OK, I realize that this will probably end up in Great Debates, but I’m hoping for some factual discussion.
This morning, I heard on the radio about this priest who was convicted of molesting a child years ago. Apparently, the conviction was based largely on recovered memories that surfaced years later. I want to know what the Straight Dope is on recovered memories.
I have no doubts that people sometimes repress traumatic memories. But can people accurately recover those memories years or decades later? By accurately, I mean reliably enough to be admissable as evidence in a court of law. What I’ve heard on this subject suggests that the recovered “memories” can be heavily influenced by the person’s therapist, and if the therapist has an agenda of some sort, what the victim recalls can be almost completely fictional. It seems to me that if there’s a distinct possibility that the memories could be distorted, then this sort of evidence should be disallowed.
The report I heard last night suggested that there had been so many people in the Boston area claiming to be the victims of this particular priest, and so much publicity, that the evidence presented in court didn’t have to be especially solid.
God, I hate cases based on so-called repressed memories! It could be anything from the absolute truth to a con-man looking to collect a cool half million in damages, with a good chance of a well-meaning therapist creating a new victim by encouraging the formation of ‘memories’ that in fact don’t exist. There’s no knowing, especially when it comes to anything to do with child molestation, about which Americans have gone absolutely nuts.
As to the actual guilt or innocence in this particular case, I haven’t the vaguest idea. But I am always suspicious of ‘repressed memory’ cases.
Well, I’m not an expert, but the fact that the same sort of techniques are used to ‘recover’ memories of past lives (i.e. reincarnation), added to the fact that there are any number of different individuals who all honestly recollect their own past life as, say, Marie Antoinette or Cleopatra (i.e. more than one person claims to have been the same historical individual), sort of raises doubts in my mind.
I’m not sure that kind of inflammatory accusatory statement sits well in G.Q. If you feel the need to tell Dopers that Americans have “gone nuts” over child molestations, perhaps you might wish to move that to the Pit? Just a thought, from a Doper who- like a hell of a lot of other Dopers- either has friends and/or family who have substantiated child abuse or have experienced it themselves firsthand.
Americans " went nuts " over Cabbage Patch Kids. People “experience” abuse. Critical difference, my friend.
A very close friend had her life turned upside down by repressed memories, about 13 years ago. She’s 46 now.
at the risk of inflaming other’s opinion of supposed inflammatory remarks…
I think i know what Oy meant…
While i will not trivialize the effects of “repressed memories” that resurface later in life… i think the point was: “how do you know they are really real?”
I’ve seen recent topics here relating to mental illnesses (likely inspired by threads regarding the outrage over the Crazy for You Bear (which i was the first to report, cuz i thought it was really cute… but not at $70… anyway)) … and many have stated that the people who suffer from these illnesses often can’t TRUELY discern reality from the effects of the illness.
That said: who’s to say that repressed memories are NOT a form of mental illness? Perhaps created by a traumatic event, (though someone earlier stated that there is no scientific evidence of this) but possibly not.
And as has been proven MANY times over, memory of even RECENT events is largely unreliable. Details are usually lost over time. Nightmares are similar to memories. And Nightmares, while quite possibly very vivid, are hardly indicitive of accuracy of past occurances.
So my point is, in relation to the OP, is there any proof that repressed memories are REALLY real?
That this particular Q was inspired by a sex offence case, isn’t really relevant, but it’s a trigger issue for a lot of peeps on here and many would seem to give credence to an otherwise shakey topic/theory for no other reason than to “beat the war drums”… so to speak…
I for one, am dubious of repressed memories. But i’m hardly an expert and it’s solely my opinion.
I feel the same way about repressed memories: My brother and I reminisce about events when we were kids so much I don’t remember if I was there or not - honestly. Maybe when something happened either I was there, or I pictured how it was based on what he told me, and now our stories of the events match and now I’m not certain if either of us were there
This is why almost all crimes have a statute of limitations, except in certain conditions. I think the gist is that there is a future discovery of harm that people/lawyers go after. “My life was meaningless, and I never knew why…” Now they discovered something happened 20 years ago, and can seek compensation.
I don’t think anyone is making light of molestation. Just questioning the validity of repressed memories. I personally don’t agree with it because it’s impossible to find an impartial jury in the case of child molestation (which it appears most repressed memories center around), and those 20 years is a freaking long time.
Uh…I’ve got a problem with this statement, too. Here we are, trying to get these things out in the open, so they don’t happen, and you call it a mere case of “going nuts” as though we were obsessing over the latest fad? It’s about time this stuff came out in the open. Incest and child rape is a huge problem from what I can tell & well-hidden in this supposedly progressive country.
I am sorely tempted to use the rolleyes but I will refrain.
Scientifically, true “recovered memories” are mostly regarded as abject nonsense concocted by people on their own or with the help of a therapist “guiding” them.
In the height of the recovered memory craze in the 80’s and 90’s there were many families and realtionships destroyed by bogus accusations that the victim believed in 100% because the therapist told them they were true.
