Saturday, September 24, 2016

A sister shares frustration and father responds....


   A sister (Jennifer) communicated with Grace using an online "chat" this month.  Jennifer candidly encouraged Grace to reject the horrid fantasies and retract the false stories and untrue allegations against her parents. Grace's horrid fantasies emerged while medicated and using dated therapeutic techniques through counseling, untrained friends using do it yourself therapy books or through a money focused ministry that relies on generating false memories (mythical memories). These methods, now known to be fraudulent and harmful, were experienced while living in Walla Walla, Washington in June of 2015. 

 Jenny writes an email:

"I have decided in light of Grace continuing to "believe" these lies in her head that strict adherence to the truth is necessary......Crazy people do not mix well with me.  Got to go....."


Her Dad wrote back:
Jenny,
     I want to thank you so much for your ardent declaration of truth and your desire to protect your parents from the horrid defamation perpetrated by your sister Grace.  Your immediate response to the accusations were extremely helpful initially.   I was totally unaware of how much damage these horrid fantasies and false accusations could have on your mother and I, our family, our grandchildren, my career and even our freedom.   After extensive study it is clear to me NOW that your immediate, ardent and persistent defense was and has been a HUGE help.  Thank you!  I will be forever indebted to you for your vigorous defense in our darkest hours.  
       In fact the support of all my family and children who refused to be caught up in the tragic false accusations has been an immense comfort.  Words can not describe how grateful I am for your maintaining the truth, offering your love and your support (as well as the rest of the family) while we (your mother and I) were under such horrid attack by these false accusations.
     Kevin and Grace have their reasons for adhering to the  slanderous and false narrative about their parents and family.  Sympathy can be used to for profit.  The reality is that Grace (and Kevin) must personally come to realize the short term profit is countered by the long term harm being done to their children and to themselves (as they strengthen the false memories with an isolation that has been proven to harm).  In the lingo of the "recovered memory" believers we have been "cut off".  This technique is used because it helps to both preserve the false memories and to propagate false narratives.  This approach is nothing new and has been written about repeatedly for decades.
      To work at exposing the many deceptions which are being propagated by the Reynolds would consume your energy and would likely not result in any reconciliation.  While you can easily clarify that there is a pattern of intentional deception I think that clarification is not presently needed.  Everyone who truly knows your mother, myself and our family are fully aware that the claims are false.  If ever people in the Walla Walla area were to seek the facts through personal inquiry they would quickly find the truth by merely talking or exchanging with Grace's siblings the close friends who lived in our home and spent extensive time there and truly know us.   The nuclear family, who were raised in the same home and those who lived with us and truly know us, are more than willing to share the facts.  All of us are sad that Grace and Kevin think defaming family and clinging to false memories and false narratives are helpful.  They, in fact, defame themselves by clinging to these horrid fantasies.

    What is the best course now?  There are many things at work in this situation and I have read many dozens of books,  hundreds of accounts and communicated with many who have gone through the same events.  We are not alone.  We can learn from those who went on before us and endured much worse (loss of family life, loss of career and even prison) despite accusations based on fantasies like Grace's.
     Evil would delight in your being distracted from serving your family.  So now I plead with you.  If you really want to help bring truth and goodness and justice to this situation then please focus on serving your family and children.  Provide for your children opportunities for them to have healthy and loving interactions with you, your parents, aunts and uncles and others with a vibrant and genuine faith.  Provide happy events in your children's lives that will be remembered long into the future.  Make sure your children and yourselves get your needed rest and that you manage your lives. Do activities in a way the foster health and joy and faith.
     Our hope as parents of Grace, are that our many visits to the beach, family camp outs, celebration of the sacraments, Saturday night games, trips to the rockies, grand canyon hikes and journey to places like Sea world will remain with Grace to compete with these horrid false memories.  The real memories along with family and friends who gently "question" her false memories may help her to overcome the culturally planted and wrongly nurtured false memories she is a victim of at present.  We will always hope!

