Talk:Martha Beck

John Beck on Amazon
Can it be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the reviewer on Amazon who says he is John Beck really is Martha's ex-husband? Considering that his review only picks a few minor nits instead of challenging the fundamental premises of the book, is it really noteworthy at all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.163.101.11 (talk) 23:21, 16 June 2005 (UTC)


 * If John didn't really write it, then both he and Martha would likely jump on Amazon and say so. Since both are best-selling authors (check out John's book "Got Game"), they are well aware of Amazon. But I agree with you that the review is pretty nitpicky. For a more substantial response from him, check out the middle of this article by Boyd Petersen. He and John both married Nibley sisters, and he talks about his and John's discussions about Martha's book. You'll see more of what John has to say. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.129.94 (talk) 23:41, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Self Hypnosis
she hasn't claimed to use self hypnosis to recover her memories. But she is accused of it, I removed reference to it because it made it seem as though had came out and admitted use of it. Perhaps some one could add reference to it by her sibling's response. Care to discus? I think it should be added but not worded in a way that implies a claim to it's use.


 * Her research in this area while at BYU was groundbreaking and published. It was also discussed in varying levels of detail in her research about homosexuality, and referenced in the most controversial book that recently came out (as well as other works by her). What is there to discuss? It's not a bash, it just saying it is controversial and unconvential method. Some claim it's useless, others claim its effective. She's been a supporter of it and of other forms of hypnosis. -Visorstuff 18:17, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Unfair portrayal
I can't quite put my finger on it, but the entry about Martha Beck seems unbalanced and unfair, not exactly what Wikipedia is all about. There are too many stories about abuse of children where siblings gather around the patriarch and defend them. The Polygamist culture of Mormonism seems to have a lot of incest, so I guess I'm not overly surprised. And listen to numerous lectures from Hugh Nibley in the 1970's while studying at the University of Utah, I must confess that I was taken aback by his rather cavalier treatment of historical facts, using them to convince us about certain Mormon historical beliefs. At any rate, I believe that this article is unfair, and a more balanced portrayal of Ms. Beck is required.


 * Polygamist culture of Mormonism? Are you saying that Nibley was a polygamist? This article gives an overview of a controversial figure. If you have biographical information please add it in, it would make the article better. But she is controversial and her research is disputed and seen as fautly by many in her field. Let alone the ethics of turning a novel into biographical memiors. Other editors have done the best with what we've been able to find. -Visorstuff 16:39, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I didn't imply that Nibley was a polygamist, but the Mormon culture seems to have an undue amount of incest. I believe that Krakauer's book, Under the Banner of Heaven, outlines the culture of incest in good detail. My point about the unfairness of the portrayal of Martha Beck is that the article seem unduly hostile, which may result from a bit of defensiveness about what she wrote. And turning a novel into a biographical memoir--I'm unconvinced that's a sign of any ethical conflict. I'm not a big fan of hypnosis, I think it's not very scientific nor medically sound, but I do believe in repressed memories, a perfectly normal psychological response to trauma. Nevertheless, I just don't think this article is balanced. OrangeMarlin 10:17, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Might be nice if you could back up the claim of "an undue amount of incest." What's "an undue amount", anyway?   In any case, Dr. Beck's premise seems to revolve chiefly upon the sexual abuse she alleged to have had at the hands of her father, memories of which she says she involuntarily repressed, and later "recovered."  You say you believe in repressed memories as a perfectly normal response to trauma, however the APA is not so sanguine on the subject:

"First, it's important to state that there is a consensus among memory researchers and clinicians that most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them although they may not fully understand or disclose it. Concerning the issue of a recovered versus a pseudomemory, like many questions in science, the final answer is yet to be known. But most leaders in the field agree that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later. However, these leaders also agree that it is possible to construct convincing pseudomemories for events that never occurred."

"The mechanism(s) by which both of these phenomena happen are not well understood and, at this point it is impossible, without other corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one."


 * In other words, the APA is saying that it isn't perfectly normal, that it is rare, and that it is possible to deceive yourself about such memories. Other things in Dr. Beck's book clash with reality in odd ways, one of them being her claim (pg 77-78) that the BYU dress code forbids men going without socks because leg hair is considered an extension of pubic hair.  Unfortunately, there has never been such a item in the dress code, nor such a belief in Mormon doctrine or culture.  Another tidbit is her claim that all references to Sonia Johnson (an ex-Mormon feminist) have been expunged from the BYU library.  Not just the books, mind you, but even the microfilm copies of the newspapers had been removed. She states, "The articles were simply missing. All of them. Someone in the BYU library had spent an enormous amount of time and effort to excise every single reference to Sonia Johnson that had ever appeared in print." Then she states, "People really do underestimate the capacity of things to disappear." (pg 83)  This is easy enough to verify, and if one does so one will discover that no such thing has happened.


