The
Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse
By Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham
Amazon.Com price: $11.16
Can certain forms of psychological therapy implant false memories of sexual
abuse? Beginning in the early 1980s numerous people were accused and convicted
of extraordinarily horrific acts of sexual abuse based on memories recovered
in therapy, often with the aid of hypnosis and other controversial techniques
to aid memory recall. In their book The Myth of Repressed Memory, Elizabeth
Loftus and Katherine Ketcham are careful not to dismiss the possibility of repressed
memory outright but do present an array of evidence that suggests most recovered
memories are likely byproducts of such intensive therapy rather than memories
of actual events.
According to Loftus the fundamental error made by the recovered memory movement
is the view, probably rather common, that memory is like a video tape recorder
that begins rolling the moment we’re born (or even earlier). On this view, everything
a person ever experiences is stored somewhere in the brain just waiting to be
accessed. Loftus, who by profession is an expert on memory. As she sums up the
results of her research,
My work has helped to create a new paradigm of memory, shifting our view
from the video-recorder model, in which memories are interpreted as the literal
truth, to a reconstructionist model, in which memories are understood as a
creative blending of faction and fiction.
Although recovered memory advocates continue to hold that the memory operates
much like a VCR, Loftus’ claims are reinforced by our common sense about memories.
Most of us are aware that sometimes events are remembered in radically different,
often mutually contradictory ways, but different individuals. Loftus discusses
fascinating experiments and studies designed to test the malleability of memory
that confirm this common sense view.
Recovered memory advocates claim, for example, that there is something special
about traumatic events that ensures they are encoded relatively literally on
our memory, but there is little evidence for this claim. In one study, for example,
students were asked shortly after the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger
to describe where they were and what they were doing when they heard of the
disasters. Two-and-a-half years later they were asked again to describe the
situation where they first heard of the disaster. Not a single person remembered
the incident completely accurately and over a third of the students reported
wildly inaccurate memories of learning about the Challenger explosion. One student,
for example, originally told researchers she heard about the disaster while
in class and only heard the details after going back to her room. Less than
three years later, though, she told researchers she heard about the disaster
while watching TV in her dorm room with a roommate.
Most of the students strongly resisted the idea that their memories were inaccurate,
and insisted their current memories were more accurate than what they told researchers
shortly after the disaster.
But if memories can be altered and are not necessarily a literal depiction
of the past how do we determine if memories of sexual abuse are accurate? And
if they are not accurate how are false memories created?
For Loftus the test of true vs. false memories is relatively straightforward
— such memories should require corroboration to the extent that this is possible.
Many tales of recovered memories contain details that are obviously false because
details that can be corroborated are clearly false. Yet therapists and others
continue to insist they are accurate.
Loftus opens her book up with the Souza case, for example, in which an elderly
couple were convicted of sexually abusing their four-year-old grandchild after
the child underwent therapy. The child’s memories included such bizarre claims
as that her grandparents had stuck their hands and even their heads into her
vagina. This would have left numerous corroborative evidence that could easily
be verified with a cursory medical examination, but although such an examination
provided no physical evidence of the alleged abuse, the memory was still treated
as real by the therapist, prosecutor and ultimately a jury.
Oftentimes recovered memory advocates will claim a patient or patients has
corroboration for a repressed memory, but these almost always disappear on closer
examination. Often such corroboration consists of a brother or sister undergoing
recovered memory therapy who has discovered repressed memories similar to the
patients. Almost all of the high profile court cases involving repressed memory
involve significant details which are demonstrably false and fail the corroboration
test.
Because she prefers to approach the matter scientifically, though, Loftus
is unwilling to claim that significant repression of memory over the long term
is impossible, which tends to infuriate others active in fighting the recovered
memory movement who see it as the 20th century version of the
Salem witch trials or similar such social craze.
Why, though, would anyone come to have false memories of sexual abuse? How
could such memories possibly be created?
