And I just learned something interesting - Michelle wasn't being hypnotized, per se. But she absolutely was putting herself into a kind of trance:

Lawrence Pazder: "Actually, it's beyond hypnosis; it's a method that Michelle had devised to go deep into her depths."

Interviewer: "How had you devised this technique yourself, Michelle?"

Michelle Smith: "It just came about in the atmosphere of Doctor Pazder saying to me, 'just go where you have to go. I'll be there with you.' I could then shut my eyes and then through breathing very deeply, go way down inside. It felt very much like falling over backwards into the dark. And that's where I began to find the memories."

Y'all, this is a thing I literally do sometimes. And you know what it does? It effectively puts me into a kind of dreaming state. Like it's not as immersive as dreaming while asleep and I'm still conscious and everything, but otherwise? It works exactly like dreaming.

Satan Wants You (dirs. Sean Horlor & Steve J. Adams) x DOXA 2023.

Satanic Panic was everywhere in the 1980s as a result of the preposterously unsubstantiated but widely believed child enslavement claims chronicled in Michelle Smith and her long since discredited psychiatrist/husband Lawrence Pazder’s bestselling book Michelle Remembers.

Starting out in Victoria, the general lack of skepticism that snowballed into a fever of overreactions to the perceived Satanist ritual sacrifice of children is a trip to recount. Horlor and Adams ably recall and document what led to Western society’s obsession with this imagined movement of devil worship conspiracies despite a startling lack of evidence.

The documentary Satan Wants You examines how Michelle Remembers, the bestselling memoir by psychiatrist Larry Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith, sparked the moral panic that would become known as Satanic Panic. Did the title of this forthcoming documentary grab your attention as much as it did mine? The world premiere of Satan Wants You will happen during SXSW 2023, which takes place from…

yeah it’s kind of crazy how good her lightsaber moves are, like how would one even begin to train to achieve that? seems like even Ewan and Hayden, who train specifically to do that kind of choreo, can’t do it like she can. thank you for recommending her to me!!