After today’s masterful Cecil column from 2003 on multiple personalities, I wonder what the latest take is on memories (especially of sexual abuse of children) recovered either by hypnosis or otherwise by recovered memory therapists. Is this still considered legitimate?
No. I’m not sure it was ever considered truly legitimate except in a couple of cases where “recovered memories” sent people to prison for crimes (of sexual abuse, mostly) they very likely did not commit.
The APA has a balanced page on forgotten memories with respect to childhood abuse.
They note that there is no definitive research on memory of trauma specifically, because it would be unethical to expose people to trauma to test their memory response. They note that:
The article below has some good information and sources, discussing scandals of false memories of sexual abuse, and moving on to the broader issue of the unreliability of memory in more general witness testimony, on which there is a considerable body of research.
Interesting links. Thank you both.
Recovered memories were a big part of the testimony that convicted Jerry Sandusky, and challenging them is a part of his current appeal. http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/jerry-sandusky/article99597837.html
The simple argument against “repressed memory” is that hundreds of thousands of concentration camp survivors remember every detail of what they underwent, most of it much worse than sexual abuse. Certainly we tend to suppress bad thoughts, but not to the point where it takes a mental archaeologist to recover them. By the time someone is digging around at that level, the likelihood of guiding them to false or mixed recollections or getting fabulation to please the questioner get pretty high - see “Bridey Murphy” as a start.
And look back at the McMartin preschool horror.
Sexual abuse will often have a unique component not found in blatant assaults. A child will often feel they were somehow complicit and brought it on themselves. Covering up or flat out denying or forgetting the part we played in something we perceived as our own fault is not that unusual and a common problem found in alcoholics who were abused as children.
It can be difficult to convince someone that the adult is always at fault in these cases especially when it is a young teenager or pre-teen involved who may have played an active roll in the flirtation and seduction. It is much easier for them to simply be in denial that anything actually happened yet they still suffer from the guilt and shame.There has been some research on incidents of abuse that happened in a very early age with children. Later in life the children have been found to have no memory of proven cases of abuse and were unable to recover any actual memories from these known cases. I’ll see if I can find a cite, but it supports the concept that memories exist or do not, and cannot be recovered. There is also plenty of evidence that reporting false memories can be induced in people through prompting or hypnotism and luckily there is much less acceptance of these alleged recovered memories under those circumstances.
It still seems unlikely and unproven that these memories are buried any deeper than a skilled therapist could reach with normal methods. I have incidents I’ve chosen to “forget”; all it takes is a need to know, and I can bring back all the details I care to remember. But for all practical purposes they’re “buried” and forgotten in everyday life.
Bringing chemical abuse/damage/influence into the mix makes it considerably different. I don’t doubt that alcoholics have genuinely forgotten memories or lapses, especially over things that might have been contributing factors to their addiction. But we’re largely talking about children with limited drug/alcohol use here.
This. Trust no recovered memories. I think sometimes people are just messed up in the head, depressed, anxious, and they and their therapists are desperate to uncover some ‘‘root’’ to this distress. Since their lives seem fine by any objective measure, it must be repressed abuse instead of a biologically based mental illness. I find this unfortunate, not in the least because those memories, even if false, feel real to the victim and it destroys families. If you look at the blatant irresponsibility and abuse of the therapist around the famed ‘‘Sybil’’ there is an extreme example of how far off the rails this ‘‘therapeutic’’ process can go.
I was sexually abused when I was three and I have no memory of it. Never have. I had no clue what he was doing was wrong and it probably never would have come out if he hadn’t confessed to my mother. Whatever he did, it was wholly unremarkable to my long-term memory.
What was remarkable – that is, what I do vaguely remember - was my mother asking me about the abuse, social workers asking me about the abuse, and lawyers asking me about the abuse. And I remember having disturbing nightmares shortly after, the same recurring dream where I was an infant in a bassinet and someone was trying to break down the front door. And I remember suddenly not having a stepfather because his pervy ass went to prison.
