One thing has been bothering me since I wrote this post. At some point, Taylor talks about having worked very hard with a Gestalt therapist to reconstruct her memories of the day of her stroke. This does make me worry a bit about how accurate her memories of the stroke, as recounted in the most compelling section of the book, actually are.

I’ve been even more worried in the last couple of days for two reasons. First, I just finished reading a book on classic psychiatric hysteria and late 20th century movements the author thought were probably newer examples of hysteria: UFO abductees, Gulf war syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, recovered memory, multiple personality disorder, and ritual satanic abuse. (Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media, Columbia Univ. Press, 1998). The sections on recovered memory and on ritual satanic abuse were particularly unnerving in terms of the possibility of therapists planting (intentionally or not) the seeds of memories.

Also, I recently got an e mail from a stroke victim, who blamed her burst aneurysm on increased blood pressure from taking an Adderall the morning of the stroke, although, she said, she didn’t remember anything from the day of the stroke, not even whether she had, in fact, taken an Adderall that morning.

So I am now even more uncertain about how much weight to put on Dr. Taylor’s memories of the day of her stroke. That doesn’t mean I disbelieve them, but I currently have a mental asterisk next to them.