This is a review of the book:
Why read this book?
A friend of mine, who knew of my recent struggles, provided me with this scholarly treatment full of meta-studies, post-facto studies, surveys and empirical experiments that focus on the human "memory". Initially I read the text with skepticism given my personal experiences and the absence of a leader in the field, Elizabeth Loftus, who did not have a study presented in the text. After plowing my way through the difficult to read material I came to appreciate the efforts of the various authors to investigate and analyze "recovered memories" in a manner that sought to be scientific and truthful. I came to the conclusion that the authors in the text, even when biased, were at least making an attempt at seeking the truth using verifiable data. Using the scientific method with fully articulated transparent and reasoned analysis can only help the discourse about "recovered memory" because they help illuminate truth.
One psychological researcher described why he migrated to studying "recovered-memory" research while screening subjects for another study.
".....I interviewed women who responded to our newspaper advertisement that requested volunteers for a study on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.... During the course of about 10 days, I assessed several woman who responded to our advertisement but who remembered nothing about their
abuse. Puzzled, I asked them why they responded to an ad that requested survivors of sexual abuse when they had no memories of sexual abuse. Each explained that she had been experiencing various symptoms (e.g., depressed mood, problems with men, drinking too much), and assumed that these otherwise inexplicable difficulties resulted from memories of sexual abuse which they could not remember." (p 129)
This experience revealed to this researcher the impact of a cultural message sent over a lifetime of exposure at school, in entertainment, in popular literature, in professional literature and during informal discussions among friends and family. It is assumed that the difficulties we face in life are the result of an experience in the past as a child. Childhood abuse that is "not remembered" is assumed to be the cause of any deliberate actions that are presently personally destructive. This assumption is so powerful it motivates people to take part in studies with required memories even if those memories do not exist!
The assumption that all personal problems always derive from early childhood trauma drives incoherent behavior with other expressions. Families are splintered by false accusations assumed to explain the destructive behavior of the accuser. States have law enforcement policies that assumes that an accuser must be telling the truth because the accuser "remembers" being abused. Therapeutic disciplines use techniques that are found to create memories which "should be there" and provide a framework for the "treatment". Many have been incorrectly jailed (some for decades) because of the assumption that such behavior had happened because the accuser had "personal problems" which were explained if the memories were true (even if later they are found not to be true by physical evidence such as DNA). The widespread cultural assumption, not empirically based, that all problems are due to being a childhood victim of abuse of some type, has destroyed individuals, splintered families, burdened society with unhelpful treatment stretched out over years and spread untold destruction to social ties.
Recognizing that there is a possibility of memories being true or false is the first step in the road to wondering about the true causes of behavior. Knowing the factors and indicators that allow for the correct assignment of "True" and "False" could be helpful in challenging a cultural assumption that has caused so much damage to our society. It can also help establish truth. Seeking the truth can only help.
I read this book because I am a victim of such a false accusation by a child of mine who was simultaneously given prescribed medications for depression and exposed to "Recovered Memory Therapy". When I heard of the accusation I knew they were all false. My other 4 adult children knew the the accusations were all false (even thought they were recruited to join in the accusations in private chats). The minor child still at home with us knew the the accusations were false. All my siblings who knew me intimately as a person knew the the accusations were false. My closest friends and neighbors who truly knew my family (we have children in each other's homes frequently) knew the the accusations were false. Any reasonable person who reviewed the facts and timelines presented easily determined the accusations were false.
Yet many, to my dismay, stood by in silence. The silence was not because they knew the accusations to be true (these false accusations are in fact false). The silence was due to the deeply burned cultural assumption that such childhood memories explain the personal difficulties in the life of the accuser" so they must be true. Another assumption is that children would "never lie about something so horrid" (bit of course the memory is being told by an adult who imagined being a child in the memory which is a subtle difference). In addition, experts have cited the reasoning that no one would ever make such horrid accusations unless they were true (reasoning may not be something you do well if reacting to medication). Finally any strident denial offered by the falsely accused is seen as "incriminating". Any lack of strident denial is also seen as "incriminating" The problem, of course, is that all the assumptions discussed are emotive based and wrong. The emotive based assumptions does not stop the process of accusing, convicting and jailing innocents (as has been repeatedly displayed).
