heard of it in the two years since its original delivery. It is recommended that one reads far enough at least until one finds why it’s called “the Greenbaum speech.”
In the introduction the following background information is given for D. Corydon Hammond:B.S. M.S. Ph.D (Counseling Psychology) from the University of Utah, Diplomate in Clinical Hypnosis, the American Board of Psychological Hypnosis, Diplomate in Sex Therapy, the American Board of Sexology,
Clinical Supervisor and Board Examiner, American Board of Sexology,
Diplomate in Marital and Sex Therapy, American Board of Family Psychology, Licensed Psychologist,
Licensed Marital Therapist,
Licensed Family Therapist, State of Utah,
Research Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Utah School of Medicine,
Director and Founder of the Sex and Marital Therapy Clinic, University of Utah. Adjunct Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Utah Abstract Editor, The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis
Advising Editor and Founding Member, Editorial Board, The Ericsonian Monograph Referee, The Journal of Abnormal Psychology
1989 Presidential Award of Merit, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis
1990 Urban Sector Award, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis
Current President, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis
THE GREENBAUM SPEECH of D.C.HAMMOND’
We’ve got a lot to cover today and let me give you a rough approximate outline of the the things that I’d like us to get into. First, let me ask how many of you have had at least one course or workshop on hypnosis? Can I see the hands? Wonderful. That makes our job easier.
Okay. I want to start off by talking a little about trance-training and the use of hypnotic phenomena with an MPD dissociative-disorder population, to talk some about unconscious exploration, methods of doing that, the use of imagery and symbolic imagery techniques for managing physical symptoms, input overload, things like that. Before the day’s out, I want to spend some time talking about something I think has
been completely neglected in the field of dissociative disorder, and that’s talking about methods of profound calming for automatic hyper-arousal that’s been conditioned in these patients.
We’re going to spend a considerable length of time talking about age-regression and abreaction in working through a trauma. I’ll show you with a non-MPD patient – some of that kind of work – and then extrapolate from what I find so similar and different with MPD cases. Part of that, I would add, by the way, is that I’ve been very sensitive through the years about taping MPD cases or ritual-abuse cases, part of it being that some of that feels a little like using patients and I think that this population has been used enough. That’s part of the reason, by choice, that I don’t generally videotape my work.
I also want to talk a bunch about hypnotic relapse-prevention strategies and post- integration therapy today. Finally, I hope to find somewhere in our time-frame to spend on hour or so talking specifically about ritual abuse and about mind-control programming and brainwashing – how it’s done, how to get on the inside with that – which is a topic that in the past I haven’t been willing to speak about publicly, have done that in small groups and in consultations, but recently decided that it was high time that somebody started doing it. So we’re going to talk about specifics today.
[Applause]
In Chicago at the first international congress where ritual abuse was talked about I can remember thinking, “How strange and interesting.” I can recall many people listening to an example given that somebody thought was so idiosyncratic and rare, and all the people coming up after saying, “Gee, you’re treating one, too? You’re in Seattle”…Well, I’m in Toronto…Well, I’m in Florida…Well, I’m in Cincinnati." I didn’t know what to think at that point.
It wasn’t too long after that I found my first ritual-abuse patient in somebody I was already treating and we hadn’t gotten that deep yet. Things in that case made me very curious about the use of mind-control techniques and hypnosis and other brainwashing techniques. So I started studying brainwashing and some of the literature in that area and became acquainted with, in fact, one of the people who’d written one of the better books in that area.
Then I decided to do a survey, and from the ISSMP&D [International Society for the Study of Mulptiple Personality and Dissociation] folks I picked out about a dozen and a half therapists that I though were seeing more of that than probably anyone else around and I started surveying them. The interview protocol, that I had. got the same reaction almost without exception. Those therapists said, “You’re asking questions I don’t know the answers to. You’re asking more specific questions than I’ve ever asked my patients.” Many of those same therapists said, “Let me ask those questions and I’ll get back to you with the answer.” Many of them not only got back with answers, but said, “You’ve got to talk to this patient or these two patients.” I ended up doing hundred of dollars worth of telephone interviewing.