I didn’t realize that just because you were too young to remember something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. So I spent a good portion of my childhood believing I had lied about the abuse and it was my fault he was in prison. When I finally admitted that out loud, my family explained to me that not only had he confessed, I recounted graphic details during that court proceeding that no child could possibly have known unless they had been abused.
As for memories of any sort being blocked out due to trauma, I am skeptical scientifically but have had a personal experience of blacked out memory that I cannot explain. I remember most of the abuse between the age of 11 and 17 except one hunting trip – really I think of it as THE hunting trip, because after that is when I tried to tell my Mom. I was alone with him in a cabin, he made a remark about sharing a sleeping bag, and the next thing I remember I was sitting on a log the next morning writing and refused to go hunting with him (as was the original plan.) I remember I had a complete nervous breakdown as soon as I got home, literally falling to my knees in the middle of my bedroom and weep-praying for his soul. But I don’t remember that night in the cabin, and I get severely distressed when I try. The thing I don’t remember is worse than anything I do remember. I have had to accept that I will never remember. For all I know I was just really, really anxious that night, or had a nightmare or something. I would not ever trust a ‘‘recovered’’ memory about this incident.
Brains are weird.
Gaah, Spice Weasel, that’s awful. My condolances. But the bottom line, as far as my question is concerned, is that you were never able to dredge up the memory.
I know an accused. His daughter saw a psychologist for some reason. This was over 25 years ago. The pscho delved and delved, maybe use hypnosis and she finally dredged up this memory. I cannot believe it of him and, more to the point, I cannot imagine his hiding it from his wife. So he lost his daughter and his grandchildren too, as a result.
Yes. I’m getting into murky territory here with my knowledge of neuroscience, but I just don’t think I have ever read anything that suggests memory works that way… that is, a memory is either formed, or it isn’t. It can either be formed as a narrative memory (‘‘I was in a car accident when I was 17." – the way most of our memory works) or it can be formed as more of a sensory experience if it occurs in the presence of high levels of adrenaline and dopamine. (’‘Red car. Blinding white light. Pain shooting up my leg. Oh god I’m so scared. I’m going to die.’’) Part of trauma work is taking these flashback sensations/impressions/feelings and putting them into some cohesive narrative… it changes the way the memory is recalled. I don’t think it eliminates the sensory memory altogether but it creates a new pathway and a different mechanism for accessing said memory. (Again, pushing the limits of my knowledge here, but I do know that neurological pathways cannot be replaced, we can only create new ones.) It’s entirely possible the details of that new, narrative memory may not be completely accurate, however at that point it’s indisputable a car wreck actually took place. Our brains fill in those details naturally because our memory gaps are so huge.
For someone to have no memory of something whatsoever – either narrative or somatic – might be possible. However, that implies your brain never processed that memory, and it would then be impossible to ‘‘spontaneously’’ remember something that your brain never processed in the first place. This is why people who have drunken ‘‘black outs’’ never remember what they did when they were drunk. Their brains were not processing the information necessary to form memories.
Then add into that how completely unreliable memory is in general, and you have a giant clusterfuck waiting to happen.
That must be very disturbing, Spice Weasel. Is it possible you could have been drugged or something?
I think most of us, either as we grow older, or as we have children, have the un-nerving realization that something we remembered (or knew the children remembered) is no longer known. In your case, it sounds like a blessing.
I thought that traumatic memory loss was pretty widely accepted, from car accidents to seeing something horrific, to experiencing something horrific cite. The memory comes back or it doesn’t. I think this is an area where TV (again) does us a disservice. Detective: We must know who the killer was. Doctor: I’ll hypnotize the witness and she’ll see his face! Life just isn’t that easy.
Brains are also wonderful. They protect us in so many ways. 
I had not considered that. I’d put nothing past that sociopath, including serial murder, so I guess it’s not impossible. I wish I remembered what had been running through my head when I was sitting on that log the next morning. I’d give anything to see what I was writing.