Finally the accuser has the freedom to reveal a vague story, devoid of details, uncorroborated, undated, no specific location, no specific time and no physical evidence over 25 years later. The accused must somehow produce evidence that the events described did not occur. So the case rests on sentiment, emotional appeal and convincing portrayal. This is hardly a recipe for justice.
My wife recognized early on that those who treating the accuser with "Memory Recovery Therapy" were likely committing what I have come to see as truly a "crime" (in facilitating these accusations). Given the assumption of our culture described in this one section of the book I am no longer surprised. In fact I should count my blessings. I was lucky enough to have five other children, a wife and my nuclear family who knew that these accusations were spurious even if vividly depicted and convincingly displayed. There are many who have suffered from the same false accusations with far worse consequences. The accused in these cases had few or no other children to corroborate no such possible activity, no surviving or united spouse to left to support and no supportive nuclear family. Many who suffered tremendously, were a better father than I, while also totally and completely innocent. My nightmare is quite gentle in comparison to those who became isolated, imprisoned, physically debilitated or even died in the grief. I should count my blessings.
In this review I offer a brief summary of each section.
Introduction: In the Aftermath of the So-Called Memory Wars
This section was authored by Robert Belli who is a cognitive psychologist specialized in studying memory, false memories and methods to improve the accuracy of memory in applied settings. Dr. Belli decribes some of the features of the "Memory Wars" that he had first hand knowledge of.
In the 1990's Dr. Belli co-authored a work with Elizabeth Loftus. Dr. Loftus was the first courageous researcher to openly, and in a public forum, challenge the use of the suggestive recovery techniques and the assumption that retrieved memories (often called "repressed") were always true and always fully accurate. In her early works Dr. Loftus was able to "create memories" that came to be claimed by participants as actual memories of real events by participants in the study (who initially denied such memories as "being lost in a mall"). Soon Dr. Loftus was writing and researching and repeatedly discovering, often in legal cases, that there were people going to jail and being convicted of crimes based on memories that were factually false (in some cases the guilty party not in prison confessed while in other cases physical evidence exonerated the imprisoned but many innocents still claiming innocence remain in prison to this day). The "False Memory Syndrome" movement has continued to question the validity and accuracy of retrieved "repressed memories" and has assisted a tidal wave of lawsuits seeking damages years after false memories were planted, accusations hurled and lives destroyed.
Dr. Belli witnessed first hand the impact of of the Memory Wars on his co-author (1996) and colleague. Dr. Loftus faced heckling during presentations open to the public. She endured public attacks on her character and ridicule by clinicians. Peers and concerned citizens began petition drives to remove her from her position at a state university. Guards had to be used to secure the buildings she might be occupying because of death threats. Her work was focused on obtaining data that could be used to evaluate the claims of articulated memories for accuracy. Her presentation of data and experimental results apparently caused strong emotional reactions. Clearly there were unstable people emotionally driven who opposed her work. In addition she was facing off against an entire industry of self help books, support groups, associations and ongoing group therapies and individual therapies totally reliant on the assumption that "retrieved memories" were true and that recalling them always benefited the patient. The battle was intense and continues even now. On one side there are huge profits, therapist fees and dependent clients in vulnerable (often drugged states) willing to pay. On the other side there are lawsuit settlements and insurance companies raising rates, restricting coverage for certain "techniques" and financing more research.
In the context of the "Memory Wars" Dr. Belli put together a symposium of with survey studies and empirical research focused on the issue of memory. Data that reveals the degree of accuracy, distortion and reliability of memory were of special interest at this symposium. Those who are doing research in this area are fairly small in number so they all have an inordinate impact on the possible future practice of dynamic psychotherapy.
I quickly cite sections (title and authors provided) by other authors with quotes and comments researchers below.
The Cognitive and Neuroscience of True and False Memories
M. Johnson, C. Raye, K. Mitchell and E. Ankudowich
"...very vivid, highly emotional,, or apparently meaningful mental experience, even if quite incomplete can seem real...
There are individual differences (in neural electro-chemical response)...to the experience of memory
...in the resolution of representational systems
...in the functioning of structures
...in the kinds and level of emotions that disrupt encoding
...in how vivid (perceptually, emotionally, semantically etc.)
...in how they weight the cues recalling memory attributions
...in how current experience deflect or inhibit memories
...in how the cues of past events influence the memory
...how similar events (real or imagined) may have influenced the memory of the target event
"These myriad of factors make memory a sometimes comforting and sometimes disturbing individual experience, but always a fascinating scientific pursuit."