What I came out of that was a grasp of a variety of brainwashing methods being used all over the country. I started to hear some similarities. Whereas I hadn’t known, to begin with, how widespread things were, I was now getting a feeling that there were a lot of people reporting some similar things and that there must be some degree of communication here.
Then approximately two and a half years ago I had some material drop in my lap. My source was saying a lot of things that I knew were accurate about some of the brainwashing, but it was telling me new material I had no idea about. At this point I took
and decided to check it out in three ritual-abuse patients I was seeing at the time. Two of the three had what they were describing, in careful inquiry without leading or contaminating. The fascinating thing was that as I did a telephone-consult with a therapist that I’d been consulting for quite a number of months on an MPD case in another state, I told her to inquire about certain things. She said, “Well, what are those things?” I said, “I’m not going to tell you, because I don’t want there to be any possibility of contamination. Just come back to me and tell me what the patient says.”
She called me back two hours later, said, “I just had a double session with this patient and there was a part of him that said, ‘Oh, we’re so excited. If you know about this stuff, you know how the Cult Programmers get on the inside and our therapy is going to go so much faster.’”
Many other patients since have had a reaction of wanting to pee their pants out of anxiety and fear rather than thinking it was wonderful thing.
But the interesting thing was that she then asked, “What are these things?” They were word perfect – same answers my source had given me. I’ve since repeated that in many parts of the country. I’ve consulted in eleven states and one foreign country, in some cases over the telephone, in some cases in person, in some cases giving the therapist information ahead of time and saying, “Be very careful how you phrase this. Phrase it in these ways so you don’t contaminate.” In other cases not even giving the therapist information ahead of time so they couldn’t.
When you start to find the same highly esoteric information in different states and different countries, from Florida to California, you start to get an idea that there’s something going on that is very large, very well coordinated, with a great deal of communication and sytematicness to what’s happening. So I have gone from someone kind of neutral and not knowing what to think about it all to someone who clearly believes ritual abuse is real and that the people who say it isn’t are either naive like people who didn’t want to believe the Holocaust or – they’re dirty.
[Applause]
Now for a long time I would tell a select group of therapists that I knew and trusted, information and say, “Spread it out. Don’t spread my name. Don’t say where it came from. But here’s some information. Share it with other therapists if you find it’s on target, and I’d appreciate your feedback.” People would question – in talks – and say, you know, they were hungry for information. Myself, as well as a few others that I’ve shared it with, were hedging out of concern and out of personal threats and out of death threats. I finally decided to hell with them. If they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me. It’s time to share more information with therapists. Part of that comes because we proceeded so cautiously and slowly, checking things in many different locations and find the same thing. So I’m going to give you the way in with ritual-abuse programming. I certainly can’t tell you everything that you want to know in forty-five or fifty minutes, but I’m going to give you the essentials to get inside and start working at a new level.
I don’t know what proportion, honestly, of patients have this. I would guess that maybe somewhere around at least fifty percent, maybe as high as three-quarters, I would guess maybe two-thirds of your ritual-abuse patients may have this. What do I think the distinguishing characteristic is? If they were raised from birth in a mainstream cult or if they were an non-bloodline person, meaning neither parent was in the Cult, but Cult people had a lot of access to them in early childhood, they may also have it. I have seen more than one ritual-abuse patient who clearly had all the kind of ritual things you hear about. They seemed very genuine. They talked about all the typical things that you hear in this population, but had none of this programming with prolonged extensive checking.
So I believe in one case I was personally treating that she was a kind of schizmatic break-off that had kind of gone off and done their own thing and were no longer hooked into a mainstream group.
