I strongly suggest that people read Beck's book for themselves and NOT rely on the summaries offered in the reviews. Boyd's, for example, contained a couple of serious errors.
There were several threads on ZLMB discussing Beck’s claim. I was looking specifically for the discussion about the Amut/costume, but for interested folks, do a search on ZLMB for “beck” and several pop up (their search engine appears to have improved with the new host). The following comments were from this thread:
http://pacumenispages.yuku.com/topic/8073?page=6
Boyd Petersen reviewed the book and claimed:
Martha's book mostly hints at Hugh's alleged breakdown, but evidently Martha believes Hugh ritually abused her while reenacting Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, all while wearing an Egyptian costume of Amut the destroyer. (121,122 and 146-147)
I posted and shared what the book actually said on those pages:
"Here's what I want to know," I say, deciding on a direct frontal attack. "What were you doing with all that Egyptian stuff? I mean, when you were performing your 'Abraamic sacrifices' on me?"
The blow lands right on target; my father flinches, his face flashing an expression that tells me a great deal. It isn't just frightened. It certainly isn't confused. It's knowing, in a way that both chills and reassures me. It tells me that while I can't trust him, I can trust my own memory.
"What do you mean?", my father asks, his voice cracking a little.
"Oh, come on," I say, "There's no reason to pretend. We were both there."
In this I feel completely secure. I needed all my martial arts training, plus a battery of hidden loved ones, to muster up the nerve to sit in a room alone with this little old man. But in one way, I can have more confidence in him than in anyone else on earth: He's the only person who knows for a fact that I'm not making anything up. He's the only person I don't have to worry about convincing.
"I remember you talking a lot about Abraham and a lot about Egypt," I tell him. "The first part I understand - the sacrifice of Isaac and everything - but that Egyptian stuff...." I shake my head. "I just don't see how it tied in."
(the conversation continues with her father saying she's been influenced by Satan, but that is the end of that part supposedly about "Amut")
This next part actually mentions Amut.
In another dream, which tortured me throughout my adolescence, I would think I'd woken up,then hear slow, heavy foosteps creaking on the floorboards outside my room. Just as I decided it was nothing, the doorway would fill, top to bottom and side to side, with the probing head of a huge crocodile, atop a tawny body that seemed to belong to a dog. The stench of stagnant water and death shriveled the air around it as the monster walked heavily, inexorably toward me, and there was nowhere I could run. Then I'd wake up.
I stopped having the dream when I moved away from my parents' house, and didn't think about it until years later, when my daughter Katie was four and developed the typical child's interest in ancient Egypt. I bought a children's book on the subject, ignoring my vague unease, and sat down that evening to read it to Katie. I wasn't surprised by the drawings of mazes that used to haunt my dreams - reproductions of such drawings show up all over the place, and I was as used to seeing them as anyone else. But then I turned a certain page and got a shock that hit me like a fist. There was my nemesis from what I used to call my alligator dreams, but the odd combination of reptilian head and golden mammalian body were unmistakable. I stopped reading aloud and scanned the text, heart pounding almost audibly.
The monster's name was Amut the Destroyer, and its job was to devour the souls of people who did not qualify for redemption in the afterlife. But I hadn't known that as a child. Had I? I was so stunned - and so puzzled by my own reaction - that I put Katieto bed without another word. I never could read clear through that book. It reminded me too much of... I had no idea what. I wouldn't understand my feelings for years.
"Do you remember my alligator dreams?" I ask my father now. "The nightmares I had every week or two?"
He gives a POW grunt.
"Do you remember what you told Mom about those dreams?"
No answer.
"You told her I was being 'pursued by an evil spirit'. You may not remember, but I do. And to me, that seems odd. I mean, whatever happened to "It's nothing, child, go back to bed?' It seems a hell of a way to put a kid to sleep."
Beck says that she had dreams about Amut the Destroyer, and does not understand how she would know about that character. She clearly states she was
dreaming about Amut, and seeing the character in her child’s book triggered the memory. Obviously she associates this with her father, where she likely learned Egyptian trivia as a child. But she does not state that her father molested her dressed in the costume. This is the assumption that some people have made, and it’s been repeated, over and over and over, and yet her book does not state this.
There was another grossly erroneous claim made by Boyd that Beck claimed that people turned blue if they lied. Yet, she was clearly stated this as an imaginary exercise.
I’m not saying people are deliberately distorting what Beck said. I think that their bias leads them to interpret Beck’s statements in the most wildly improbable fashion in order to undermine her credibility.
In regards to repressed memories, I know first hand it is possible to have “forgotten” a traumatic event, and then have that memory triggered by something – something you see, smell, or hear. I bet if you think about it in those terms, you all will realize you’ve had repressed memories that suddenly come back to you when something prompts the memory. Here’s my experience that I shared on the same linked thread:
What Martha is describing is different than self-hypnosis memory recovery. She is describing a sudden flashback of a past event that was not previously in her conscious mind. I have experienced the same thing, and believe that it is not uncommon - for good and bad memories. I've briefly mentioned having a very troubled marriage to my former husband, due, in large part, to his untreated bipolar disorder. I spent almost fifteen years as the target of various intensities of cruel emotional abuse - so much of it that some memories are more embedded and hidden than others - but something in my current environment can definitely "trigger" a memory I had seemingly forgotten. When we were going through our divorce, an extraordinarily ugly experience, he temporarily agreed to professional counseling (joint and individual). We were standing in front of the therapist's office while she was talking to our children, probably arguing, and he made a gesture with his hand that suddenly unleashed a flood of memories of a particular thing he did during the earlier years of our marriage. It was like the memory just flew into my mind - I was stunned that I could have forgotten those incidents, because for several years he did it quite regularly. I was so stunned and taken by the memory that I just blurted out to him, "do you remember how you used to..." He looked a little caught off guard, but didn't deny it - THEN. He would now, of course.
I think that sometimes our minds DO protect us from experiencing too many memories before we're not prepared to deal with them. It's almost a conscious decision - until and unless I got to the point where I was prepared to actually DO something to protect myself, why allow myself to have all these memories? It's like I was living in a fog, a haze, a carefully self constructed island of deliberate delusion. People who have not experienced long term victims of abuse really have no way of understanding these sort of self protective mechanicisms.
by the way, I later went back and reread my journal entries made during my marriage. I mentioned this particular thing he used to do in the journals, so I know I didn’t subconsciously or consciously “make up” this memory. But it was a memory I had not accessed in a long time, so when he moved his hand in the same way he used to do when he did this particular thing to me, suddenly the memory flooded back to me.
