Review: John Leonard gives a brief review of
"Frontline: Divided Memories"
04/02/95
CBS, Inc.

   Announcer: It's SUNDAY MORNING on CBS, and here again is
Charles Osgood.
   CHARLES OSGOOD, host:
   Time now for a television review which means it's time for John
Leonard. Good morning, John.
   JOHN LEONARD reporting:
   Good morning, Charles.
   In 1991, producer Ofra Bikel went to North Carolina to look
into accusations of child abuse against seven day-care workers on
429 counts of sodomy and rape involving knives, scissors, forks,
hammers and needles. She came back with angry doubts and a
"Frontline" documentary that won an Emmy and a du Pont Silver
Baton. In 1993, Bikel returned to the same small town to interview
everybody all over again, including a judge who second-guessed
himself, five troubled jurors and people who'd begun to wonder if
therapits--therapists hadn't planted some of this lurid stuff in
the heads of the kids, igniting a witch-hunt.
   Now she's back, this Tuesday night and next on public
television, with "Divided Memories," a four-hour "Frontline" report
on the debate about repressed and recovered memory, and those
therapies, like hypnosis and reparenting and age regression, that
somehow always find the abuse they look for, destroying families in
the process.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) There is the daughter who suddenly
remembers, after 20 years, that her father killed her best friend.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) There's the doctor who has his doubts...
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) And a father who sues her daughter's
therapists.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) There are psychologists, even law
professors, who blame a lot on Freud for abandoning his seduction
theory.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) There are those who doubt the whole idea
of repression.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) There are therapists who, using hypnosis,
regression and other techniques, discover not only abuse in
childhood but abuse, too, in previous lives.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) A Harvard Med psychiatrist thinks we make
up stories about ourselves; some true, some not.
   Unidentified Man #1: We all tell tales about ourselves, we all
have images of ourselves that are not entirely in keeping with the
reality of one's life, but we need to have a coherent version of
ourself--of ourselves.
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) But others seem to think it doesn't matter.
   Unidentified Man #2: I said, `I don't care if it's true. What's
important to me is that I hear the child's truth, the--the--the
patient's truth. That's what's important. What actually happened is
irrelevant to me, doesn't matter.'
   Unidentified Woman: Your job is not to be a judge or a jury,
and your job is also not to make the family feel better. Your job
is to help the patient make sense out of her life, make sense out
of her symptoms.
   LEONARD: (Voiceover) Meanwhile, listen to the screaming.
   (Footage from "Frontline: Divided Memories")
   LEONARD: It's impossible in three minutes to do justice to the
texture of the first two hours of "Divided Memories," nor even hint
at the pain we see next Tuesday, when Bikel talks to the families,
and everybody sues everybody else for damages. Imagine the surprise
of the therapists, whose reports are often the only evidence a jury
has to go on, when they themselves are sued.
   Like Frederick Crews in recent issues of The New York Review of
Books, Bikel is obviously suspicious of coaching, confabulation and
hysteria. She listens carefully nevertheless. She lets her camera
wince and shrug. We can't help thinking of the McMartin case in Los
Angeles and the Kelly Michaels case in New Jersey. Nobody here
denies an appalling incidence of incest in this country. And, of
course, we want to believe our children. But who told our children
what to believe? Cauldrons. Pentagrams. Satanism. Human
sacrifice. Rubbish.