    Join us for another tailgate!  The weather will be perfect! Get there early so there is time to play bean bag toss, visit and talk with the grand children and you.  Bekah will be sabre tossing as well as flag waving at half time and she is part of a great show.   Cousins may be there!
    Your mother and I love you and adore your family as well!
   Thank you for your love and support!
   Daddy

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Grace is climbing Camel Back
with sandals but still happy.
            This blog is, presently, a form of communication.  When direct and free communication is implemented then this blog, as well as other indirect means of communication, would no longer be needed.  It will then be purged of references to this personal tragedy (though we could write a book jointly).  There are others who have expressed appreciation for the information and insights provided.  So much of the public information will remain online to assist others who have suffered from similar experiences.
===============

All pictures of Grace on this blog are prior
to the creation of pseudo memories in 2015
with help from someone in the Walla Walla Area.
         Our daughter, Grace, underwent techniques that produce fantasies or pseudo memories in May of 2015 while living in Walla Walla, Washington.  The techniques, observed by eyewitnesses, were once mistakenly thought to be "memory recovery techniques" but are now known to create fantasies or "pseudo memories".  Shortly after giving birth to a new child, isolated from family, enduring a reaction to medication for depression and subjected to suggestive sessions Grace developed the expected horrid fantasies.  She then "cut off" any one who maintained that the fantasies were not factual.  Those "cutoff" included all five of her siblings, her parents and all family or close friends who chose to share only the truth about life prior to June 2015.   Many victims of this technique never regain full communication with family after an episode like the one our daughter Grace endured.
A fun visit
in Pittsburgh!
    Journalist Rebecca Meiser, states "...memories, by nature, are fluid and malleable, easily influenced by suggestion.  People told they were abused eventually believe that they were, regardless of fact.  The mind creates a visual picture of the abusive act.  And if a person is surrounded by others who encourage her to draw out these pictures and details, this new memory can become even more vivid than an actual remembrance.  To complicate things further, the brain starts creating emotional responses to these memories, which seem to validate the claims even more."

Grace loved presents as a child
like all of our children!
       Surprisingly Grace and Kevin asked by email to stop sending "junk" by mail.  We assume they refer to the Christmas and birthday gifts that we continue to send to the grand children.   It seems, to us, like such a sad thing to expect.  Despite the threats and warnings we continue to send the gifts.  We were never were sure, and remain uncertain, if the children were and are getting the presents sent.  There has never been any confirmation or acknowledgement that the gifts were actually given to the children. We do know that they have received the gifts at there home from postal delivery records. We continue to send them anyway. 


Fun in the Rockies with 
Grace brother and cousin!
       Renowned experts in psychology and law have warned repeatedly about the fallacy of "repressed memories". These are actually known to be false memories.  The idea that "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"(PTSD) is evidenced by "repressed memory" connects a cultural myth with the opposite problem of memory persistence.  Those truly suffering from "PTSD" wish that they could "repress" or "forget" the event that traumatized them but they can not.  All the evidence is that the greater the trauma the stronger the memory is thought of from it's beginning! It is not buried.


Genuine friendship
and a great family.
       Those claiming "repressed memories", generated during  "flashbacks" in an entranced or medicated state, are actually creating vivid and typically horrid false memories.  Then the victims of this type of "memory recovery technique" react to the created pseudo memories, as our daughter did, by accusing and withdrawing called "cutting off".  "Memory recovery" is actually a misnomer used prior to the 1990's because memory was once thought to be like a "recording device".   It is now known that human memory is malleable, often influenced by suggestion and bias, frequently inaccurate, easily confused, often confabulated with other recollections, fantasies and/or hallucinations.      


School friends act goofy.
       Physiological researchers have learned from scans of the brain during tasks involving  memory and tasks that require "imagining" that they both occur in the same location. Remembered events are now known to be "reconstructed", often incorrectly, rather than "recalled".

Lush mountain creek and our Grace.
        After public confrontations and false accusations in June of 2015, based on pseudo memories, all friends and family that shared doubts or maintained historical truth that the horrid abuse described never happened were  quickly "cutoff". This pattern matches exactly the pattern of those in the grips of false memories.  Pray for her freedom from this sad and tragic event.