As Loftus methodically documents, such memories are the byproduct of assumptions
and practices of some therapists that in many ways make recovery of false memories
of sexual abuse all but inevitable. Loftus describes the creation of false memories
as a multistage process. First, recovered memory therapists tend to believe
that child sexual abuse is epidemic. As Judith Lewis Herman puts it, incest
is a “common and central female experience.” By expanding the definition of
incest to include kisses from parents or the overhearing of sexual jokes, etc.,
therapists come to believe that the woman who seeks therapy who has not been
sexually abused is the exception to the rule.
Second, the recovered memory therapist tend to believe that repression of
sexual abuse is also rampant. New Age guru John Bradshaw wrote in his widely
published columns that 60 percent of all incest victims repress their memories.
Author Renee Frederickson claims literally millions of people were sexually
abused as children but repressed their memories. Research that demonstrates
repression is extremely rare is derided as an attempt to “hide truth and support
lies” (to quote from Frederickson).
Third, the therapists tend to believe that one can recover from traumas and
psychological problems by recovering memories of sexual abuse through a variety
of techniques. Often therapists use symptoms list — do you have a lack of interest
in sex? Over eat? Abuse alcohol or drugs? Feel like life has no meaning? Afraid
to try new experiences? Then you might have been sexually abused but repressed
the memory. As Ellen Bass writes in The Courage to Heal, “If you think you were
abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were.”
To retrieve the repressed memories, recovered memory therapists have developed
a wide range of techniques. Of course hypnosis is sometimes used, although studies
of hypnotized subjects demonstrate the such patients tend to describe what they
expect their therapist wants to hear. Imagistic work is common — the patient
is instructed to imagine being abused. After a couple weeks such patients tend
to accept this imagined abuse as memory of actual abuse. As Loftus writes, though,
“cognitive psychologists know that when people engage in exercises in imagination,
they begin to have problems differentiating between what is real and what is
imagined.”
The same technique is used for dreams — patients are encouraged to interpret
dreams as bits and memory fragments of actual sexual abuse. Sometimes therapists
use so-called body work. Although there is no evidence for it, recovered memory
therapists believe that even if the mind has forgotten the sexual abuse it is
preserved in physiological reactions. Loftus doesn’t dwell too far into this,
but in some cases the fact that a woman had a strong aversion to white sauces
or disliked bananas, for example, has been used as evidence in court that her
father forced her to perform oral sex.
Group therapy is often used which tends to reinforce and encourage the recovery
of memories of sexual abuse. As Loftus notes, it is dangerous to mix people
who have no memories of sexual abuse into a group therapy situation with people
who have memories of sexual abuse. The very dynamic of group therapy will encourage
the creation of memories as well as provide ample building blocks to construct
false memories.
The scary thing is that if recovered memory therapists hadn’t resulted in
the bizarre tales of Satanic abuse it probably would have gone on much long
before more people looked at it with a skeptical eye. Many recovered memory
advocates, especially those active in diagnosing and treating multiple personality
disorder, are convinced there are large, multigenerational Satanic cults who,
if their patients’ claims are taken literally, are responsible for tens of thousands
of deaths in the United States annually. These tales tend to be fantastic and
stretch the credulity of most people, with patients often claiming to have suppressed
almost all of their memories of childhood to cover the activities of the cult
that usually involved human sacrifice, baby killing, cannibalism, extensive
sexual abuse, etc. The fact that no corroborating evidence for such cults can
be found is usually taken by those who believe as further proof of just how
sinister and widespread they really are.
When The Myth of Repressed Memory was first published, the recovered
memory therapists and advocates clearly held sway. Since then, fortunately,
the tide has begun to turn against recovered memory. Several therapists have
lost multi-million dollar judgments in lawsuits by patients claiming the recovered
memory techniques outlined above constitute medical malpractice. Insurance companies
have in many areas stopped paying for recovered memory therapy and questionable
multiple personality disorder claims. Anyone who wants to read a scientifically
informed look at recovered memory that helped turn sentiment against widespread
repressed memory should begin with The Myth of Repressed Memory.