Recovered and False Memories

1. Recovered and False Memories

2. Repression • According to Sigmund Freud, the ego uses a series of defense mechanisms that protect itself from harmful or unacceptable truths. • Repression is one of the most famous. It takes place when something happens that is so completely shocking that the mind pushes the memory deep into the unconscious, where it cannot easily be retrieved. Sometimes, the memory will return unexpectedly, many years later. • There are conflicting studies about the frequency of repressed memories, but most suggest that the majority of people who are abused remember the experience their whole lives. Studies indicate that between 18% to 59% of people who allegedly have been abused have repressed the memory of it.

3. RMT: Recovered Memory Therapy • People seek psychotherapy for a range of problems: depression, sexual dysfunction, sleep problems, low self-esteem, etc. • The Courage to Heal (Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, 1988) • 700,000 copies sold: the “Bible” for incest and sexual abuse survivors • Written by two women with no medical, psychological, or psychiatric experience or training • “If you are unable to remember any specific instances like the ones mentioned above but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did.” • “If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were.” • Therapists’ Suggestions: Many people enter therapy without memories of abuse but acquire memories during the therapy. Some therapists will inform their patients after one session that they “probably are the victim of childhood abuse” and encourage them to try to recover those memories. • “Your symptoms sound like you’ve been abused when you were a child. What can you tell me about that?” • “You sound to me like the sort of person who must have been sexually abused. Tell me what that bastard did to you.”

5. RMT, cont. • Recovered Memory Therapy techniques: hypnosis, free association, guided imagery and visualization, dream therapy, age regression, “truth serum,” automatic writing, imagining abuse that could have happened to them. • Once a memory has been recovered or created, it is real to the person. You cannot reverse the process. • Support groups: Survivors of Incest Anonymous (SIA) accepts people who do not have any memory of abuse • Sometimes, being a part of a group like this leads to proto-extension: people begin to remember details from other peoples’ stories and believe that the events actually happened to them. • Some troubled people (predominantly white and female) seek attention or empowerment; to be a member of one of these groups is to be a “survivor,” which is an attractive idea for some people. • Confirmation bias: therapists have a tendency to search for evidence that confirms their beliefs. • The impact of RMT on families: • Often, the alleged victim breaks off contact with their parents and siblings.

6. Popular Stories • 1991 cover story of People:Former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur reveals to the world how she recovered memories of her father sexually abusing her at age 24. • 1991 cover story of People: Roseanne Barr’s recovered memories of sexual abuse by her mother from birth until the age of 7. • Stories in the mass media in the early 1990s: Washington Post, Seventeen, Glamour, Newsweek, Time, etc. • Widely reported statistics about sexual abuse: (i.e. 1 in 5 women is an incest survivor, 1991)

7. Laws • Statutes of limitations (Telegraphers v. Railway Express Agency, 1944): force plaintiffs to begin their legal claims quickly, because memories fade and evidence becomes more difficult to obtain. • In 1989, laws began to change, allowing people to sue people for damages for injuries suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse at any time within three years of remembering it. This started in the state of Washington and continued into 18 other states by 1991. The number of lawsuits climbs significantly at this time. • Most cases involving recovered memories have been civil cases, because criminal charges are more difficult to prove.

8. Important stories • Before 1995, many accused people were convicted of child sexual abuse on the basis of recovered memories alone. In 1995, things began to change. A number of court decisions were handed down which declared that recovered memories have no validity unless supported by other evidence. • 1988: Paul Ingram, a respectable Olympia, Washington man, was arrested for child abuse, and after five months of intense interrogation and intense pressure by a psychologist, he began to have memories of abusing his daughter. Then, they interviewed Ingram’s son and convinced him that the dreams he had had about his father were real. He confessed to sexual assaults, rapes, and murdering 25 babies in Satan-worshipping cult rituals. • Another psychologist told Ingram that he had forced his son and daughter to have sex in front of him, which never happened. After enough pressure and suggestion, Ingram later wrote a detailed 3-page account of the event.

9. More examples • 1990: George Franklin, Sr. was convicted of the murder of an 8-year-old girl 21 years after the fact. He was arrested and convicted on the basis of a memory that his daughter recovered in therapy. Eileen Franklin’s detailed and confident memory was believed by her therapist, the district attorney, and the jury. He was found guilty of first degree murder on November 30, 1990. This was the first time an American citizen had been convicted of a crime on the basis of a recovered memory. • 1992: A father accused of incest by his 26-year-old daughter hired a private investigator to go to her therapist posing as a troubled woman. By the third session, the therapist told her that she was an incest survivor. • 1992: A 33-year-old woman sued her father in L.A., and was awarded $500,000 by the jury. • 1992: A 33-year-old woman in Akron, Ohio sued her uncle and was awarded $5.15 million. • 1993: a 23-year-old Massachusetts woman was awarded $500,000 in a lawsuit she brought against her father. After going into therapy, she recovered memories of being raped approximately 3,000 times between the ages of 4 and 17. • A 40-year-old woman and her 35-year-old sister accused their parents of abusing them in a bizarre series of ways: drugs, electrical shocks, rape, sodomy, forced oral sex, and the ritualistic killing of babies that were born to the girls. These memories were recovered when the two sisters went into therapy in the late 1980s. • Satanic Ritualistic Abuse (SRA): allegations of bizarre abuse done in the context of a large, secret network of satanic cults: being used during adolescence as baby breeders for the cult, etc.

10. The Future of False Memories • In 1993, the American Medical Association was the first major organization to issue a formal statement against recovered memories. Other organizations followed. • Beginning in the mid-1990s, many therapists were taken to court, as many clients and families of clients brought lawsuits against their therapists. • Lynn Carl, 46, sued her therapist, Dr. Gloria Keraga, and won $5.8 million. As a result of the therapy, Carl was convinced that she engaged in murder, cannibalism, sexual abuse, incest, was a member of a satanic cult, and that she also suffered from multiple personality disorder and had over 500 personalities. She was divorced and her children were taken from her, but she and her husband later remarried. • Pat Burgus sued her therapist, Dr. Bennett Braun, in 1997, and won an award of $10.6 million. The former Dr. Braun now works as a night watchman at one-tenth of his former salary. • One malpractice insurance company for clinical psychologists in California recently tripled its rates without any explanation; many people believe that the company is preparing for increasing numbers of lawsuits against therapists who caused false memories. • Many people who have recovered memories have since retracted their stories. This often happens after women relocate to another area and lose touch with their therapist and support groups. Without constant reinforcement, they often begin to doubt the validity of their memories. • Support for recovered memory therapy is rapidly disappearing. Most of the accusations happened between the years of 1989 and 1994, with 1991 and 1992 being the peak years. • The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, founded in 1991, has been contacted by over 7,000 families who believe that their grown children are suffering from false memories. • Some people continue to believe in their recovered memories, and challenge those who disagree by making the analogy that “some people even say the Holocaust didn’t happen.”