[Pause]
Here’s where it appears to have come from. At the end of World War II, before it even ended, Allen Dulles and people from our Intelligence Community were already in Switzerland making contact to get out Nazi scientists. As World War II ends, they not only get out rocket scientists, but they also get out some Nazi doctors who have been doing mind-control research in the camps.
They brought them to the United States. Along with them was a young boy, a teenager, who had been raised in a Hasidic Jewish tradition and a background of Cabalistic mysticism that probably appealed to people in the Cult because at least by the turn of the century Aleister Crowley had been introducing Cabalism into Satanic stuff, if not earlier. I suspect it may have formed some bond between them. But he saved his skin by collaborating and being an assistant to them in the death-camp experiments. They brought him with them.
They started doing mind-control research for Military Intelligence in military hospitals in the United States. The people that came, the Nazi doctors, were Satanists. Subsequently, the boy changed his name, Americanized it some, obtained an M.D. degree, became a physician and continued this work that appears to be at the center of Cult Programming today. His name is known to patients throughout the country.
[Pause]
What they basically do is they will get a child and they will start this, in basic forms, it appears, by about two and a half after the child’s already been made dissociative. They’ll make him dissociative not only through abuse, like sexual abuse, but also things like putting a mousetrap on their fingers and teaching the parents, “You do not go in until the child stops crying. Only then do you go in and remove it.”
They start in rudimentary forms at about two and a half and kick into high gear, it appears, around six or six and a half, continue through adolescence with periodic reinforcements in adulthood.
Basically in the programming the child will be put typically on a gurney. They will have an IV in one hand or arm. They’ll be strapped down, typically naked. There’ll be wires attached to their head to monitor electroencephalograph patterns. They will see a pulsing light, most often described as red, occasionally white or blue. They’ll be given, most commonly I believe, Demerol. Sometimes it’ll be other drugs as well depending on the kind of programming. They have it, I think, down to a science where they’ve learned you give so much every twenty- five minutes until the programming is done.
They then will describe a pain on one ear, their right ear generally, where it appears a needle has been placed, and they will hear weird, disorienting sounds in that ear while they see photic stimulation to drive the brain into a brainwave pattern with a pulsing light at a certain frequency not unlike the goggles that are now available through Sharper Image and some of those kinds of stores. Then, after a suitable period when they’re in a certain brainwave state, they will begin programming, programming oriented to self- destruction and debasement of the person.
In a patient at this point in time about eight years old who has gone through a great deal early programming took place on a military installation. That’s not uncommon. I’ve
treated and been involved with cases who are part of this original mind-control project as well as having their programming on military reservations in many cases. We find a lot of connections with the CIA. This patient now was in a Cult school, a private Cult school where several of these sessions occurred a week.
She would go into a room, get all hooked up. They would do all of these sorts of things. When she was in the proper altered state, now they were no longer having to monitor it with electroencephalographs, she also had already had placed on her electrodes, one in the vagina, for example, four on the head. Sometimes they’ll be on other parts of the body. They will then begin and they would say to her, “You are angry with someone in the group.” She’d say, “No, I’m not” and they’d violently shock her. They would say the same thing until she complied and didn’t make any negative response.
Then they would continue. “And because you are angry with someone in the group,” or “When you are angry with someone in the group, you will hurt yourself. Do you understand?” She said, “No” and they shocked her. They repeated again, “Do you understand?” “Well, yes, but I don’t want to.” Shock her again untill they get compliance. Then they keep adding to it. “And you will hurt yourself by cutting yourself. Do you understand?” Maybe she’d say yes, but they might say, “We don’t believe you” and shock her anyway. “Go back and go over it again.” They would continue in this sort of fashion. She said typically it seemed as though they’d go about thirty minutes, take a break for a smoke or something, come back. They may review what they’d done and stopped or they might review what they’d done and go on to new material. She said the sessions might go half an hour, they might go three hours. She estimated three times a week.
