Although many naïve psychotherapists have accepted some of the premises of RMT, according to sociologist Rael Jean Isaac, PhD [writing in Priorities for Health 12(4);2000/13(1);2001.], the repressed memory movement has been on the wane since 1994. For example, the number of continuing education courses on RMT offered to clinicians has decreased considerably. Clients and falsely accused family members have initiated numerous lawsuits against RMT practitioners. Hospitals have closed MPD units. Insurers have refused to pay for RMT. Prominent RMT practitioner Bennett Braun, MD had his medical license suspended. He was expelled from the Illinois Psychiatric Society and the American Psychiatric Association. Braun's insurers had to pay a malpractice award of $10.6 million to one of his former patients.
Instead of repressing memories of traumatic events, people tend to have trouble forgetting them. Memory is a process of reconstruction prone to error. Therefore, it is not difficult for therapists to implant false memories. The failure of RMT practitioners to acknowledge this is a psychotherapy scandal. Isaac quotes False Memory Syndrome Foundation Executive Director, Pamela Freyd, PhD: "We have a whole culture that has accepted the notion that the proof that something happened is that the person forgot it."
Elizabeth Loftus, professor of psychology at the University of Washington (now at University of California), has been the most prominent critic of claims about "recovered memories" of child abuse. RMT fanatics have responded to Professor Loftus's research findings with threatening letters, filings of complaints, lawsuits, and defamatory falsehoods in newspapers and over the Internet. Nevertheless, in June she received the William James Fellow Award of the American Psychological Society. The award citation [published in the November/December 2001 issue of Skeptical Inquirer] states in part: "As a result of her pioneering scientific work as well as her activity within the legal system, society is gradually coming to realize that such memories, compelling though they may seem when related by a witness are often a product of recent reconstructive memory processes rather than of past objective reality."
Excerpted from:
No comments:
Post a Comment