 * Beck claims in her book that her father never studied Egyptian until asked by the LDS church to examine certain Egyptian papyri purported to be the papyri from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham. And when he did so, and found that the papyri had nothing to do with the Book of Abraham, he was put in an untenable quandary.  She wrote: "In a way, I admire him for choosing the only other alternative: he went crazy" (pg. 148).  Thus leading to his bizarre behavior of raping her while costumed as the Egyptian god Amut the Destroyer.  Unfortunately for veracity, her father learned Egyptian long before Beck's birth, studying with the great Klaus Baer, and when asked to examine the papyri and report his findings, he did so honestly, reporting that the papyri had nothing to do with the Book of Abraham and appeared to be excerpts from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  This was reported in, of all things, the official church magazine.  She also makes the claim that her father was a highly specialized apologist for the LDS church, there being no market for this outside Utah, and thus he could not tell the truth about the papyri for fear of losing his only possible source of income.  Again, how is a man who was capable of working in German, French, Arabic, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Old Norse, Hebrew, Coptic and Egyptian going to have a problem finding another job?  In fact, at the time the church asked him to have look at the papyri he received an offer an offer to teach at Clarion State College in eastern Pennsylvania, but he turned it down, preferring to stay at BYU.  There are lots of examples of such things in Dr. Beck's book, playing fast and loose with the facts.  This seriously undermines her credibility on many levels; so how is one to make a balance out of this?  The woman appears to have lied her head off making up bizarre falsehoods for the sake of selling books, or, is herself unbalanced and not quite sane.  Go ahead, what are you going to say in fairness?  That the book is well and engagingly written?  If you've read it, you can see that she's a skilled writer.  So, sure, why not, go ahead.  You'll be in the same position as the biographer of that Korean biologist, Hwang Woo-Suk, who built up an enormous structure of lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications.  Most of that gent's article in Wikipedia is about his failure as a scientist.  About the same fraction of his article is as positive as Martha Beck's, and for probably the same reason: on balance, they have lost virtually all credibility, except in Beck's case with those who make a profession out of finding fault with the Mormon Church. (Fair disclosure: I am an active Latter-day Saint.)  --Mike 06:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