(p 38)
Towards a Congitive and Neurobiological Model of Motivated Forgetting
M. Anderson and Ean Huddleson
"What we remember and what we forget of our life experiences is driven as much or more by our goals to regulate our current emotional state as it is by the passive incidental factors traditionally emphasized in cognitive psychology."
(p 110)
Searching for Repressed Memory
R. McNally
Those claiming to have "repressed memories" include a wide variety of experiences. Some identify repressed memories which include war time memories, horrific and violent crimes, traumatic emotional events, alien abductions and childhood sexual abuse. Studying the people who make the claims of repressed memory can help the search for the cues and factors that allow a clinician to determine the memory accuracy, distortion or reliability of the memories.
In a lightning strike in horrific manner killed two children at a soccer game involving dozens of players and spectators. When the children were interviewed thirty years later the only two who could not recall the traumatic event were two that were struck by side bolts and lost total consciousness. All others recalled the event. No motivated forgetting or repression was found in any of the remaining survivors. (p127)
The author suggests that Childhood Sexual Abuse may not have been understood at the time of the event. The abuse may not have been terrifying and so it was only later that the event, when understood, takes on greater emotional meaning and this may be one of the "repression" experiences (p121).
Four groups of participants in one study with women who recalled sexual abuse as children, women who believed they experienced abuse but did not recall an incident, women who were sexually abused and could always recall the abuse and women with no history of abuse. The results indicated that "the recovered memory group was more prone to false recognition than other groups. More recently it has been shown that increased false recall and recognition are specific to people who recovered memories in the context of suggestive therapy, and are not evident in the people who recovered their memories spontaneously."
"The field (of recovered memory experiences) has not been well-served by much of the existing literature, which has uncritically embraced a variety of myths, logical errors and false assumptions, and adapted a simplistic approach to what are complex and fascinating memory phenomenon." (p 167)
A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Recovered Memory Experiences
C. Brewin
"These results strongly support the idea that memories recovered in a suggestive therapy and recovered spontaneously may have fundamentally different origins. As a group, people who report having recovered their memories in suggestive therapy show a pronounced tendency to incorrectly claim that they have experienced events when they have demonstrably not experienced them as measured by a DRM test." the passage goes on "to the extent that the DRM test is indicative of a broader deficit in monitoring the source of one's memories
...this finding suggests that such reports of recovered memories should be viewed with a cautious eye as they reflect an interaction of suggestive therapy with pre-existing source monitoring deficits." (p 187)
"Thus in some cases of recovered memories may in fact be false memories that are, in effect, unwittingly implanted by therapists who actually intent to help the patient." (p 188)
Note: DRM (Dees-Roediger-McDermott) task is described on page 214 and provides information that can be used to verify the likelihood of correctly and/or reliably recalled memories.
Motivated Forgetting and Misremembering: Perspectives from Betrayal Trauma Theory
A DePrince, L. Brown, R. Cheit, J. Freyd, S. Gold, K. Pezdek, K. Quina
In this article, heavily reliant on surveys and questionnaires, the assumption is the there is no controversy about "recovered memories" both spontaneous and and in dynamic therapies being true. Accusations and memories reported by people but not corroborated are because those who do not corroborate those memories do not remember. Is the failure too corroborate a "memory" assumed to always be a sign of cooperation with a perpetrator? Is the memory of an accuser assumed to be true without corroboration? The assumption of the article that recovered memories themselves are true is then used to describe a "Betrayal Trauma Theory" model to explain repression and retrieval by the victims and the perpetrator. So the entire article is a house of cards.
I was bothered by the statement "The veil of secrecy enforced by perpetrators serves as a potent suggestion to forget the abuse." What if there was no abuse? Does the lack of mentioning the abuse signal repressions or the fact that it never occurred? In the many cases of childhood sexual abuse brought about by recovered memories decades after they were alleged to have occurred the assumption of "veil of secrecy" is then used to explain the lack of corroboration. The perpetrator is assumed, through enforcement of the veil of secrecy, to be extinguishing the "memories". The denial of siblings then become fully explained in this bizarre understanding of what happens when false accusations and twisted or created memories are used. Why is it that "suppressed tales of alien abductions" go years in secrecy?" The possibility of a false memory is never addressed.