School Photo.
       Given her vulnerability and experience  we do not think Grace is "lying" or being "deceptive".   She was subjected, without being fully informed, to  memory recovery techniques known to create pseudo-memories (fantasized events that are mistaken for historical events).   These false memories seem real to her largely due to her amazing intelligence.   Pseudo-memories are genuinely mistaken for truthful memories through such things as "flashbacks". These are recollections in an entranced or medicated state, reactions to medication producing hallucinations, or by therapists using recovered memory techniques, or by friends using do it yourself therapy books or through prayer partners using  something similar to Theophostic Prayer techniques.  All of these techniques and programs are known to generate pseudo-memories that seem real to the victim. 


Grace helped
care for a baby sister who 
thought she could fly.
     Those with "pseudo memories" often never reconcile with their family after making the typically horrid false accusations that seem like real memories to them.  Often innocent people experience the loss of careers and even prison due to such false accusations.  While our situation is very sad it is more tolerable than so many others tragically harmed by this type of approach to healing.


All pictures of Grace on this blog are prior
to the creation of pseudo memories in 2015.
       Recently (June and July) there has been more communication between Grace and numerous nuclear and extended family members.  So we are very happy to have her making some contact with a number of family members, including 2 sisters, through email and phone conversation.  We remain hopeful. Pseudo memories also called "repressed memories"were generated using techniques she described in public posts. They may never be entirely eliminated. The human mind is vulnerable when medicated, exhausted and in the throws of postpartum hormonal changes as our daughter was.  She continues to be medicated.  Her sisters, her brother, her father and I continue to hope and pray that she free herself from the bondage of these tragic pseudo memories.

Her uncle spends time
with Grace.
        My husband and I are convinced that truth is the only way out of this.  We were initially advised to sue for defamation, but did not, to give Grace time to cease her public accusations.   Those public false accusations stopped.  This was also a hopeful sign at the time.  Genuine love requires that all coercion and threats cease.   We are praying for a genuine change of heart and for her to cease the attempts to recruit co-accusers, to discontinue dwelling on her false memories and to turn away from "digging up more memories" which actually means nurturing more false memories.  Such change is always difficult especially while medicated, compromised by pseudo memories and having those who truly know you"cutoff" when sharing truth.

Grace and brother share 
awards at science fair.
   We continue to get reports from people who truly love her and her family in Walla Walla.  

     The hopeful road she may have started will be likely much longer than we would like.  Truth may foster healing but there are times when it is uncomfortable.  Pray for all of us to have the patience and wisdom needed.
       Grace will always be one phone call away from getting help.  
====================
Sisters enjoying the view after a climb.
          In spite of the bizarre and false accusations we love our daughter and her family. Following our very brief visit in 2015 our daughter has "cut off" siblings, both parents and genuine friends who choose to challenge her pseudo memories.  She has threatened legal action if we attempt contact.  A father still hopes.  A mother still pleads.  Her sister still remembers.  We will never give up on reconciliation and pray daily for the miracle of a phone call from her.  She is always a phone call away from getting help.
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    Location: Walla Walla, WA 99362, USA

    Saturday, September 10, 2016

    Rosanne Tells The Truth a Decade Later

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    Location: Walla Walla, WA 99362, USA

    Thursday, September 1, 2016

    Uninformed Therapists Harming Society

    In the article below professional research psychologists current in the data and literature detail a horrendous situation where practicing therapists operate with the mythical idea that "memory recovery" generates historically accurate memories.  Such methods are proven to harm the mental health of the client, isolates the client from healthy familial relationships and then often impoverishes the client and his/her support network.  The findings below are shocking and the proposals to solve this present day tragic mental health crisis seems to be a reasonable long term solution.
    ===============
    What Do People Believe About Memory? Implications for the Science and Pseudoscience of Clinical Practice

    Steven Jay Lynn PhD,  James Evans MS, Jean-Roch Laurence PhD and Scott Lilienfeld PhD
    [originally written and published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry]
    Note:  References are numbered in parenthesis ( ) and provided at the end of the article