A somewhat robust critique on defence of Beck, there, Mike, and bold defence of Hugh Nibley. Useful message? Read accounts of stong claims against a person with balanced judgement. But, perhaps it would pay not to hug too tightly to Nibley as a near spotless character, himself. I must say I'd admired Nibley's writings for many years, until I took a step back and found he tended to fudge many areas, such as over-generalising with cliches, like "ancient people" this/that in less than justifiable cases. But, without turning this into a treatise of Nibley (See the wikipedia article on him for that), my real point is more general - let's not begin taking this personally - it seems we need to lace our critiques with more balance, something hard to do when fear-stricken by a potential expose on someone we hold in high esteem, or more likely, when our belief system might, even potentially, begine to look less sound than we believed. That aspect is more suited for a wikipedia article on investigative review of LDS history, etc. But, as in this commentary on the author, yes, it's easier to start from the premise (even is unconsciously formed, that the author has indirectly threatened my faith -> therefore, she MUST be "wrong" -> therefore, I will bring here down. It's almost has if the charity taught by the LDS Church belongs on the shelf. This is not spoken merely of Mike, but a clear trend we see from a clear majority of active Latter-day Saints who actually speak out on critiques of the LDS faith or LDS history. While using a somewhat plausable line of logic (sometimes rightly disproving unsound theories or claims against LDS history, etc) but, ending up undermining the approach they rely on - "objetive" view point is clearly tainted by preconceived position that the person making the exspose or counter-claim against LDS claims is always "wrong". While the author may well have stretched or smudged points background (perhaps she takes after her father in roling some actual insights and experiences with theories), she has also produced medical evidence fairly pointing to sexual abuse. Her memories might rest on the fence, they might be baseless, they might be actual. For someone who finds too much falsehood in Joseph Smith's/LDS Church's current claims, would still say critique the falts in her story, but let it rest where it falls - we may not have suffered abuse that she may well have suffered. Let's not send her to hell just yet. Like the Catholic church, the Jehovah's Witness movement and LDS Church need brave (albiet not misleading) people to come forward about sexual, mental and physical abuses, especially by those in leadership positions. It's all part of the balancing process - dark secrets melow their claims to superioty/altimate Truth (www.mormon.org). Let's not charge our comentary with religiously motivated hate speech of "anti-mormons". Balance is the aim, not rubbishing all, along with residual merit. Likewise, Mike provides a meesage, those with bias against the LDS movement, lets not read such accounts without weighing in the balance. (redundant disclosure: I'm not an active LDS) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lllewelll (talk • contribs) 19:28, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that this article seems biased against Martha Beck. I've read three of her books.  She's a splendid writer.  I didn't know any of this lurid stuff until I read this article.  Nor did I know Ms. Beck was gay.  Her most popular books ("North Star," "Joy Diet," "Expecting Adam."), I assure you, are NOT about remote Utah religious politics-- or even childhood sexual abuse.  It seems to me that the article has reduced Ms. Beck to some sort of Mormon artifact.  But that's not what she is to me.  Furthermore, the  obviously partisan skepticism about childhood sexual abuse is nauseating. NaySay (talk) 17:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have now obtained a copy of Beck's "Leaving the Saints" and read it from cover to cover. It is a painful account of Beck's dreadful childhood living with a monster child-molester father who appears to have been borderline psychotic and a cold mother who turned a blind eye to the whole horror.  Some of the comments above appear to be inaccurate.  Hypnosis and leading questions were not needed for Beck to remember her rape as a five-year old; she had clear but traumatic memories of it all her life.  So that part of the account in the article should be reviewed.  The book is also a despairing condemnation of a culture of violence against women and children, widespread rape, hidden polygamy and also a culture of intimidation where free speech is quashed heavy-handedly.  Most of all, it is a condemnation of the leaders who allowed all this to happen and never, never, never punished or condemned the vile perpetrators.  As a complete outsider, I was monumentally shocked.  It has taken me several weeks to recover my equilibrium enough to talk about it.  How anyone could question this account is beyond my understanding; I wonder if those who do have actually read the book.  Anyway, it's certainly not my interest or inclination to weigh in, in any way, on Mormonism and its culture.  But about this one victim, and what she reported, the record really should be set straight, being careful not to create an unwarranted bias against the religion itself. NaySay (talk) 19:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "How anyone could question this account is beyond my understanding"
 * It may well be beyond your understanding, but if you are a "complete outsider," how can you be so utterly convinced by extraordinary claims about something you know nothing about, without even a trace of skepticism? Others should pay some attention to the specific facts cited above, which can be objectively verified, such as expunging all references to Sonia Johnson from the Lee Library. The Lee Library had some stacks of newspapers, of course, (primarily local and non-US) but like all university libraries at the time, its major repository of US periodicals was the online service LexisNexis. No university could possibly expunge LexisNexis, and without that ability, throwing out paper copies of the local Utah press (the articles most likely to be biased in FAVOR of the Mormon Church) would be pointless. And that business about the socks (imagine me rolling my eyes)...the dress code was utterly consistent from head to toe: don't look like a frat boy on his way to a kegger. To claim the socks part, completely consistent with the rest of the code, was actually based on some other weird pubic hair thing...well, some people will fall for anything. Martha grew up in Provo, and maybe that's some sort of local kids' urban legend she picked up and never thought to verify after she grew up.


 * That's not to say Martha was lying. Some of her claims about things I know are clearly wrong, but maybe she heard them somewhere and believes them. I've known her, her former husband, siblings, and I knew her father for many, many years. Both father and daughter were brilliant and extremely eccentric, lost in the amazing mental worlds they lived in. They would both say some things that were fascinating and others that were..., well some people tell me about receiving answers to prayers and she tells me about her experiences of clairvoyance. I don't think any of them are lying, but I don't believe that what they are saying is actually "true" either.


 * All of which suggests that the tone of the article, which is not so utterly convinced by her every claim as you are, is properly balanced, in my opinion. A neutral tone of simply stating that she claims such and such and that others counter with such and such is the right way to present it in a proper Wikipedia article.Tuanglen (talk) 23:05, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

why is this article so unbalanced and filled with Mormon cant and propaganda? It ids appalling that this cult can use Wiki to cover up their criminal sexual misconduct and antisocial practices with obfuscation and propaganda. Should be reviewed. NaySay (talk) 23:03, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Biography policy
Editors involved in editing this page should read the Biographies of living persons policy. -Visorstuff 22:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Additional discussion
A discussion about private correspondence regarding the article though email is had here. User_talk:Bjgmb -Visorstuff 17:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Issues with sourcing
I'm trimming this article right down for now, having identified the following issues with sourcing:


 * 1) Most biographical information is sourced directly from Beck's own website.
 * 2) The references for her O column and books are 404 errors
 * 3) The reference for her and her husband's homosexuality is a Word format file on somebody's website

I'm removing the unsourced or poorly sourced sections. The section on Leaving the Saints seems to be reasonably well sourced, so I'll leave it for now. --Tony Sidaway 03:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your edits, but it's late and I want to think about it. Biographical information about Beck does indeed come from her own website--if there is a Wiki-rule against that, then I'd appreciate seeing it. Otherwise, it may be the best we've got about certain aspects of her more recent life. The O column reference was retrieved this month, and apparently it went bad. I found the correct url. My mistake. As for the homosexuality, the reference was a review on a pdf document. I retained it from a much earlier edit, which probably was due to laziness. However, they are both gay, and there are numerous references out there for that. I will add it.