In this, the most pro Memory Recovery article of the collection the author claims: "Although DePrince et al are skeptical regarding the role of suggestive therapy in producing real world false memories of childhood sexual abuse they are nonetheless disturbed that suggestive therapy occurs at all. In their view...only a minority of incompetent therapists would be using techniques that could be considered as suggestive." (p 9)
The interesting fact is that DePrince et al think that the childhood sexual abuse problem emerges from an unjust social structure that is found in the traditional family. So support for the "Recovery Memory Therapy", in this research, comes from those who would like to see the traditional family remade. In reading this section it is clearer to me that the goal is not obtaining truth or evaluating the accuracy, reliability or correct source of a memory. This article is focused on the family dynamics and interpersonal actions that suppress the memory and seeks to explain how the memories can be so successfully "suppressed" while assuming the memories themselves are accurate recollections. It is about reordering family life to be more "just". I was not surprised that the "Memory Recovery Therapy" appears to be aligned with those who think the traditional family structure is inherently wrong because this technique has so thoroughly destroyed families so effectively for so long.
Conclusion:
This book contained a wide range of information about memory. Memory accuracy is altered by time, emotional state, similar events, confusion of sources, stress and intellectual impairments caused by physical events (such as lack of sleep), the presence of neurally active drugs and the natural interference that occurs with the use of memory for an entire myriad of activities over a lifetime.
In addition is has been clearly proven that memories can be created through a variety of mechanisms and exposure to stimuli.
Memories recalled by war time veterans in large studies and by those who claim alien abductions (there are a number of those) have parallels to the trauma in childhood recalled in a similar manner decades later.
The support for "Recovered Memory Therapy" (RMT) is not based on an understanding of memory and its limitations. RMT is based on the assumption that early childhood trauma explains a wide range of undesirable adult behaviors. Those who cling to RMT appear to ignore the possibility that we, as individuals, are the sum total of our experiences and that the coping mechanisms for emotion, intellectual skills defining the outlines and content of our memory and our spiritual formation all play a role in how we respond to personal challenges and successes. It is very possible that we learn to use those tools and mechanisms that work for us. A better avenue to personal improvement than finding or even creating memories of early childhood trauma may be to develop new coping mechanisms and work on overcoming a deficiency in skills one may have available to help in times of stress.
True and False Recovered Memories:
Toward a Reconciliation of the Debate
Selected research from the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation
Editor by Robert F. Belli (2012)
One psychological researcher described why he migrated to studying "recovered-memory" research while screening subjects for another study.
".....I interviewed women who responded to our newspaper advertisement that requested volunteers for a study on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.... During the course of about 10 days, I assessed several woman who responded to our advertisement but who remembered nothing about their
abuse. Puzzled, I asked them why they responded to an ad that requested survivors of sexual abuse when they had no memories of sexual abuse. Each explained that she had been experiencing various symptoms (e.g., depressed mood, problems with men, drinking too much), and assumed that these otherwise inexplicable difficulties resulted from memories of sexual abuse which they could not remember." (p 129)
This experience revealed to this researcher the impact of a cultural message sent over a lifetime of exposure at school, in entertainment, in popular literature, in professional literature and during informal discussions among friends and family. It is assumed that the difficulties we face in life are the result of an experience in the past as a child. Childhood abuse that is "not remembered" is assumed to be the cause of any deliberate actions that are presently personally destructive. This assumption is so powerful it motivates people to take part in studies with required memories even if those memories do not exist!
The assumption that all personal problems always derive from early childhood trauma drives incoherent behavior with other expressions. Families are splintered by false accusations assumed to explain the destructive behavior of the accuser. States have law enforcement policies that assumes that an accuser must be telling the truth because the accuser "remembers" being abused. Therapeutic disciplines use techniques that are found to create memories which "should be there" and provide a framework for the "treatment". Many have been incorrectly jailed (some for decades) because of the assumption that such behavior had happened because the accuser had "personal problems" which were explained if the memories were true (even if later they are found not to be true by physical evidence such as DNA). The widespread cultural assumption, not empirically based, that all problems are due to being a childhood victim of abuse of some type, has destroyed individuals, splintered families, burdened society with unhelpful treatment stretched out over years and spread untold destruction to social ties.
Recognizing that there is a possibility of memories being true or false is the first step in the road to wondering about the true causes of behavior. Knowing the factors and indicators that allow for the correct assignment of "True" and "False" could be helpful in challenging a cultural assumption that has caused so much damage to our society. It can also help establish truth. Seeking the truth can only help.