    Despite what many people believe, memory is not a repository of past experiences but a dynamic mechanism that ensures the stability and coherence of the self across situations. In recent decades, researchers have documented the striking limitations and plasticity of memories. Today, scholars recognize that memories are reconstructive rather than reproductive. Rarely, if ever, are memories exact replicas of the past (1,2) Instead, memories are often stitched together into plausible—but not necessarily accurate—narratives based on beliefs, feelings, intuitions, guesses, and memory fragments (3,4) As William James observed over a century ago.
    ===========================

    False memories are by no means rare occurrences in most of us . . . Most people probably are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.(5, p 173–174)

    Nevertheless, many clinicians and laypeople hold beliefs about memory that contradict scientific evidence. These beliefs may lead therapists and patients to accept memory retrieval techniques that are suggestive and potentially harmful. In our article, we examine what people believe about memory and briefly discuss the implications of these beliefs for psychotherapy.

    Typically, the more vivid, detailed, and emotional the memories, the more easily they are accessed and held with confidence, regardless of their accuracy.(6–8) Even in cases of emotionally compelling, so-called flashbulb memories (9)—memories marked by a seemingly photographic quality—recollections often change substantially over time, as documented by studies of the catastrophic breakup of the space shuttle Challenger (10), the trial verdict of football star O J Simpson (11), the death of Princess Diana (12), and the September 11, 2001 attacks (13).  Dekel and Bonanno (14) conducted repeated memory assessments of survivors of the September 11th attacks who had witnessed them directly, and found considerable variation in memory reports at (7) compared with (18) months. People who were resilient in the face of trauma created a more benign memory over time, whereas those who experienced chronic posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms reported relatively stable memories. The causality of this finding is unclear; a more benign reconstruction of memory could lead to more benign outcomes, or vice-versa (or both). In a study of US veterans of the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, Southwick et al (5) found that 88% of veterans recounted a different response regarding a traumatic event (for example, sniper fire) they experienced 2 years after their service, compared with 1 month after their return, and 61% of veterans experienced more than 1 changed memory.

    Laboratory research also indicates that events can be remembered as more traumatic than they were initially experienced. Strange and Takarangi (16) reported that participants claimed, incorrectly, to have witnessed 26% of the short clips removed from an emotionally disturbing film of a car accident in which 5 people, including a baby, were killed. Participants were particularly prone to mistakenly recall with high confidence the most traumatic clips.

    The malleability of memory is further underscored by 2 findings: suggestive procedures can implant false memories of complex events, such as riding in a hot air balloon, being the victim of bullying, being subjected to a vicious animal attack, and committing a crime, in 20% to 80% of participants (17–19), and eyewitness testimony is frequently confidently expressed in the courtroom, even though it can be inaccurate (20–22). The specificity of recall of events and the emotion participants attach to these events provide no guarantee of their accuracy (23,24).

    The finding that memory is reconstructive bears important implications for therapy, as does the contrary belief that memories are preserved in pristine form in the unconscious, yet accessible using memory recovery techniques. Therapist and patient beliefs regarding memory and the centrality of memory recovery to the process of therapy can steer decisions regarding the choice of therapeutic techniques. Beliefs and expectations can even influence the presentation of the patient. Sagan (25) observed that the clinical material that emerges in psychotherapy following memory recovery techniques often bears striking parallels to the expectations of the clinician, as in cases of supposed child sexual abuse, satanic ritual abuse, and alien abductions (26).

    The belief that memories lie hidden or dormant in the unconscious traces its origins largely to Freud (27) and his conceptualization of repression as arising when the ego is “confronted by an experience, an idea, a feeling, arousing an affect so painful that the person resolved to forget it.” (27 p 61–62) Although Freud used the term “resolved to forget,” he conceptualized repression as the unconscious, motivated forgetting of unpleasant material (28).  The presumption that the recovery of repressed or dissociated traumatic memories is essential to mental healing became a fundamental tenet of psychoanalysis and remains central to contemporary memory recovery therapies (29).