Programming under the influence of drugs in a certain brainwave state and with these noises in one ear and them speaking in the other ear, usually the left ear, associated with right hemisphere non-dominant brain functioning, and with them talking, therefore, and requiring intense concentration, intense focusing. Because often they’ll have to memorize and say certain things back, word-perfect, to avoid punishment, shock, and other kinds of things that are occurring. This is basically how a lot of programming goes on.
Some of it’ll also use other typical brainwashing kinds of techniques. There will be very standardized types of hypnotic things done at times. There’ll be sensory deprivation which we know increases suggestibility in anyone. Total sensory deprivation, suggestibility has significantly increased, from the research. It’s not uncommon for them to use a great deal of that, including formal sensory- deprivation chambers before they do certain of these things.
[Pause]
Now let me give you, because we don’t have a lot of time, as much practical information as I can.
The way that I would inquire as to whether or not some of this might be there would be with ideomotor finger-signals. After you’ve set them up I would say, “I want the central inner core of you to take control of the finger-signals.” Don’t ask the unconscious mind. The case where you’re inquiring about ritual abuse, that’s for the central inner core. The core is a Cult-created part. “And I want that central inner core of you to take control of this hand of these finger-signals and what it has for the yes-finger to float up. I want to ask the inner core of you is there any part of you, any part of Mary,” that’s the host’s name, “who knows anything about Alpha, Beta, Delta, or Theta.”
If you get a Yes, it should raise a red flag that you might have someone with formal intensive brainwashing and programming in place.
I would then ask and say, “I want a part inside who knows something about Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta to come up to a level where you can speak to me and when you’re here say, ‘I’m here.’” I would not ask if a part was willing to. No one’s going to particularly want to talk about this. I would just say, “I want some part who can tell me about this to come out.” Without leading them ask them what these things are. I’ve had consults where I’ve come in. Sometimes I’ve gotten a Yes to that, but as I’ve done exploration it appeared to be some kind of compliance response or somebody wanting, in two or three cases, to appear maybe that they were ritual abuse and maybe they were in some way, but with careful inquiry and looking it was obvious that they did not have what we were looking for.
Let me tell you what these are. Let’s suppose that this whole front row here are multiples and that she has an alter named Helen and she has one named Mary, she has one named Gertrude, she has one named Elizabeth, and she has one named Monica. Every one of those alters may have put on it a program, perhaps designated alpha-zero-zero- nine a Cult person could say, “Alpha-zero-zero-nine” or make some kind of hand gesture to indicate this and get the same part out in any one of them even though they had different names that they may be known by to you.
Alphas appear to represent general programming, the first kind of things put in. Betas appear to be sexual programs. For example, how to perform oral sex in a certain way, how to perform sex in rituals, having to do with producing child pornography, directing child pornography, prostitution. Deltas are killers trained in how to kill in ceremonies. There’ll also be some self- harm stuff mixed in with that, assassination and killing. Thetas are called psychic killers.
You know, I had never in my life heard those two terms paired together. I’d never heard the words “psychic killers” put together, but when you have people in different states, including therapists inquiring and asking, “What is Theta,” and patients say to them, “Psychic killers,” it tends to make one a believer that certain things are very systematic and very widespread. This comes from their belief in psychic sorts of abilities and powers, including their ability to psychically communicate with “mother’” including their ability to psychically cause somebody to develop a brain aneurysm and die. It also is a more future-oriented kind of programming.
Then there’s Omega. I usually don’t include that word when I say my first question about this or any part inside that knows about Alpha, Beta, Delta, Theta because Omega will shake them even more. Omega has to do with self-destruct programming. Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. This can include self-mutilation as well as killing- themselves programming.
Gamma appears to be system-protection and deception programming which will provide misinformation to you, try to misdirect you, tell you half-truths, protect different things inside.