I just don’t understand why I would remember everything else about my abuse, and remember stuff leading up to that night, and remember stuff that happened afterward, but not remember that one specific period of time. It bothers me but there’s nothing I can do about it and no way I will ever have answers.
The last time this subject came up, someone posted about a study indicating that memories could apparently be suppressed through hypnosis – however, the subjects, even without conscious memory of the suppressed event, still behaved as if they had experienced the event. They were still affected by it even if they didn’t remember it.
It’s one reason I’m skeptical that psychogenic amnesia is a thing. If the brain ostensibly protects us from painful memories, why do they still affect us even when we can’t remember them? Why do so many people experience absolutely heinous things and remember every second?
Whatever my stepfather did to me in that cabin, it still remains one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever been through, even though I have no memory of it. I realize that sounds absurd but I sometimes do have somatic impressions associated with it. Because they aren’t attached to any narrative memory I can’t prove they didn’t come from somewhere else or make any sense of them. It’s basically like floundering around in a black room where horrible things happen at random and you are in a state of perpetual terror and confusion. I think knowing what happened would bring me peace, not make things worse.
I don’t really understand the under lying causes behind it but it reminds me of people who steal or cheat and then rationalize to the point where it never really happened as far as they are concerned. Guilt even if it is not deserved can do weird things to people.
bolding mine
I think psychogenic amnesia is a thing. I was crisis counselor for years. I’m not skeptical. I bet if you talk to combat vets, or ER docs, or any number of folks who see people who have lived through traumatic events they’ll tell you they believe it’s a thing too. As to why it’s an experience that’s different for everyone, the simplistic answer to that is because we’re all different. I had a fall off a horse once. I don’t remember the entire fall (and I was not injured). I just remember a few snapshots of the incident. It’s been years and that’s all I will ever remember. It was scary as shit, involved me coming off in the middle of an entire group of horses that bolted, and I just don’t remember all of it. This is not in any way comparable to your experience. It’s just an illustration that in traumatic moments, not everything is recorded.
If you have somatic impressions sometimes, isn’t that a form of memory? There’s something there. Just like I don’t remember my entire fall, but I distinctly recall that one split second of seeing my horse’s shoulder as I fell past it. I guess I’m saying that I don’t think somatic memory invalidates the premise that you have a form of amnesia from that night.
In your case, it would not surprise me if he drugged you. Or if that night was just the one night when your brain said, “enough”. It sucks that you might never know.
I won’t poke at you anymore about this. I’m so sorry any of it happened to you at all. {{{Hugs}}}
I don’t think too many people remember anything from when they were three. I remember some few snippets of my pre-age-5 childhood, timelines I can approximate by which house we were in, etc.
I also remember waking up one morning having had a dream - the place we lived in until I was about 4 or 5, we were out playing on our own (kids did that in those days) and we walked a board across a ditch and a much younger child following us, fell, their head cut open and blood was flowing across their face. Their mother came running across the street grabbed the child and took it.
Did this happen? Was it a construct of my imagination? Bad dream? The dream happened when I was about 30 years old or more, the event would have happened about 1960; the surroundings sort of matched; there’s nobody left to ask if this happened, what are the odds they would remember. I don’t think it was media induced, I’m not a big fan of blood-and-gore or horror movies. I could not swear it did or did not happen.
General criminal law wisdom is that eye witnesses are the worst form of evidence.
I don’t know. Years ago, I was shown an old picture of me at a tender age holding a rubber daffy duck. Upon seeing it I suddenly remembered this toy I had completely forgotten about, but also I felt the taste and texture of its beak in my mouth.
This incident intrigued me a lot. I since often wondered how many other memories are perfectly formed and detailled (like the rubber beak taste), stockpiled somewhere, and just waiting for the right trigger to become accessible. Could I remember, say, the morning of September 9 1978, if only the right trigger appeared?
So, I’m not really convinced that memories are either consciously present or permanently inaccessible.