    The idea of the permanence of memory and the need to recover repressed memories to recover from trauma is vividly captured in the notion of body memories, as described in a manual for sexual abuse survivors:

    Your body, believe it or not, remembers everything. Sounds, smells, touches, tastes. But the memory is not held in your mind, locked somewhere in the recesses of your brain. Instead, it’s held in your body, all the way down at the cellular level (30).

    In van der Kolk’s31 words, The Body Keeps the Score. The implication is that if somatic experiences are not recovered and dealt with, complete recovery from sexual abuse is difficult or impossible.

    According to survey research, 36% of US psychotherapists (32) interpret body pains or physical symptoms as indicative of childhood sexual abuse. Legault and Laurence (33) found that 71% of Canadian social workers and 61% of licensed psychologists agreed that “Sensory impressions from early in life (preverbal memories) may form the basis for reliable memories which can be recovered later on.” (33 p 122) This belief is mirrored in the general population. Freedman and Laurence (34) reported in a conference presentation that 38.1% of psychology undergraduates reported that “Sometimes, it feels as though my body remembers things that I consciously forgot.”

    Clinical Implications

    Competent psychiatrists and other mental health professionals must possess basic knowledge concerning the workings of human memory.  False beliefs regarding memory may predispose to the use of unsupported and potentially harmful suggestive therapeutic techniques.

    Limitations:

    It is possible that some recovered memories are accurate.   Little is known about how best to educate mental health professionals about the basic science of memory.

    A Sample of Clinical Treatments Often Nonscientific and for those who Understand the Research Often Bizarre: 

    Contemporary interventions that draw on memory recovery often lack credible empirical support. Among them are sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing therapy, neurolinguistic programming, alien abduction therapy, energy approaches, experiential integration, reenactment protocol, and internal family systems therapy, the last of which involves interaction and work with putatively dissociated parts of the personality (35,36). Many of these treatments can be considered pseudoscientific, because they are not only supported mostly or exclusively by anecdotal claims, rather than by controlled trials, but also reliant on scientifically unsupported beliefs that memory is permanent and that excavating memories is vital to positive therapy outcomes. These therapies can be contrasted with empirically supported interventions, such as exposure therapies, which seek to blunt the harmful emotional force of readily accessible memories with no implication that unearthing repressed memories is necessary.

    A sampling of memory recovery therapies is illustrative.  "Brainspotting" seeks to determine the location of unavailable experiences and symptoms of trauma at the “unconscious body brain” and release them, in which a brainspot is defined as the eye position which is related to the energetic/emotional activation of a traumatic/emotionally charged issue within the brain, most likely in the amygdala, the hippocampus, or the orbitofrontal cortex of the limbic system (37).

    Or, consider "Somatic Transformation Therapy", which purportedly balances the arousal and fear of recovered memories with felt experiences of self-regulation of the emotional physiological systems. Subtle gestures and movements of the body are utilized to access sensory data and result in shifts in the brain-body continuum (38).

    According to the "Dr Janov’s Primal Center" (39)  website, which espouses primal therapy (colloquially termed primal scream therapy),  We have found a way into those early emotional archives and have learned to have access to those memories, to dredge them up from the unconscious, allowing us to re-experience them in the present, integrate them and no longer be driven by the unconscious . . . The number one killer in the world today is not cancer or heart disease, it is repression.

    The website of the "Traumatic Incident Reduction" [TIR] Association (40) states, "When something happens that is . . . painful, one has the option of either confronting it fully and feeling the pain, or trying in some way to block one’s awareness of it . . . in the second case, the action of experiencing that incident is blocked . . . in the great majority of cases, TIR correctly applied results in the complete and permanent elimination of PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder] symptomatology."

    These claims (above) are based on the scientifically dubious assumption that highly aversive experiences are typically banished from consciousness.  To the contrary, a sizable corpus of findings reveal that emotional memories are usually highly salient and memorable (7, p 33;41).