There can also be other Greek letters. I’d recommend that you go and get your entire Greek alphabet and if you have verified that some of this stuff is present and they have given you some of the right answers about what some of this material is, and I can’t underline enough: DO NOT LEAD THEM. Do not say, “Is this killers?” Get the answer from them, please. When you’ve done this and it appears to be present, I would take your entire Greek alphabet and, with ideomotor signals, go through the alphabet and say, “Is there any programming inside associated with epsilon, omicron,” and go on through. There may be some sytematicness to some of the other letter, but I’m not aware of it. I’ve found, for example, in one case that Zeta had to do with the production of snuff films that this person was involved with.
With another person, Omicron had to do with their linkage and associations with drug smuggling and with the Mafia and with big business and government leaders. So there’s going to be some individualism, I think, in some of those.
Some of those are come-home programs, “come back to the Cult”, “return to the Cult” program.
Here’s the flaw in the system. They have built in shut-down and erasure codes so if they got into trouble they could shut something down and they could also erase something. These codes will sometimes be idiosyncratic phrases, or ditties. Sometimes they will be numbers maybe followed by a word. There’s some real individuality to that. At first I had hoped if we can get some of these maybe they’ll work with different people. No such luck. It’s very unlikely unless they were programmed at about the same point in time as part of the same little group. Stuff that I’ve seen suggests that they carry laptop computers, the programmers, which still include everything that they did twenty, thirty years ago in them in terms of the names of alters, the programs, the codes, and so on.
Now what you can do is get erasure codes, and I always ask, "If I say this code, what will happen?’ Doublecheck. “Is there any part inside who has different information?” Watch your ideomotor signals and what I’ve found is you can erase programs by giving the appropriate codes, but then you must abreact the feelings. So if you erase Omega, which is often where I’ve started because it’s the most high risk. Afterwards I will get all the Omega, what were formerly Omega alters, together so that we will abreact and give back to the host the memories associated with all the programming that was done with Omega and anything any Omega part ever had to do in a fractionated abreaction.
They use the metaphor – and it is their metaphor – of robots. and it is like a robot shell comes down over the child alter to make them act in robotic fashion. Once in a while internally you’ll confront robots. What I found from earlier work, and so I speed the process up now because I confirmed it enough times, is that you can say to the core, “Core, I want you to look – there’s this robot blocking the way in some way, blocking the progress. Go around and look at the back of the head and tell me what you notice on the back of the head or the neck.” I just ask it very non-leading like that and what’s commonly said to me is that there were wires or a switch. So I’ll tell them, “Hold the wires or flip the switch and it will immobilize the robot and give me a yes- signal when you’ve done it.” Pretty soon you get a yes- signal. “Great. Now that the robot is immobilized, I want you to look inside the robot and tell me what you see.”
It’s generally one or several children. I have them remove the children. I do a little hypnotic magic and ask the core to use a laser and vaporize the robot so nothing is left. They’re usually quite amazed that this works, as have been a number of therapists.
[Pause]
Now there are many different layers of this stuff is the problem. Let me come over to the overhead and give some ideas about them. What we have up here are innumerable alters.
I’ll tell you one of the fascinating things I’ve seen. I remember a little over a year ago coming in to see some cases, some of the tough cases at a dissociative-disorders unit of a couple of the finest of the MPD therapists in this country, who are always part of all the international meetings, have lectured internationally. We worked and I look at some of their patients. They were amazed at certain things because they had not been aware of this before. As we worked with some of the patients and confirmed it, I remember one woman who’d been inpatient for three years, still was inpatient. Another who had one intensive year of inpatient work with all the finest MPD therapy you can imagine –
abreactions, integrations, facilitating cooperation, art therapy, on and on and on, journaling, intensively for one inpatient year followed by an intensive year of outpatient therapy two, three hours a week. In both patients we found out that all of this great work had done nothing but deal with the alters up here and had not touched the mind-control programming. In fact it was not only intact, but we found that the one who was outpatient was having her therapy monitored every session by her mother, out-of-state, over the telephone, and that she still had intact suggestions that had been give to her at a certain future time to kill her therapist.
(Full speech is several more pages but forum post is limited to 32,000 characters full speech is almost 70,000)