Date:   Mon Aug 02 1993  06:59:00
From:   Jim Speiser
To:     All
Subj:   False Memories        1/2
Attr:
ABDUCT                         -------------------------------

The following message comes from Tom Monticue on Genie's PSINET:

+---+---+

The following article was written by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, and
appeared in the Washington Post.   I consider Dr. Loftus' work
into the False Memory Syndrom to be vitally important to
skeptics, not only for its implications in child sexual abuse
(which should be reason enough), but also for its extrapolated
implications in UFO abductions and Satanic ritual abuse.

Some of you may not agree with my assesment, and since it is a
rather longish article, I'm giving you fair warning so that you
can avoid connect charges and terminate the capture now.

I would appreciate any feedback about whether or not you consider
articles like this to be of interest on this mailing list.

   Thanks!
      -Tm

   Date:  27-Jan-93
   Subj:  WP You Must Remember This . . . ; . . . Or Do You? ...

   You Must Remember This . . . ; . . . Or Do You? How Real Are
Repressed Memories?
   By Elizabeth F. Loftus

  OUT OF THE blue, the man in Santa Cruz, California, received
notice: His daughter, accusing him of incest, was suing him for
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The daughter, a college
graduate who worked as a technical writer, claimed that while her
father sexually abused her from infancy until she was 18, she
repressed the memories until she was 26 and in individual and
group therapy. There, she recovered explicit memories of abuse by
her father that occurred to her as early as six months old.
  "Repressed memory" cases like that against the Santa Cruz man
are lately flourishing in America's legal and journalistic
landscape. While no one has an exact figure, academics say
hundreds of such cases are currently being considered in the
courts. But are those repressed memories real? After asking that
question at meetings of the American Psychiatric Association and
elsewhere, I've been the recipient of hate letters, hate voice
mail, hate e-mail on my computer: "How could you, a woman, be
saying these things?" "I'll bet you think the Holocaust never
happened, either."
  Most often, though, I'm accused of doubting the reality of all
child abuse. I don't. I do, however, doubt one special class of
"memories": those that emerge in adulthood after extensive
"memory work" - therapeutic hypnosis or age regression or
suggestive questioning or guided visualization or sexualized
dream interpretation or any of a number of other suspect
techniques. These techniques have led to the surfacing of
"memories" of child molestation in women, like the daughter in
Santa Cruz, who have spent their lives thinking they had a happy
childhood. Yet not a single piece of empirical work in human
memory supports the authenticity of claims of memory dating back
to six months of age. And research on later childhood amnesia
raises many questions about repressed memory, too.
  It is well known that humans experience a poverty of
recollections of their first several years of life. Contemporary
cognitive psychologists place the end of childhood amnesia at the
age of about 3 or 4.
  One study showed that few Americans who were younger than 3
recalled any information about where they were when they heard
about the Kennedy assassination, although most people who were
over 8 at the time had some recall. While one recent study from
Emory University suggests that some people might have a memory
for a hospitalization or the birth of a sibling that occurred at
age 2, even these "memories" could be the product of family
stories.
  What about the repression of memories, even of events occurring
later in life? Again, there's little science to support the idea
that trauma that is repressed can return decades later in
pristine form. To the contrary, research psychologist David
Holmes of the University of Kansas reviewed 60 years of research
and found no controlled studies showing that an event can be
accurately reproduced in memory after a long period of
repression. Moreover, studies of children who have experienced
parental murder and other atrocities show that the children are
continually flooded with pangs of emotion about the incidents.
  The memory dating back to age six months that formed part of
the basis of the case against the Santa Cruz man does not pass
the test of science. Where, then, would this false memory come
from? The answer requires an inquiry into the modern science of
memory distortion. Since the mid-1970s at least, I and other
research psychologists have conducted hundreds of studies on the
creation of false memories through exposure to misleading
information. The resulting body of research shows that new,
post-event information often becomes incorporated into memory,
supplementing and altering a person's recollection.
  Many studies show how people can be led to believe they've
witnessed something when in fact they did not. For example, in
one study by Jeffrey Haugaard and his colleagues at the
University of Virginia, children age 4-7 were led to believe that
they saw a man hit a girl (he hadn't) after hearing the girl lie
about the assault. Not only did they misrecall the nonexistent
hitting, but they added their own details - it happened near a
pond, inside the girl's house and so on.
  In another study, Los Angeles psychiatrists R.F. Pynoos and K.
Nader examined children's recollections of a (real) sniper attack
at an elementary school playground. Some of the children
interviewed were not at the school during the shooting - they
were already on the way home or on vacation. Yet even the
nonwitnesses had memories: "One girl initially said that she was
at the school gate nearest the sniper when the shooting began. In
truth she was not only out of the line of fire, she was half a
block away. A boy who had been away on vacation said that he had
been on his way to the school, had seen someone lying on the
ground, had heard the shots, and then turned back. In actuality,
a police barricade prevented anyone from approaching the block
around the school." The memories apparently were created by
exposure to the stories of those who truly experienced the
trauma.
  My own recent research on false memories shows that it is even
possible to inject into someone's mind a detailed memory of a
childhood event that never happened. The implantation is
accomplished by a small suggestion from a trusted family member.
Consider what happened when Jim Coan, the chief research
assistant on the project, tried to convince his younger brother
Chris that he had been lost at age 5 in a shopping mall one day
while browsing with his mother and brother Jim. Both mother and
Jim attest that this event never happened.
  Jim told Chris this story as if it were the truth: "It was 1981
or 1982. . . . We had gone shopping at the University City
shopping mall in Spokane. After some panic, we found Chris being
led down the mall by a tall, oldish man (I think he was wearing a
flannel shirt). Chris was crying and holding the man's hand. The
man explained that he had found Chris walking around crying his
eyes out just a few moments before and was trying to help him
find his parents."
  Just two days later, Chris recalled his feelings about being
lost: "That day I was so scared that I would never see my family
again. I knew that I was in trouble." On day three, he recalled a
conversation with his mother: "I remember Mom telling me never to
do that again." On day 4: "I also remember that old man's flannel
shirt." On day 5 it was the mall itself: "I sort of remember the
stores." In his last recollection, he could even remember a
conversation with the man who found him: "I remember the man
asking me if I was lost."
  A couple of weeks later, Chris was reinterviewed about the
false memory. He characterized his memory as reasonably clear and
vivid, and then expanded on it. "I was with you guys for a second
and I think I went over to look at the toy store, the Kay-bee toy
store, and we got lost and I was looking around and I thought,
`Uh-oh, I'm in trouble now. . . . ' And then this old man, I
think he was wearing blue flannel, came up to me . . . . He was
kind of old. He was kind of bald on top . . . . He had like a
ring of gray hair . . . and he had glasses."
  Finally Chris was told that his "getting lost" memory was made
up. Still he clung to it: "Really? I thought I remembered being
lost . . . and looking around for you guys. I do remember that.
And then crying, and mom coming up and saying, "Where were you?
Don't you - don't you ever do that again."
  Examples of such confidently held and richly detailed false
memories do not, of course, prove that repressed memories of
abuse that return are false. But they do demonstrate a mechanism
by which false memories can be created by suggestion. And they
help us understand how someone could believe they had a memory
for something that happened at six months of age, when in fact
they do not.
  The reason repressed memories have gained such currency in
recent years is no mystery. The case against the Santa Cruz man
and many more like it began when a grown-up daughter or son
walked into a therapist's office seeking help for depression, low
self-esteem or any of a number of life's problems. Nearly every
one of these cases involves memories of childhood sexual abuse
recovered while in therapy - memories that did not exist, or at
least were not remembered, before therapy began.
  Of course, detailed memories that turn out to be false don't
necessarily come only from misguided therapy. These memories
could arise from fantasy, imagination and illusion. They could
combine a mixture of borrowed ideas, characters, myths and