    One reason why memory recovery therapies flourish is that beliefs in the permanence of memory and the repression of traumatic memories are prevalent among laypeople and mental health professionals. Golding et al (42) reported that 89% of undergraduates had heard of a circumstance in which someone recovered a repressed memory.  Not surprisingly, 75% learned of this circumstance via television.  Moreover, the amount of media exposure was related to the believability of repressed memories.

    Patihis et al (43 in their Study 2) conducted a survey of beliefs regarding memory.  Two-thirds of undergraduates agreed to some extent with the statement that “Memory of everything experienced is stored permanently in the brain, even if we can’t access all of it,”p 521 and a similar rate of laypeople responded affirmatively to the same question.  Patihis et al found rates of endorsement of the same question of 59.3% in Great Britain and 84.4% in India.  When Alvarez and Brown (44) worded the question somewhat more restrictively (“Precise records of all our experiences are permanently stored in the brain”p 3), a lower yet still sizable percentage (31%) of the US public endorsed it.  A slightly lower rate (28%) emerged in response to the question, “Once you have experienced an event and formed a memory of it, that memory does not change,” (45, p 3) in an online survey of the US community conducted via Mechanical Turk, compared with 47.6% in the community in a nononline survey (46) Simons and Chabris (45) found that when the question was worded, “Human memory works much like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later,”(p 4) 46.9% of a sample drawn from Mechanical Turk responded affirmatively (45, p 4) and 63% of a sample acquired by SurveyUSA responded likewise (46, p 5) Clearly, a broad swath of the US population concurs that memories are permanently stored.

    Turning to professional beliefs, high rates of practitioners in Canada (33, p 122) agreed that memory is permanent, with percentages varying from 84% of social workers, 71% of psychologists, and 51% of physicians.  Wise et al (47) similarly found that about two-thirds of US law enforcement officers agreed that memory works like a tape recorder.  In a survey of 103 psychologists in South Africa, Kagee and Breet48reported that 31% indicated probable or definite agreement that memory works like a video camera or tape recorder, accurately reproducing everything we have experienced.

    In contrast, several recent findings are somewhat more encouraging. In a sample of 234 licensed psychologists in New England, Meyer (49) reported that 12% disagreed that “Psychological research has discredited the idea that human memory works like a video or tape recorder.” p 111 Simons and Chabris (46, p 5) found that none of the 16 experts (cognitive and [or] social experimental psychologists) surveyed agreed that memory does not change once it is formed, and a minority, but still disconcerting percentage (24%), of 96 experts that Patihis et al (43, p DS18 ) questioned affirmed this belief.

    The belief in repressed memories is also widespread. More than 20 years ago, Loftus (3, p 534) called attention to the risk that therapists who hold this belief will communicate it to patients, opening the door to interventions geared to recovering ostensibly recovered memories. Despite strong evidence against the thesis that memories are readily repressed,(7, p 33) the idea that repression occurs is very much alive today among professionals. In the survey just described, Patihis et al (43, p DS18) reported that 19.4% of clinical psychology researchers in US universities, 60.3% of board-certified clinical psychology practitioners, and 83.9% of general population adults agreed, to at least some extent, that “Traumatic memories are often repressed.” Interestingly, practitioners of alternative therapies, including neurolinguistic programming, Thought Field Therapy (TFT), internal family systems therapy, and hypnotherapy, agreed, to some extent, with this latter statement, with rates between 80.6% (internal family systems therapists) to 100% (TFT and primal therapists). Additionally, 16.1% of research-oriented clinical psychologists, 43.1% of clinical practitioners, and 77.7% of general population adults agreed, to at least some extent, that “Repressed memories can be retrieved in therapy accurately.”(43) These statistics complement those of earlier surveys of practitioners where 71% of doctor of psychology clinicians and 58% of doctor of philosophy clinicians in the United States (50), 64% of licensed psychologists in Norway (51) and 96% psychotherapists in the Netherlands (52) who reported high levels of belief in recovered or repressed memories, compared with only 34% of experimental psychologists.(50, p 255) Poole et al (32, p 432) found that 71% of clinical and counselling psychologists had encountered at least one case of recovered memory.  Moreover, Legault and Laurence (33, p 123) reported that 27% of Canadian psychologists concurred that “Recovered memories must be reliable because no one wants to have been abused as a child.”(33 p 123) Laurence and Freedman (53) reported that 17.5% of 2451 women treated for sexual abuse did not, according to their therapists, have any memory of abuse at the onset of therapy (31.5%) or merely suspected abuse but did not harbor any memories of it (68.5%), raising the possibility that many patients diagnosed and treated for abuse may not have been abused.

