A `Divided' Look at Recovered Memory
04/04/95
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

   When she made her superb two-part "Frontline" report "Innocence
Lost" on the Edenton, N.C., child abuse case, filmmaker Ofra Bikel
offered a kind of demilitarized zone for the small town's warring
factions.
   All of their hopes and fears and paranoias surrounding stunning
claims of ritual child abuse in the hundreds were laid bare in
front of Bikel's camera. They all trusted her, even if you couldn't
help wondering whether she believed them.
   The same dynamic propels Bikel's new two-part, four-hour work
for "Frontline," "Divided Memories." Now she has taken her camera
to a new but related psychosocial war front, pitting children who
claim repressed memories of being abused as children against their
parents.
   This deeply emotional sparring, though, is heightened by a
parallel debate between a movement of psychotherapists practicing
"recovered memory" techniques and mental health scientists and
feminists who harshly condemn the movement as quackery and
exploitative.
   Bikel's great achievement is to track both of these clashes
until it seems that the very heart and soul of the country is at
stake. Is there truly an unprecedented level of ongoing incest and
child abuse in the United States-as the recovered-memory therapists
and advocates claim-or is the "inner child" craze another example
of American infantilization? Are women the vast majority of
recovered-memory patients because fathers typically abuse
daughters, or is the new psychotherapy a new method of keeping
women dependent?
   "Divided Memories" suggests that all of these could be true at
the same time, but, as in "Innocence Lost," Bikel is fascinated at
how the spark of vague fears can turn into a social wildfire.
   In tonight's opening two hours, Bikel dwells on the claims of
recovered-memory patients. Some, like the case of Jane Sanders
(whose mother got an admission of incest out of her husband), come
off as very credible cases of incest and abuse. Some, like Ann
Rose, who changed her name to Kate, begin with the slightest sense
of a bad memory and develop into explicit, incredible accounts of
satanic ritual abuse and murder.
   In Rose's case, after many years in therapy with Laguna
Beach-based therapist Douglas Sawin, she decided to sue her parents
and grandparents for $20 million in damages. Sawin, as do other
therapists, tells Bikel that he is trained to believe his clients
such as Rose. But when claims become lawsuits, more proof is
required than trust.
   According to such recovered-memory critics as psychiatrist Dr.
Salvador Minuchin and former recovered-memory advocates as Paul
Simpson, trust is about all these therapists have. Minuchin states
emphatically that the scientific evidence to prove that removal of
repressed feelings can uncover memories does not exist.
   "Divided Memories" becomes one of television's most
extraordinary investigations into the legitimacy of psychotherapy
itself-its pseudo-religious aspects, its penchant for launching pop
movements that soon fizzle, its preference for feelings over
reason. The children of Freud are now at an unprecedented crisis
point.