Aside from the human tragedies involved, it is an excellent demonstration of how plastic the nature of belief and reality are. The facile nonsense of the “if it’s true for you it’s* true*” perspective came to a head in this debacle.
People can often compartmentalize unpleasant things on a day to consciousness level just to get on with life, but they don’t generally “forget” in the sense that the memory is no longer accessible.
Maybe they are real, maybe they are not. I don’t have enough knowlege of the subject to be sure.
BUT, it does seem clear that recovered memories alone, without any corroberating evidence, comes nowhere NEAR the standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” required for a criminal conviction.
Recovered memories, and in fact memories in general can be highly inaccurate. There are several processes that are capable of corrupting our reccollections of events, their specific terms currently eluding me. The two off the top of my head are source amnesia which involves the addition of new memories into the original event. For example when you describe your 10th birthday party and unconsciously incorporate memories from your 12th into it. Memories of horrific events, contrary to popular belief, can be corrupted just as easily. Such Memories such as Pearl Harbor, 9/11, etc are referred to as “flashbulb” memories. Most people swear they’ll never forget, or the images will be seared into their minds forever but this is hardly the case. A study conducted right after 9/11 and recently followed up on, found something like 35% of people told a totally different story of where they were and what they were doing when it was happening.
Finally the process of recalling the memories is suspect as well. Leading questions can be used to to help influence a response from a person.
You know, I almost made a comment like “This whole business with repressed memories sounds like a modern-day version of past life regression.” I didn’t say it because I was afraid of poisoning my own thread, but I’m glad to see that someone else has had the same idea. I have an active imagination, and I have a couple of “memories” which I’m not sure are real. For example, when I was really young (like 6 or 8) my older brother and I decided to pee into the heat vent in our room (God only knows why – one of those things that kids do, I guess). Our parents caught us doing this and spanked us. My parents deny that this incident ever happened, and so does my brother. No one but myself seems to remember it, so I have to wonder if it was really just a dream or something. It certainly could be a dream; I had some very vivid dreams when I was a kid, including a few that I still remember today, but most of them were obvious fantasies involving car chases and freeways that bank and loop around like Hot Wheels tracks.
(Plus, if I really did get spanked for pissing into the heat vent, I’ve got to admit that I deserved it :wally )
Memory corruption generally occur in two ways, internally influenced and externally influenced. I can’t recall its name, but there is a process where your memories can actually be those of someone else. If you had always wanted to go to Great Adventure, and a friend went and came back and described it to you in super detail, you may eventually “remember” going to great adventure when you were 14 years old.
Memory is not a perfect, exact recording of events as they happen.
The human mind is not analagous to a video or audio recorder. Memory is not only imperfect at perceiving an event, but can be (and usually is) modified and distorted over time. And the holder of the memory is rarely aware of this phenomena.
So even if an event can be recalled, it may not be a valid memory.
Then add to that the distortions and outright stories implanted by recovered memory “facilitators”. Such psychological sessions are rarely recorded on video, but the assistants are often caught suggesting to subjects in highly-suggestable states, and these suggestions frequently become incorporated into the subject’s memory bank, later to be treated as original and true. This fraudulent technique has been used to recover (read: create) satanic stories and alien abductions.
For more on this topic, check out books and articles by Elizabeth Loftus, who has contributed much to our understanding of the human mind.
I certainly don’t want to belittle your friends’ suffering, but I agree that Americans have gone nuts over child sexual abuse. Especially, abuse at the hands of strangers, while largely ignoring the much more prevalent familial abuse. It’s to the point that people won’t let their nine year old kids wander around the neighborhood, so instead they park in front of the TV running their Game Cubes and scarfing down fried snack foods all afternoon, becoming giant tubs of lard and ruining their health, in order to avoid the very rare case of an abusive stranger.
My oldest is eight, and he’s just about ready to be let loose on his own to go visit his friends, play in the woods, etc. I figure there is a small but non-zero chance of something really bad happening to him, but the alternative is to give him a 100% chance of something fairly bad happening to him.
Confabulation is the term that cognitive psychologists apply to the process. In the view of main stream cognitive psychologists memory involves the responsiveness of clusters of neurons to one another. Recalling something involves getting these self-supporting circuits to activate enough to drive the neurological activity of the brain. Since neurons that are active at the same time become more responsive to one another recalling something strengthens the memory. False memories have the content and emotional context repeated over and over again. The consequence is a flurry of activity that sets things up so that when you activate the right neurons (by mentioning the incident, for example) the rest of the neurons fire and the person feels the emotions of the event and starts digging up the details of it as well. This will reinforce the memory further.
In many ways there is no difference between the mechanisms of recall and imagination. It is only explicit designation and context that keeps the two seperate. I’m sure most people know somebody who can convince himself of anything. These sorts don’t keep the difference between imagined and recall strict for themselves.
That’s the term I couldn’t remember.
Recalling something involves getting these self-supporting circuits to activate enough to drive the neurological activity of the brain. Since neurons that are active at the same time become more responsive to one another recalling something strengthens the memory.
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