    The rates of endorsement may differ across studies, because some items do not clearly distinguish memories that are purportedly repressed from those that are forgotten through ordinary mechanisms (for example, not thinking about events). For example, consider the following question:

    Sometimes adults in psychotherapy remember traumatic events from early childhood, about which they previously had absolutely no recollection. Do you think such memories are real or false? (51, p 56)

    Additionally, the question of whether memories that are suddenly remembered are necessarily the products of the lifting of repression remains scientifically controversial.

    This point may explain why psychologists and psychiatrists who serve as experts in court proceedings in Norway (54) endorsed the aforementioned question (“all” or “most real”) at a rather high rate (59%) and close to the same rate (64%, see above) as licensed psychologists (51, p 57) in Norway and advanced clinical psychology students (66%) in Italy (55).  In contrast, Italian experimental psychology professors were more skeptical in response to this question (24%) (55, p 254).

    Nevertheless, the differential endorsement rates imply that the beliefs of clinicians depart from those of researchers, who generally hold more skeptical views, suggesting a gap in knowledge regarding human memory. Indeed, clinicians who are not active in research, compared with their research-oriented counterparts, endorse stronger beliefs in repressed memories and the belief that memory recovery techniques do not result in false accusations (50, p 255).

    Still, providing some cause for concern regarding professional opinion about memory, 38% of members of the Norwegian Psychological Association (51)—many of whom are academic psychologists—endorsed the option “they tell the truth” in response to the question,

    Sometimes people who have committed murder claim to have no memory for the crime. Do you think such memories can be repressed and that the perpetrator believes they are telling the truth, or do you think they are lying? (51 p 57)

    Nevertheless, this question may pose a false dichotomy: people may forget a crime for reasons other than unconscious repression (for example, conscious suppression).  Moreover, Melinder and Magnussen (54, p 57) reported that 39% of psychiatrists and psychologists in Norway who served as expert witnesses endorsed the option “they tell the truth,” and Mirandola et al (55, p 254) similarly found that 36% of professors in experimental psychology in Italy also did.  Clearly, a sizable percentage of experts and professionals across different countries hold beliefs that conflict with scientific opinion, which holds that amnesia in these circumstances is highly unlikely (56).  In addition, in a survey of psychologists in South Africa mentioned earlier, 75.7% responded probably true or definitely true to the statement “individuals commonly repress the memories of traumatic experiences.” (48, p 5)

    Beliefs about memory, repression, and techniques to retrieve memories are interrelated. Patihis et al (43, p 521) found that participants who believed that traumatic memories are often repressed were more likely than other participants to believe that repressed memories could be retrieved in treatment and that one can be a victim of child sexual abuse yet have no memory of it.  Moreover, certain individual differences predicted memory beliefs. For example, skepticism regarding repressed memories was associated with being male and with more years of college education; high SAT scores were associated with less agreement with the ideas that repressed memories can be retrieved in therapy and that some people have true photographic (eidetic) memories; and critical thinking ability was associated with skepticism that repressed memories can be recovered accurately in therapy and during hypnosis, that memory is permanently stored and photographic, and that memory is almost always reliable.  Moreover, high scores on fantasy proneness and absorption predicted disagreement with the idea that memory is unreliable and agreement that memory is stored permanently. Trait empathy predicted belief that traumatic memories are often repressed.