I read this book because I am a victim of such a false accusation by a child of mine who was simultaneously given prescribed medications for depression and exposed to "Recovered Memory Therapy". When I heard of the accusation I knew they were all false. My other 4 adult children knew the the accusations were all false (even thought they were recruited to join in the accusations in private chats). The minor child still at home with us knew the the accusations were false. All my siblings who knew me intimately as a person knew the the accusations were false. My closest friends and neighbors who truly knew my family (we have children in each other's homes frequently) knew the the accusations were false. Any reasonable person who reviewed the facts and timelines presented easily determined the accusations were false.
Yet many, to my dismay, stood by in silence. The silence was not because they knew the accusations to be true (these false accusations are in fact false). The silence was due to the deeply burned cultural assumption that such childhood memories explain the personal difficulties in the life of the accuser" so they must be true. Another assumption is that children would "never lie about something so horrid" (bit of course the memory is being told by an adult who imagined being a child in the memory which is a subtle difference). In addition, experts have cited the reasoning that no one would ever make such horrid accusations unless they were true (reasoning may not be something you do well if reacting to medication). Finally any strident denial offered by the falsely accused is seen as "incriminating". Any lack of strident denial is also seen as "incriminating" The problem, of course, is that all the assumptions discussed are emotive based and wrong. The emotive based assumptions does not stop the process of accusing, convicting and jailing innocents (as has been repeatedly displayed).
Finally the accuser has the freedom to reveal a vague story, devoid of details, uncorroborated, undated, no specific location, no specific time and no physical evidence over 25 years later. The accused must somehow produce evidence that the events described did not occur. So the case rests on sentiment, emotional appeal and convincing portrayal. This is hardly a recipe for justice.
My wife recognized early on that those who treating the accuser with "Memory Recovery Therapy" were likely committing what I have come to see as truly a "crime" (in facilitating these accusations). Given the assumption of our culture described in this one section of the book I am no longer surprised. In fact I should count my blessings. I was lucky enough to have five other children, a wife and my nuclear family who knew that these accusations were spurious even if vividly depicted and convincingly displayed. There are many who have suffered from the same false accusations with far worse consequences. The accused in these cases had few or no other children to corroborate no such possible activity, no surviving or united spouse to left to support and no supportive nuclear family. Many who suffered tremendously, were a better father than I, while also totally and completely innocent. My nightmare is quite gentle in comparison to those who became isolated, imprisoned, physically debilitated or even died in the grief. I should count my blessings.
In this review I offer a brief summary of each section.
Introduction: In the Aftermath of the So-Called Memory Wars
This section was authored by Robert Belli who is a cognitive psychologist specialized in studying memory, false memories and methods to improve the accuracy of memory in applied settings. Dr. Belli decribes some of the features of the "Memory Wars" that he had first hand knowledge of.
In the 1990's Dr. Belli co-authored a work with Elizabeth Loftus. Dr. Loftus was the first courageous researcher to openly, and in a public forum, challenge the use of the suggestive recovery techniques and the assumption that retrieved memories (often called "repressed") were always true and always fully accurate. In her early works Dr. Loftus was able to "create memories" that came to be claimed by participants as actual memories of real events by participants in the study (who initially denied such memories as "being lost in a mall"). Soon Dr. Loftus was writing and researching and repeatedly discovering, often in legal cases, that there were people going to jail and being convicted of crimes based on memories that were factually false (in some cases the guilty party not in prison confessed while in other cases physical evidence exonerated the imprisoned but many innocents still claiming innocence remain in prison to this day). The "False Memory Syndrome" movement has continued to question the validity and accuracy of retrieved "repressed memories" and has assisted a tidal wave of lawsuits seeking damages years after false memories were planted, accusations hurled and lives destroyed.
Dr. Belli witnessed first hand the impact of of the Memory Wars on his co-author (1996) and colleague. Dr. Loftus faced heckling during presentations open to the public. She endured public attacks on her character and ridicule by clinicians. Peers and concerned citizens began petition drives to remove her from her position at a state university. Guards had to be used to secure the buildings she might be occupying because of death threats. Her work was focused on obtaining data that could be used to evaluate the claims of articulated memories for accuracy. Her presentation of data and experimental results apparently caused strong emotional reactions. Clearly there were unstable people emotionally driven who opposed her work. In addition she was facing off against an entire industry of self help books, support groups, associations and ongoing group therapies and individual therapies totally reliant on the assumption that "retrieved memories" were true and that recalling them always benefited the patient. The battle was intense and continues even now. On one side there are huge profits, therapist fees and dependent clients in vulnerable (often drugged states) willing to pay. On the other side there are lawsuit settlements and insurance companies raising rates, restricting coverage for certain "techniques" and financing more research.
In the context of the "Memory Wars" Dr. Belli put together a symposium of with survey studies and empirical research focused on the issue of memory. Data that reveals the degree of accuracy, distortion and reliability of memory were of special interest at this symposium. Those who are doing research in this area are fairly small in number so they all have an inordinate impact on the possible future practice of dynamic psychotherapy.
I quickly cite sections (title and authors provided) by other authors with quotes and comments researchers below.
The Cognitive and Neuroscience of True and False Memories
M. Johnson, C. Raye, K. Mitchell and E. Ankudowich
"...very vivid, highly emotional,, or apparently meaningful mental experience, even if quite incomplete can seem real...
There are individual differences (in neural electro-chemical response)...to the experience of memory
...in the resolution of representational systems
...in the functioning of structures
...in the kinds and level of emotions that disrupt encoding
...in how vivid (perceptually, emotionally, semantically etc.)
...in how they weight the cues recalling memory attributions
...in how current experience deflect or inhibit memories
...in how the cues of past events influence the memory
...how similar events (real or imagined) may have influenced the memory of the target event
"These myriad of factors make memory a sometimes comforting and sometimes disturbing individual experience, but always a fascinating scientific pursuit."
(p 38)
Towards a Congitive and Neurobiological Model of Motivated Forgetting
M. Anderson and Ean Huddleson
"What we remember and what we forget of our life experiences is driven as much or more by our goals to regulate our current emotional state as it is by the passive incidental factors traditionally emphasized in cognitive psychology."
(p 110)
Searching for Repressed Memory
R. McNally
Those claiming to have "repressed memories" include a wide variety of experiences. Some identify repressed memories which include war time memories, horrific and violent crimes, traumatic emotional events, alien abductions and childhood sexual abuse. Studying the people who make the claims of repressed memory can help the search for the cues and factors that allow a clinician to determine the memory accuracy, distortion or reliability of the memories.
In a lightning strike in horrific manner killed two children at a soccer game involving dozens of players and spectators. When the children were interviewed thirty years later the only two who could not recall the traumatic event were two that were struck by side bolts and lost total consciousness. All others recalled the event. No motivated forgetting or repression was found in any of the remaining survivors. (p127)
The author suggests that Childhood Sexual Abuse may not have been understood at the time of the event. The abuse may not have been terrifying and so it was only later that the event, when understood, takes on greater emotional meaning and this may be one of the "repression" experiences (p121).
Four groups of participants in one study with women who recalled sexual abuse as children, women who believed they experienced abuse but did not recall an incident, women who were sexually abused and could always recall the abuse and women with no history of abuse. The results indicated that "the recovered memory group was more prone to false recognition than other groups. More recently it has been shown that increased false recall and recognition are specific to people who recovered memories in the context of suggestive therapy, and are not evident in the people who recovered their memories spontaneously."
"The field (of recovered memory experiences) has not been well-served by much of the existing literature, which has uncritically embraced a variety of myths, logical errors and false assumptions, and adapted a simplistic approach to what are complex and fascinating memory phenomenon." (p 167)
A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Recovered Memory Experiences
C. Brewin
"These results strongly support the idea that memories recovered in a suggestive therapy and recovered spontaneously may have fundamentally different origins. As a group, people who report having recovered their memories in suggestive therapy show a pronounced tendency to incorrectly claim that they have experienced events when they have demonstrably not experienced them as measured by a DRM test." the passage goes on "to the extent that the DRM test is indicative of a broader deficit in monitoring the source of one's memories
...this finding suggests that such reports of recovered memories should be viewed with a cautious eye as they reflect an interaction of suggestive therapy with pre-existing source monitoring deficits." (p 187)
"Thus in some cases of recovered memories may in fact be false memories that are, in effect, unwittingly implanted by therapists who actually intent to help the patient." (p 188)
Note: DRM (Dees-Roediger-McDermott) task is described on page 214 and provides information that can be used to verify the likelihood of correctly and/or reliably recalled memories.
Motivated Forgetting and Misremembering: Perspectives from Betrayal Trauma Theory
A DePrince, L. Brown, R. Cheit, J. Freyd, S. Gold, K. Pezdek, K. Quina
In this article, heavily reliant on surveys and questionnaires, the assumption is the there is no controversy about "recovered memories" both spontaneous and and in dynamic therapies being true. Accusations and memories reported by people but not corroborated are because those who do not corroborate those memories do not remember. Is the failure too corroborate a "memory" assumed to always be a sign of cooperation with a perpetrator? Is the memory of an accuser assumed to be true without corroboration? The assumption of the article that recovered memories themselves are true is then used to describe a "Betrayal Trauma Theory" model to explain repression and retrieval by the victims and the perpetrator. So the entire article is a house of cards.
I was bothered by the statement "The veil of secrecy enforced by perpetrators serves as a potent suggestion to forget the abuse." What if there was no abuse? Does the lack of mentioning the abuse signal repressions or the fact that it never occurred? In the many cases of childhood sexual abuse brought about by recovered memories decades after they were alleged to have occurred the assumption of "veil of secrecy" is then used to explain the lack of corroboration. The perpetrator is assumed, through enforcement of the veil of secrecy, to be extinguishing the "memories". The denial of siblings then become fully explained in this bizarre understanding of what happens when false accusations and twisted or created memories are used. Why is it that "suppressed tales of alien abductions" go years in secrecy?" The possibility of a false memory is never addressed.
In this, the most pro Memory Recovery article of the collection the author claims: "Although DePrince et al are skeptical regarding the role of suggestive therapy in producing real world false memories of childhood sexual abuse they are nonetheless disturbed that suggestive therapy occurs at all. In their view...only a minority of incompetent therapists would be using techniques that could be considered as suggestive." (p 9)
The interesting fact is that DePrince et al think that the childhood sexual abuse problem emerges from an unjust social structure that is found in the traditional family. So support for the "Recovery Memory Therapy", in this research, comes from those who would like to see the traditional family remade. In reading this section it is clearer to me that the goal is not obtaining truth or evaluating the accuracy, reliability or correct source of a memory. This article is focused on the family dynamics and interpersonal actions that suppress the memory and seeks to explain how the memories can be so successfully "suppressed" while assuming the memories themselves are accurate recollections. It is about reordering family life to be more "just". I was not surprised that the "Memory Recovery Therapy" appears to be aligned with those who think the traditional family structure is inherently wrong because this technique has so thoroughly destroyed families so effectively for so long.
Conclusion:
This book contained a wide range of information about memory. Memory accuracy is altered by time, emotional state, similar events, confusion of sources, stress and intellectual impairments caused by physical events (such as lack of sleep), the presence of neurally active drugs and the natural interference that occurs with the use of memory for an entire myriad of activities over a lifetime.
In addition is has been clearly proven that memories can be created through a variety of mechanisms and exposure to stimuli.
Memories recalled by war time veterans in large studies and by those who claim alien abductions (there are a number of those) have parallels to the trauma in childhood recalled in a similar manner decades later.
The support for "Recovered Memory Therapy" (RMT) is not based on an understanding of memory and its limitations. RMT is based on the assumption that early childhood trauma explains a wide range of undesirable adult behaviors. Those who cling to RMT appear to ignore the possibility that we, as individuals, are the sum total of our experiences and that the coping mechanisms for emotion, intellectual skills defining the outlines and content of our memory and our spiritual formation all play a role in how we respond to personal challenges and successes. It is very possible that we learn to use those tools and mechanisms that work for us. A better avenue to personal improvement than finding or even creating memories of early childhood trauma may be to develop new coping mechanisms and work on overcoming a deficiency in skills one may have available to help in times of stress.
===========================
========================================
*** WARNING ***
If you are seeking help for personal struggles and a therapist, counselor or friend says that "recovering childhood memories can help you get better" then IMMEDIATELY get up from your chair (or off the couch), run to the door, open it and flee. Hundreds of thousands have lost families, years of productive living and squandered immense wealth with tragedy inducing therapy that produces horrid false memories, splinters families, isolates the client and is documented to cause decline in mental health.
==============================================================
This is an effort to Break the Cycle of Shame
and Save Others from Similar Tragedy!
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