accounts from outside sources. But as Emory University
psychiatrist George Ganaway recently argued at an American
Psychological Association meeting, false memories might be
unwittingly implanted by suggestions or expectations of a
therapist or another perceived authority figure with whom a
patient desires attention or approval. Harvard psychiatrist
Judith Herman made a similar point in her book, "Trauma and
Recovery": Whereas an earlier generation of therapists might have
been discounting or minimizing their patients' traumatic
experiences, the recent rediscovery of psychological trauma has
led to errors of the opposite kind. Some contemporary therapists
have been known to tell patients, on the basis of a suggestive
history or "symptom profile," that they definitely had a
traumatic experience. The therapist then urges the patient to
pursue the recalcitrant memories.
  In one case in Cleveland, an accused father hired a private
investigator to go undercover to his 26-year-old daughter's
therapist after the woman reported a recently uncovered repressed
memory and accused him of incest. The investigator visited the
therapist complaining about nightmares and sleep trouble.
According to tapes of the visits, on the third visit the
therapist told the investigator that she was an incest survivor.
As the investigator reported later, "She then told me that she
was certain I was experiencing body memory from a trauma earlier
in life that I could not remember. I could not remember because
my brain had blocked the memory that was too painful to deal
with." When the patient said she didn't remember any traumas, the
therapist told her many people - including Vietnam vets,
earthquake survivors and incest victims - repress such memories.
She then recommended an incest-survivors group.
  This therapist, like many others, direct clients to popular
books on sex abuse such as "Courage to Heal." "Courage"
advertises itself as a guide for women survivors of child sexual
abuse and is likely a great comfort to thousands of genuine
survivors. But for people without any memories, it keeps up the
suggestive pressure. The reader is told, "If you are unable to
remember any specific instances . . . but still have a feeling
that something abusive happened to you, it probably did." On the
next page, the reader is told, "You may think you don't have
memories, but often as you begin to talk about what you do
remember, there emerges a constellation of feelings, reactions
and recollections that add up to substantial information. . . .
If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms,
then you were."
  That a five-course meal of suggestions can actually lead
someone to falsely believe she was sexually abused may be a hard
pill to swallow. Hearing the life stories of scores of
"retractors" might help the pill go down more easily. Mel
Gavigan, for example, got her first false memories of child
sexual abuse when she was hospitalized for depression in Long
Beach, Calif. Her therapist seemed disinterested in discussing
her painful divorce and the fact that she was unemployed. He kept
insisting that she had been sexually abused as a child but had
repressed it. Mel tried to remember - she wanted to please her
therapist - and soon came up with stories of rape by her father
at the age of 4. She became so convinced that she confronted her
parents and reported them to a child abuse hot line. She read
"Courage to Heal." Her memories became more detailed, and
increasingly shocking and violent. Eventually, with the help of
other more sensible therapists, she came to appreciate that her
memories were totally false.
  Believing something to be true when it's not is obviously not
good for a patient; it diverts attention from true problems and
wastes endless amounts of time and money. But that's hardly the
worst of the consequences. When uncritical acceptance of
uncorroborated trauma memories fuels false accusations by alleged
"survivors," the lives and reputations of innocent people are
irretrievably damaged.
  Not everyone accused is innocent, of course. The point is that
we do not yet have the tools for reliably distinguishing the
signal of true repressed memories from the noise of false ones.
Until we gain these tools, it seems prudent to urge care in how
horrors on the other side of some presumed amnesic barrier are
probed. Is this discriminatory against truly victimized people? I
don't think so. For uncritical acceptance of every single claim
of sexual abuse, no matter how dubious, is bound to have an
unintended and tragic consequence: trivializing the true and
ruthless cases of abuse and increasing the suffering of genuine
victims.
  Elizabeth Loftus is professor of psychology and adjunct
professor of law at the University of Washington. Her most recent
book is "Witness for the Defense" (St. Martin's Press).
  Copyright 1993 The Washington Post

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