    A curious aspect of beliefs about memory is that people may simultaneously believe that memories are both permanent and cannot be trusted.  For example, Patihis et al (43, p 521) reported that 85.9% of undergraduates agreed, to some extent, that “Memory is unreliable,” yet 66.7% agreed, to some extent, that “Memory of everything experienced is stored permanently in the brain, even if we can’t access all of it.”  One might extrapolate that some people believe that memories that are accessible (for example, not repressed and not dissociated) may be subject to distortion, prone to suggestive influence, or overlaid by inaccurate memories.

    Legault and Laurence (33) reported that 71% of psychologists agreed that “Everything one experiences is permanently recorded in one’s brain,” while 97% agreed that “Post-event information can alter a person’s recall of an event”(33 p 122).   Apparently, the idea that memory can be modified after the fact does not conflict with the notion that memories are permanently recorded.  How people reconcile contradictory, or at least disparate, beliefs about memory warrants future research.

    Although undergraduates’ opinions about the accuracy of repressed memories appear not to have changed much between 1995 (42, p 432) mean 5.57 on a scale, with 1 = never accurate, 10 = always accurate) and 2011 (43, p 527) mean 5.39, some changes in beliefs about recovered memory are evident among mainstream clinical psychology practitioners during this same period, based on responses to questions concerning a case vignette.  This vignette described a woman in therapy who recovered vivid memories of sexual abuse at age 2 by her father.   The therapists, who were sampled from the American Psychological Association, responded 6.45 (with 1 = not likely at all, 10 = extremely likely) regarding whether they believed the client was sexually abused (57) compared with a more recent study of members of the American Academy of Clinical Psychology sampled in 2011–2012 (43, p 526) who rated the item 4.45, a significant decrease. Moreover, rated willingness to assist the client in retrieving memories of childhood sexual abuse decreased from 4.8 to 3.4, again a significant decrease.   A similar significant decline was observed (from 4.6 to 2.9) in response to the question, “How likely are you to tell the client that you suspect a history of sexual abuse?” These changes in beliefs raise the possibility that clinicians are paying greater heed to the scientific literature on memory.
    Closing Thoughts

    Beliefs can create reality. To the extent that laypeople—many of whom obtain psychotherapy—and mental health professionals hold outdated and poorly supported beliefs regarding the nature of human memory, mental health consumers and their loved ones will inevitably be exposed to psychological risk.(58)  In particular, many false beliefs about memory may contribute to the use of suggestive interventions geared to the recovery of repressed memories. These techniques include repeated prompting of memories, guided imagery, and hypnosis and hypnotic and nonhypnotic age regression. A nontrivial proportion of therapists use many of these techniques. The reported use of age regression techniques in psychotherapy ranges from 7.1%59 (for sexual abuse) to 20% (33, p 124) Moreover, Legault and Laurence (33, p 124) reported that 44% of therapists reported that they used imagination-based interventions, including hypnosis, to assist patients in recovering memories [(60) and (32, p 432) for earlier surveys].

    Regrettably, the basic science of human memory and cognition is rarely emphasized in the education and training of mental health professionals.(61) Therefore, we strongly recommend that systematic exposure to the nature of human memory, especially its fallibility, become a required—not merely a desired—component in the coursework of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, and other mental health professionals. To practice scientifically, therapists must be certain to avail themselves of the best available scientific evidence on the nature of memory. By doing so, they can avoid inadvertently implanting false memories, and thereby ensure that they are not harming the very people for whom they have been entrusted to help.

     Regrettably, the basic science of human memory and cognition is rarely emphasized in the education and training of mental health professionals.(61) Therefore, we strongly recommend that systematic exposure to the nature of human memory, especially its fallibility, become a required—not merely a desired—component in the coursework of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, and other mental health professionals. To practice scientifically, therapists must be certain to avail themselves of the best available scientific evidence on the nature of memory. By doing so, they can avoid inadvertently implanting false memories, and thereby ensure that they are not harming the very people for whom they have been entrusted to help.

    The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

    ============================
    The Canadian Psychiatric Association proudly supports the In Review series by providing an honorarium to the authors.

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