Yup, that’s the mantra. I figured it wasn’t informative by itself.
Considering the number of people who recover memories of being kidnapped by aliens (Barney Hill incident), its no wonder why my psychiatrists distrust the notion of recovered memory.
An acquaintance of mine (a talented painter who did vibrant quirky canvases) saw an unlicensed “therapist” who specialized in “recovered memories” and who had no medical background. She “remembered” early childhood sexual abuse and became extremely tormented. She also was terrified of leaving her daughter behind to possibly fall into the hands of her abusers as they would likely get custody. So it was a murder suicide. At the age of 26, Jackie hanged herself and her two-year-old daughter in her kitchen with boot laces.
She had never been abused, the memories were false. Some of the “memories” were, in fact, impossible as they would have had to take place in the total absence of one of the accused.
This resulted in a lawsuit - Jackie’s mother was awarded $6,000. Her mother has since become an activist fighting against “false memory syndrome”.
As a result of some of the controversy surrounding Jackie’s case and others, the Canadia Psychiatrics Association had to release a position statement which includes:
I’d recommend reading some of the transcripts of psychiatrist Dr Harold Merskey’s comments to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. You’ll have to scroll down a little to his comments.
Note: As may be deduced, I have quite a bias on this subject, so please take that into account with respect to getting a factual answer to the OP.
:smack: Nice typing. That was supposed to be “Canadian Psychiatrists Association”.
Many years ago, when I was in my teens, I was send to a psychiatrist who apparently believed that all troubled teenagers had been sexually molested. For many months he dug and prowled and rummaged through my dreams and my testimony about my family life. Failing to find any evidence of molestation, this shrink decided that I had repressed it, and he began a program of what I can only describe as brainwashing. If I couldn’t remember the abuse, he would “help” me remember it.
Needless to say, I was much worse off after this “therapy.” Although my family life had been a nightmare in many ways, sexual abuse was not one of those ways, and for a psychotherapist to convince me that it had been didn’t make things any better.
Four decades later, I’m pretty much okay in the head now, other than having a lifelong mistrust of psychotherapists.
Eats_Crayons and pinkfreud I am sorry to hear about your experiences with recovered memory therapy. In many ways ignorant and unlicensed therapists are like doctors before the rational study of anatomy and biology. They may mean well but they are inserting themselves into a machine while it is operating and they have little, if any, understanding of that machine’s construction or operations beyond what they can see. Without grinding any of my axes about the field all I can say is there is a disconcerting lag between solid discovery and it becoming commonly known, and a corresponding lag between potentially dangerous practices and experiments to address the issue before that potential is realized.
When I said that imagining and remember are the same I meant that the neurological underpinnings are similar, so similar that it is only a matter of explicit awareness of the fictitious nature of imagined events that allows them to be recalled as such. Strip the context of imagining away or present things as fact from the outset and a false memory appears. When I mentioned individuals that seem able to convince themselves of things I meant those who make up stories and seem to remember them as facts. I was providing an illustration of the effect that is not as dramatic and terrible as “recovered” memories, but an annoying quality of character that most people would be familiar with. The effect happens to everybody to an extent, but some are prone to confabulating memories without another person guiding them.
WHile I do believe some people have been abused and have blocked it from their memory, I also must say that I have read quite a few cases on the “Satanic Panic” epidemic that struck the country in the 80’s/90’s. A lot of “therapists” had investigated children based on some other issues and began diugging up repressed memories that these children had been sexually assaulted at their pre-schools and churches by vast secret satanic cults.
Two interesting and well-written books on this are :
Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend by Jeffrey S. Victor
Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt by Debbie Nathan, Michael Snedeker
Which reminds me of the expression, “You have to believe it to see it.” Beginning with a preconceived notion is not the way to conduct a fair investigation.
BurnMeUp, I concur with your book selection. I have read the Victor book and it is good. Two more good books, although slanted more towards children’s memory than adults, are:
The Abuse of Innocence, The McMartin Preschool Trial, by Paul & Shirley Eberle
*Jeopardy in the Courtroom, a Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony*, by Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck
…and here’s a book by Elizabeth Loftus that covers the OP perfectly: The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse