Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Review I: The Myth of Repressed Memory


 Part I:  Personal Review of the book
               (My Amazon.com review is here)
Part II: A collection of high quality reviews
  "The Myth of Repressed Memory"
   
by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and K. Ketcham (1996)

        I once thought there was something to repressed memories. It made sense to me that horrible things might be "blocked out" but were possibly true. After reading this book and reviewing the evidence in over a dozen other books the idea of a repressed memory now seems absurd.   Popular movies may depict repressed memory as real like "Sybil" which is now fully proven to be a fraud used to generate money. Repressed memories are like other myths such as vampires, space aliens with personal accounts of experiences as the only evidence available.  This book has provided me with a significant awakening.  I now know that memory is very vulnerable to what influences us and our imagination.
       The primary author Dr. Elizabeth Loftus is an internationally known scientist published in professional journals and principal investigator of numerous highly acclaimed peer reviewed experiments on memory. Dr. Loftus was often called as the memory expert in high stakes court cases due to her expertise. Katherine Ketcham has a degree in psychology and has both popular writing experience and clinical counseling experience. Legal cases, both criminal and civil, and personal attacks have not been successful against either author over the decades. These attacks are by those whose therapy businesses have been affected from the exposure of the truth about the harm their "therapy" was doing. 
        Dr. Loftus has also endured protests, public attacks on her character and death threats by those who disagree with her evidence, analysis and conclusions. This book focuses on an emotionally riveting topic and these authors display a rare courage and integrity whether one agrees or does not agree with the thesis of the book.  She addresses the harassment, threats and violence perpetrated by "believers" against "deniers" (and against other researchers like her) in Chapter 2 "A Strange Time" (pg 3-7)
       This book is an amazing diverse collection of stories, personal experiences, research, interviews and facts all focused on carefully examining the assertion that "repressed memories" are historically accurate accounts of past experiences. In many accounts the "Repressed Memories" are used, as stand alone evidence to accuse, isolate, sue, prosecute, jail and imprison innocent people (some for more than a decade). 
        This book carefully and gently leads the reader to the conclusion, based on the accounts and interviews, that "repressed memory" can not possibly provide anyone with reliable accounts of the highly emotional traumatic recollections years or decades later as claimed. In fact the events may never have taken place historically and may be the result of confabulations, distortions, assumptions, suggestive therapy, coercive questioning or source confusion among other factors (or any combinations of these possibilities).
       She examines the historical roots of how Sigmund Freud initially viewed "repressed memories".   Freud initially thought the memory descriptions were actual historical recollections but he quickly came to the conclusion that these stories were actually fantasies.  Freud's initial errant insight that these fantasies were factual memories (pg 49-50) has been lifted for use by clinicians and writers who came to see "repressed memory" as the explanation for a wide variety of maladies.  This notion has fueled book sales, personal therapies and group therapy sessions (pg 50-59).
       The book carefully documents how suggestive and/or coercive comments, inquiries, influences and therapies through counselors, friends, relatives and interrogators can help create imagined events which are then labeled "repressed memories." Some of the stories are personal accounts. Dr. Loftus relates that she had a detailed memory develop when told that as a child. that she had found her mother drowned in a pool. In fact she had not even though it seemed so real to her through suggestion. (pg 39-40). Throughout the book story after story details how accusers in court cases influenced by friends, police and therapists find "repressed memories" that describe in amazing detail horrid behavior including incest, physical abuse, murder and satanic rituals. Even cursory investigation along with an obvious lack of physical evidence often causes very reasoned doubts that the memories are genuine historical events even if they appeal to our strong natural emotional urge to protect children.
       I found the most interesting part of the book to be Chapter 11 "Sticks and Stones". In this chapter Dr. Loftus reveals personal meetings and exchanges she has had with famous proponents from the "recovered memory" movement. It is amazing how gracious and amiable she managed to be with those who have publicly disparaged her and her positions. Toward the end of the Chapter 11 Dr. Loftus shares with a recovered memory therapist (Barbara) how she was sexually abused when she was 6 years old by a 15 year old male babysitter (pg 225-226) named Howard. Dr. Loftus states "In his mind, I suspect, he (Howard) was taking a minor risk, experimenting with someone 'safe'. A little girl who wouldn't reject him or tattle on him....He wasn't cruel he just didn't think...But I never forgot this memory, nor did I repress it" (pg 226). Dr. Loftus shares that when she and the recovered therapist "parted later that night we hugged" (pg 226). A week later she received a paper with a drawing in the shape of a body labeled "HOWARD". It had pins in the chest and where sexual organs would be. The pins tips were colored bright red. Barbara had sent this to Dr. Loftus (pg 226). This is the point in the book that solidified (for me) how repressed memory zealots manage emotional issues (using symbols). Those like Dr. Loftus manage the emotional trauma differently. I will leave it at that.
       I have read all the poor ratings of this book. None of them display the evidence of having read the book but here I address frequent errant assertions:
       (1) The book is referenced with 15 pages of citations to a wide variety of literature both in scientific journals and popular reading materials. Most impressive is the careful reading of "recovered memory" books that she cites in her book (something the recovered memory books do not do of her writings!)
       (2) She is an abuse victim herself and her book reflects great care for those who genuinely are victims (she is even gentle with those who sincerely think they are abused because of memories nurtured by poor therapy). I was genuinely touched.
       (3) She clearly distinguishes between the DSM description on dissociate amnesia and "repressed memory" which is NOT in the DSM. In fact this book does the best job in contrasting these two concepts better than any other book I have read.
       (4) She does not deny the Holocaust because none of the validated recollections of the Holocaust were ever claimed to have been "repressed." These memories were recorded and cataloged at the time and the victims have remembered all along what happened to them (this has been well documented in multiple studies).
       (5) Dr. Loftus has never been found to have a secret pact or relationship with any known satanic or right wing conspiracy leaders since the writing of the book more than 20 years ago.
       (6) She never lumps the incest survivor stories using "repressed memories" with repressed memories of space alien abductions or repressed memories of previous lives as roman soldiers or repressed memories of satanic rituals involving dark lit areas with large altars and screaming victims. She could have but she does not.
       I think EVERY aspiring therapist should read this book. Every parent or family member who is being falsely accused should read this book. It will allow you to see more clearly how your accuser is truly a victim. Not because of you but because of a cultural myth called "repressed memory".

 =========================================
INTERESTING QUOTES from "True Stories of False Memories"

Using nightmares to imprison the innocent...
     "Checklists and symptoms confirmed their suspicions.  Fearing the worst they (mother and sister in law) questioned the children...the mother switched therapists.  In their very first session, the therapist diagnosed...sexual abuse."
     "On the basis of nightmares reported by their children and grandchildren Raymond and Shirley Souza were indicted.  The prosecutor immediately offered them a deal:  If they agreed to plead guilty, they could walk away without a prison sentence.  The Souzas refused the arrangement..."
      "No physical evidence whatsoever existed to corroborate the charges, but on February 12, 1993, Raymond and Shirley Souza, both sixty-one, were convicted of multiple counts of rape and indecent assault and battery."
                                                                                                       pg 2
Enemy of truth...
     "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie- deliberate, contrived and dishonest- but the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.  - John F. Kennedy"
                                                                                                       pg 3
The concept of Repression...
     "The concept of repression presumes a certain power of mind.  Those who believe in repression have faith in the mind's ability to defend itself from emotionally overwhelming events by removing certain experiences and emotions from conscious awareness awareness.  Months, years, or even decades later, when the mind is better able to cope, these repressed memories can be dredged up piece by piece from the watery grave of the past, studied and painstakingly analyzed like ancient scrolls filled with literal truth..."
     "I study memory, and I am a skeptic, But this story is much more important than my carefully controlled scientific studies or any specific argument I might have with those who cling so fervently to the concept of repression.  The modern-day unfolding of the drama known as repression is rooted in the very depths of the human psyche-that inner place where reality is primarily symbolic, where images are alchemized by experience and emotions into memories, and where meaning becomes possible."
                                                                                                       pg 7
----------
THE STORY OF LYNN (from Chapter 3 ENTRANCED):

Lynn learns buzzword "denial" and gets 
group therapy to help uncover repressed memories...
     "...All survivors, he said, are in denial.
      Denial was the buzzword that reverberated across the room, the quick diagnosis that explained everything.  If one of the women expressed doubts about being abused, she was in denial.  If you are in denial, the therapist explained, that is further proof that you were in fact abused.  If a parent or sibling resists your story, accuses you of getting your facts wrong, or asks for external proof or corroboration, then they are in denial.  Most likely they have repressed memories of their own.
      The group sessions were becoming more unpredictable and chaotic....
      Adrenaline surged, emotions seethed, abreactions abounded.  Just being in the room filled with high drama and wild emotional breakthroughs became addictive, for only here was it possible to let go of everything and scream, cry, curse, howl.  No one ever told you to stop, to grow up, to behave yourself, to get a grip.  After a ninety-minute session, the outside world seemed tame, inconsequential, almost manageable.
     In May 1987 Lynn became suicidal....."
                                                                                                       pg 16
Lynn gets new counseling that truly helps...
     "What (sic) are you going to do about now, today, this moment?" the counselors asked over and over again.  When she said couldn't stop thinking about the past because she still wasn't sure what happened back in her childhood, the counselors advised her to stop looking in the past for the answers to her present pain.
     Who promised you that life wouldn't hurt? So what if you're depressed? they said.  We all have days when we feel lousy, but we get up and go to work.  We sleep, eat, take a shower, comb our hair, walk out the door and down the street.  You have to keep moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other.
   Lynn didn't know how to respond to this advice."
                                                                                                       pg 18
Lynn returns...
     "But for two more years Lynn was filled with shame for what she had done to them.
     Then one day, the pain of being separated from her parents overwhelmed the fear of facing them.  She was at her sisters house when when they walked in the door.  Seeing their daughter for the first time in three years, the opened their arms and hugged her as if they would never let her go.  They never asked Lynn to explain what happened nor did they request an apology.  They had what they wanted, and what for years they had believed would never be there's again: their daughter, safe, sane, alive."
                                                                                                       pg 19
----------
More use of the buzzword denial...
     "Denial was the ever-present word, the inherent, unalterable, indisputable truth.  Survivors are in denial.  Families are in denial.  Child abusers are in denial.  Denial is the answer to every question.  If the accused family members have nothing to say, its because they are guilty; if they claim innocence, they are trying to hide something; if they don't remember the event the way the survivor remembers it, they are in denial.  There was always an answer, and the answer always involved the word denial.
      Your whole family is in denial, Erin's therapist told her.
      "But wait a minute,"  Erin said, feeling angry and defensive. "Your proceeding as if you're certain that I'm an incest survivor, when I still don't know what happened to me."
     "Many of my clients who are incest survivors don't know what happened to them," her therapist responded. "Most of them are in denial."
      If you were in denial you simply had to work harder."
                                                                                                       pg 25
A return from "repressed memory therapy" described...
     "Years have gone by and Elizabeth, Pamela, Melody, Laura and Erin are recovering their strength and sanity.  But the healing is far from over.  They all mourn for the time they lost, years spent in futile efforts to discover a past that never actually existed.  They grieve for the pain they caused their husbands, children, parents and friends....
     This therapy has snatched years from me that I can never get back..."
                                                                                                       pg 29
True Believers vs. Deniers...
     "The true believers claim the moral high ground.  They are, they insist, on the front line, fighting to protect children from sexual predators and assisting survivors as they struggle through the arduous healing process.  The implication, unspoken but not unheard, is that anyone who refuses to join the True Believers in their quest to uncover the hidden past and to gain legitimacy for the concept of repression is either antiwoman, antichild, antiprogress, or, at the worst extreme, dirty i.e. a practicing pedophile or satanist.
                                                                                                       pg 32
 "Denier" innocent but loses job...
     "My six year old nephew, who had been in therapy more than a year and was now seeing another counselor because his first counselor couldn't find any evidence of sexual abuse, began to make some disclosures.  He said my mother, my father, and my older brother, whom I had not seen in four years, had sexually molested him.  Two weeks after my parents were named, I began a career as a therapist.  I worked for three days and on the fourth day my supervisor called me into the office to inform me that my nephew had named more people who allegedly molested him.  I was among the people he named.  I was fired on the spot and was investigated by the Children's Services Board and the police.  The investigation took four months before my name was cleared."
                                                                                                       pg 35
 "Denier" memory researcher threatened and harassed...
     Friend warns:"Get out of this whole field before your reputation is destroyed"
                                                                                                       pg 35
     Journalist cautions:"Be careful."
     "Please consider your work to be on the same level as those who deny the existence of the extermination camps during World War II -a letter writer concludes"
      "Is this the memory doctor who hates children? a soft female voice inquires as I pick up the phone"
      "I have an opinion about Dr. Loftus" a caller to a local radio program announces.  "I think she is connected to the right wing Christian groups who are trying to advance the cause of male patriarchy..."

 "Denier" found innocent by court murdered...
     "I open the newspaper to read that a man I testified for in a child molestation case was brutally murdered.  Tow years earlier Kaare Sortland and his wife Judy had been charged with molesting three young children at their day care center.  They were acquitted on one charge and the judge dismissed the other two charges, noting that the children originally denied that they were abused and only changed their minds after numerous therapy sessions and intensive interviews with interrogators.
    On the night Kaare was murdered...his wife heard him shout "I didn't do it!" and seconds later he lay dying in the gravel driveway, shot three times in the chest with a large caliber handgun."
                                                                                                       pg 36
Freud's use of repression...
     "Freud used repression as an allegory, a fanciful story used to illustrate the unknowable and unfathomable reaches of the human mind.  We moderns, confused perhaps by the metaphorical comparison and inclined to take things literally, imagined we could hold the unconscious and its concerns in our hands.  Whole memories, some argued, could be buried for years and then exhumed without any aging or decay of the original material. "
                                                                                                       pg 52
Analysis of stress on memory...
     "This analysis didn't square at all with my work in the laboratory on the corrosive effects of stress and trauma.  I've conducted more than twenty of these studies, most of which support the theory that stressful experiences eat away at memory."
                                                                                                       pg 57
Why believe such memories?
     "But perhaps the most compelling reason to believe these stories of recovered memories is that not believing is edged with painful complexities and ambiguities.  Not believing shakes up our sense of our own self."
                                                                                                       pg 67
Pathological symptom...
     "In a psychotherapeutically inspired double bind typical of our times, denial itself is evidence of denial, the pathological indicator that makes declarations of innocence virtual proof of guilt.    -Family Therapy Networker, 1993"                                                                                                                                                                                                                pg 102
==========================
Chapter 8 Family Destroyed:  The Doug Nagle Story

A therapist shares number found innocent of sexual deviancy...
     "How many of these evaluations have you conducted?" Doug asked.
     "Over two thousand."
      Two thousand! Doug thought.  That seemed like a lot of evaluations...he asked the next question.  "How many of those two thousand did you think were innocent?
      Dr. Barker hesitated for a moment. "One, perhaps two" he finally answered.
                                                                                                       pg 105
A father's dilemma...
     "I can't fight my kids," Doug said...."I'm not mad at my kids.  They're victims too,  I blame the counselors and sometimes I blame my wife.  But I love my kids and most of the time I love my wife.  I want to save our marriage.
      "That's very noble in theory," the polygrapher said, "but you will go to prison if you don't change your attitude.  Either attack your kids or they'll destroy you-it's one or the other."
       "Doug went home, got on his knees and prayed for several hours..."
                                                                                                       pg 123
Innocent asked to plead guilty...
     "Doug couldn't believe what he was hearing.  My own lawyer wants me to plead guilty! (in exchange for no prison time)...I'll sit in prison the rest of my life if I have to, but I won't plead guilty.  I will not do that...."
                                                                                                      pg 127
Doug Nagle was acquitted of all charges and avoided prison but his family was lost to divorce and separation.  He has since remarried and has another family.
                                                                                                      pg 137
==========================
                                                                                                     
The core ideas of Repressed Memory Therapy...
     "Incest and child sexual abuse are epidemic...."
     "Many symptoms of adult psychopatholgy including but not limited to anxiety, panic attacks, depression, sexual dysfunction, relationship difficulties, abusive behaviors, eating disorders, loneliness, and suicide attempts reflect long term reactions to childhood sexual abuse"
      "A significant percentage of adult survivors completely block out their traumatic memories..."
      "Accessing and accepting memories as real and valid is a critical step in the recovery process
      "Individual and group therapy can offer healing, resolution and renewal"
                                                                                                       pg 140-1
Specific Techniques for generating repressed memories...
     "There is never only one path up the mountain...Techniques for memory recovery are as unlimited as human creativity.
                           -  Renee Frederickson,  Repressed Memories"
                                                                                                        pg 150
     "THE DIRECT QUESTION"
                                                                                                        pg 151
     "The symptom lists toss out a net that entangles the whole human race.  As psychologist Carol Travis comments:  The same list could be used to identify oneself as someone who loves too much, someone who suffers from self-defeating personality disorder, or a mere human being in the late 20th century.  The list is general enough o include everybody at least sometimes.  Nobody doesn't fit."
                                                                                                       pg 154-5
How to generate repressed memories...
     "Fredrickson includes seven basic techniques designed to excavate buried memories: imagistic work, dream work, journal writing, body work, hypnosis, art therapy; and feelings work..."
                                                                                                       pg 156
"Warning: "Create your own story" and "imagine what actually might have happened...run the very serious risk of mistaking imagined events for memories of actual experiences"
                                                                                                       pg 158
"Warning: "Were these dreams true?...psychologists are questioning claims that dreams provide reliable map to reality"
                                                                                                       pg 159-60
"Warning: "strikes many cognitive psychologists as a potentially risky exercise particularly when therapists suggest patients strive for non-critical, stream of consciousness flow, writing down whatever comes to mind."
                                                                                                       pg 162
"Warning: "no evidence exists to support that muscles and tissues respond interpreted reliably as a concrete episodic memory."
                                                                                                       pg 163-4
"Warning: "Repeated questioning tends to freeze or harden memories regardless of historical accuracy of the memories.  Hypnosis researcher Campbell Perry..suggests that therapists may be responsible for creating and then validating the client's psuedomemories."
                                                                                                       pg 166
"Warning: "While drawing pictures might access blocked feelings, is it wise to use those feelings to explore deeper nuances of suspicion and fear? Where, we have to ask, will those nuances lead?  If memories are triggered by a clients drawings or visual representations, the therapist has no reliable way of determining whether those memories are accurate or inaccurate.  Once again caution is advised."
                                                                                                      pg 167

GROUP THERAPY WARNING:  "the chaining process can spiral out of control....it is particularly dangerous to mix people who have memories of abuse...with those who think they may have been abused but have no memories."
                                                                                                       pg 170
CONFRONTATION WARNING: "The effect of deathbed, receiving line, or one on one confrontations extend beyond the accused, who may or may not be guilty as charged.  The damage to the survivor must also be considered.  what if months  or years down the road the survivor discovers she was mistaken about the details?

In the end we clinicians cannot tell the difference between believed in fantasy about the past and viable memory of the past.  Indeed there may be no structural difference at all."
                                                                                                      pg 175
==========================
Toward the end of the Chapter 11 Dr. Loftus shares with a recovered memory therapist (Barbara) how she was sexually abused when she was 6 years old by a 15 year old male babysitter.  Dr. Loftus states 

"In his mind, I suspect, he (Howard) was taking a minor risk, experimenting with someone 'safe'.  A little girl who wouldn't reject him or tattle on him....He wasn't cruel he just didn't think...But I never forgot this memory, nor did I repress it.... when we parted later that night we hugged." 
                                                                                                     pg 226  
A week later Dr. Loftus received a paper with a drawing in the shape of a body labeled "HOWARD".  [by a repressed memory believer] It had pins in the chest and where sexual organs would be.  The pins tips were colored bright red. "  Dr. Loftus stated "I stared at it for a long time."
                                                                                                      pg 226  
===========================
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  - F. Nietzsche"
                                                                                                     pg 264
"Guze suggests that therapists abandon claims to understand etiology- causes of behavior- and settle for the more modest and achievable goals of helping patients feel better, suffer less disability and cope more effectively."
                                                                                                     pg 267
"By locking memory into the child's passive, powerless point of view, therapy imprisons its patients in the painful past rather than releasing them from it.  When we remember traumatically the violations and insults are revisited over and over again, and childhood does indeed become the hell from which there is no escape."
                                                                                                      pg 268
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