Hysteria over memory
04/04/95
THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS

AS LONG AGO as 1896, Sigmund Freud developed a theory to account
for the uncommon number of women who came to him with what medicine
in those days called "hysteria."
   A number of them had been sexually abused in their childhood,
he announced in a paper read to the scientific community of Vienna,
Austria, where he was a practicing psychiatrist.
   But instead of being greeted with applause, his "seduction
theory," as it came to be known, was met with total silence. No
one, in those days of Victorian sexual mores, wanted to touch it.
   And so, a few years later, Freud himself announced he had been
mistaken. These women were not suffering from repressed memories of
incest. Their problems came from "repressed wishes for" incest,
which came out as memories. And he, himself, in his treatment, may
have encouraged them.
   So matters stood for 75 years until, in the 1970s, women began
coming forth with what therapists called "recovered" memories of
childhood abuse to explain their current unhappiness. And
therapists and the public started taking them seriously.
   In "Divided Memories," an important four-part report on PBS'
"Frontline" series, producer Ofra Bikel studies the issue of
recovered memory from all sides, trying to make sense of the debate
that surrounds it.
   Can a person have a traumatic experience, lose all memory of
it, and years, even decades, later recover that memory intact?
   Over four absorbing hours, from 9 to 11 tonight and next
Tuesday night, WFYI , you will hear stories of women in terrible
pain, whose only release came when they were able to locate the
source of that pain in repressed memories of childhood abuse.
   You will meet therapists who believe that these memories must
be true, else why would the patient feel them so strongly?
   You will meet therapists who believe they not only are not
true, but are inspired by the very therapists who are helping to
uncover them. And you will get some historical perspective on how
this came to be.
   The memories tore apart families, increased the income of
therapists, but seemed, in a way, to help the victims find peace in
their lives. "Everything came together for me. I felt like a real
person for the first time," says one incest survivor, as these
people have come to be known.
   In a way it's a reaction against the hundreds of years when
women's complaints were not taken seriously. Now, given the backing
of the women's movement and the recovery movement that also gained
power in the 1970s, therapists are programmed to believe what their
patient tells them.
   And, if the therapist's job is to heal, and these people are
healed, what difference does it make whether the accusations are
true?
   Well, it makes some difference to the persons accused. They can
lose their jobs, their families, their reputations. The more they
protest their innocence, the more the survivors and their
therapists accuse them of being "in denial."
   In tonight's two hours, you'll see how repressed memories are
brought to light, from sudden flashes to regression therapy. In
next Tuesday's two hours, the impact of such accusations on victims
and their families is explored. This is in many ways the more
frightening of the two.
   For it becomes clear that, without even noticing, we have
opened up an area as emotionally charged as the Salem witch trials.
   The memories keep mounting, the accusations get wilder and
wilder. And the media feeds the frenzy. It's almost fashionable to
be an incest survivor. After all, Roseanne is, and so is Oprah.
   The strategy of the show, like the growing phenomenon, is to
start out with a small, seemingly normal situation, and watch it
escalate into accusations of Satanism, ritual abuse, even murder.
   "The recovered memory debate has been cast so narrowly," says
producer Bikel, "that there is little room to figure out what is
true and what is not."
   This is a warning bell to let you know what's happening.