I don't think you should make wholesale edits and deletions that change the substance of the article on your own without gaining consensus from at least one or two other editors who have invested some time in this article. If a reference is missing or incorrect, it is better to through a citation tag on an unsourced statement rather than deleting it. IMHO. Orangemarlin 07:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * To clarify, we've received complaints about the content of this article, ane we take such complaints very seriously. Our Biographies of living persons policy rightly emphasizes the importance of sourcing statments, and it is in accordance with this policy that I have removed unsourced or poorly sourced statements.  A biographical article about a living person should never contain a "citation needed" tag.  If a statement about a living person is not known to be accurate it should not appear in a Wikipedia article. --Tony Sidaway 09:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd just like to back Tony up on this. It is very important that we make our Biographies of living people as good and solid as we possibly can. If that means we have to take some things out because of sourcing problems, we should do that. Also, I would point you to WP:BRD - Bold, revert, discuss. I've found it to be a very good way to work on articles, even when there are a number of editors working on the article. I appreciate that Tony has been bold in cleaning up this article. I would encourage you to work with him where possible, using this method. Mak (talk)  15:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Got it. I forgot that there is a much higher standard for BLP's.  I've tried to clean up this article over the past few months, but it's never been a high priority.  When I first found it, it was a terrible mess, highly POV, and well, just bad.  I should have thrown out the whole thing and started over!!!!  Let me source a few of the statements.  Thanks for the comments.  Orangemarlin 16:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've reviewed your most recent work and it seems to be sourced to her books, which is good. Thanks. --Tony Sidaway 17:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * "she underwent psychotherapy, which uncovered alleged sexual abuse by her father."[6]--This is a misrepresentation of the information on her site.


 * "her research into and use of conventional psychotherapy (such as group therapy) to recover repressed childhood memories (including the alleged abuse)."[1][15]


 * An accurate representation of 15 but a misrepresentation of 1. In her book, she talks about researching repressed memory recovery. She does not say she used psychotherapy to recover her memories.


 * Re 6--this link no longer goes to a viable page.--brozy_a

Rewritten
As I should have done many months ago, I have completely rewritten the article, following both WP:NPOV and WP:BLP policies for Biographies. I actually spent time rereading Leaving the Saints, because I did not recall what was written in the book as being what was described in this article. In fact, Martha Beck does not base all of her allegations against her father based on repressed memories, but in memories that came to the forefront prior to her engaging in any type of therapy. In addition, hypnosis was not the exclusive therapeutic technique used by her to uncover these memories, standard diagnostic and therapeutic techniques were used. However, I have made certain to include articles from "both sides" of the discussion, including family members. Setting aside what may or may not be "allegations" or "the truth", the point of this article is to discuss Martha Beck's life, a part of which is her publication of Leaving the Saints, but also of many other aspects of her life. As a published author, one who is now a homosexual, despite writing a well-known book showing how to fight homosexual feelings, she would be notable without the Leaving the Saints book. Her notability in Utah and amongst LDS faithful is probably much higher than in the "gentile" world (of course, I'm neither a Gentile nor a Mormon, but growing up in Utah, I do read these articles and books). Well, that's my soliloquy for today. Orangemarlin 01:53, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This article is very long and carries way more information than is encyclopedic. Please take a break from it and allow some non-involved eyes to take a look at it and edit it back down to a reasonable length.  Thank you.  Cary Bass demandez 14:12, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Very long? It just got a "Start" grade as a biography, which means it probably needs more flesh.  What information is not encyclopedic?  As a notable person, she deserves some detail.  Orangemarlin 15:41, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The WikiProjects have volunteer graders who often have unrealistic ideas about how much you can write in a biography.
 * I've removed references to hypnosis, self-hypnosis and recovered memory techniques, which Martha Beck denies having used (this story appears to originate from her estranged siblings and cannot be relied on).  --Tony Sidaway 06:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't believe I missed that one, especially since I re-read key portions of the book to make sure it matched with this biography, and I read her statement that she published soon after the publication of the book. It has become an urban myth that she recovered her memories through hypnosis.  Her memories arose in an almost classic way, similar to others who exhibit post traumatic stress disorder.  That's why I guess several editors need to involve themselves in these type of articles.  BTW, I still think it's relevant that she did not attend her father's funeral, but I see it's still there.  Orangemarlin 08:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's a judgement call whether the father's funeral is relevant. Since she'd been estranged from her Mormon family for so long, this would not be  too surprising because some Mormons still practise shunning. --Tony Sidaway 04:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)