The Traumatic Flashback as One Basis of Misunderstanding Between Patients and Law Enforcement Officers

A patient in psychoanalytic psychotherapy reported to the analyst that the patient recently had been forced by satanic cult members to commit a murder. After discussion, the patient and the analyst agreed to inform the police. The police could not find evidence for the occurrence of the crime. Continued psychoanalytic work revealed that it was not a contemporary murder but a flashback of a childhood horror. Because flashbacks of past traumatic experiences are not an uncommon phenomenon, they would account for some of the gruesome events reported by patients but which law enforcement officers cannot validate as having recently occurred.