The Recovered Memory Controversy

Reply to anonymous66

I seems to me that the power of suggestion, and the power of the mind to invent memory is equal or stronger than the ability of the human mind to completely suppress memory.
This being the case we ought to traduce the charlatans and quacks of the regression technique and show them for the fakers they are.

Reply to charleton
Elizabeth Loftus is working on it:

The memory wars

In the early 1990s, the focus of Loftus’ work shifted to investigating whether it was possible to implant false memories for entire events that had never taken place. The impetus for this new line of research was a case for which Loftus had been asked to provide expert testimony in 1990.[10][11][13][16] The unique point in this case was that George Franklin stood accused of murder, but the only evidence against him was provided by his daughter, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, who claimed that she had initially repressed the memory of him raping and murdering her childhood friend, Susan Nason, 20 years earlier, and had only recently recovered it while undergoing therapy.[10][11][16] Loftus gave evidence about the malleability of memory, but had to concede that she did not know of any research about the particular kind of memory Franklin-Lipsker was claiming to have; Franklin was convicted (though in 1996 he was released upon appeal).[10][11][16]

At that time, many others were also making accusations, both in and out of court, based on recovered memories of trauma.[16] Loftus began work to find out whether some of these recovered memories might in fact be false memories, created by the suggestive techniques used by some therapists at the time and encouraged in some self-help books.[10][11][16] Ethically, she could not try to convince research subjects that they had been sexually abused by a relative as a child, so Loftus had to come up with a paradigm that involved childhood trauma without causing harm to subjects. Her student Jim Coan developed the lost in the mall technique. The method involves attempting to implant a false memory of being lost in a shopping mall as a child and testing whether discussing a false event could produce a "memory" of an event that never happened. In her initial study, Loftus found that 25% of subjects came to develop a "memory" for the event which had never actually taken place.[11][16] Extensions and variations of the lost in the mall technique found that an average of one third of experimental subjects could become convinced that they experienced things in childhood that had never really occurred—even highly traumatic, and impossible events.[16] Loftus’ work was used to oppose recovered memory evidence provided in court[11] and resulted in stricter requirements for the use of recovered memories being used in trials as well as a greater requirement for corroborating evidence. In addition, some states no longer allowed prosecution based on recovered memory testimony and insurance companies were more reluctant to insure therapists against malpractice suits relating to recovered memories.[8][10][11]

Memory like everything else in the universe is constantly changing. But scientists of all types always assume there is a stagnant, immovable Truth. It permeates the discipline in different forms.

It may be fun (and easy income) to search for repressed memories but it is of no matter. A person can change but the "I' had to initiate it and create new memories to change the old.

Quoting anonymous66

In the late 1980's and early 90's

This does need contextualising. The 1980's in Britain and the USA saw an upsurge in retrospective accusations of child sexual abuse, together with some contemporaneous use of purported physical evidence that children were being abused.

Part of the upsurge represented a feminist-led liberation. After some decades of children who claimed abuse largely being disbelieved, a new generation of abuse survivors, social workers, lawyers and researchers emerged who were less deferential than their predecessors and more prepared to confront the often authoritative fathers, uncles, elder brothers and male authority figures who were mostly accused of being responsible. It seems to me this lifting of deference and the preparedness to confront entrenched power has happened very slowly and gradually: the #metoo stuff that has followed the Weinstein allegations demonstrates that 30-35 years later, curtains are still being lifted on the unpleasant truth. Many memories of past abuse are withheld or personally suppressed by the sufferers because they think they won't be believed, or lack a sense of their own power or worth, or because it's too painful to fight a battle about what happened to them.

But in the 80's this liberation was also accompanied by serious failings. In the UK there was a scandal in Middlesborough where two arrogant doctors suddenly decided that a new physical test they were using showed according to them a dramatic rise in evidence of child sexual abuse. The local police, social services, press and public figures went to war over this. And wild tales emerged in various places of 'Satanic' abuse, fuelled by a widespread therapeutic belief that children wouldn't tell untruths about such things, when subsequent studies show that with particular interview techniques they are highly suggestible. Then some 'therapists' began to make an industry out of purportedly recovering repressed memories, and many innocent parents were wrongly accused.

This paper by Howe and Knott from a couple of years ago seems to me a good summary of the stuff that emerged about memory. It's interesting in how it summarises current academic views of memory as narrative reconstruction, which can be influenced especially in childhood by the way that figures in authority talk to you about your supposed memories. A lot of 'common-sense' views held by police or therapists with only modest training are erroneous, e.g. that more detail implies more credibility.

Reply to anonymous66 Very aware of the controversy. There was a "sex panic" at the time. Some people (like prosecutors) were conjuring up scenes of wild abuse in day care facilities, for instance, or repressed memories that suggested child abuse of all sorts was endemic/epidemic, and so on. Lives were ruined.

There is, of course, no question that sex abuse does exist, and that sex abuse has existed in the past. The facticity of actual sex abuse is the raison d'être of rooting it out where it doesn't, hasn't existed. Collective hysteria is a co-factor, along with an obsessive focus on abuse.

One would expect the severity of abuse to vary, and thus the consequences to vary. One would also expect a good deal of individual variability in the way the child copes with, and is, or is not, affected by whatever abuse occurred.

So, yes, in this kind of atmosphere, people can be induced to cough up the sort of memories they are expected to have. With coaching, one can also come to believe that the memories one coughed up are true to the "facts". And this whole process can be harmful to the individual and the community.

It's tricky: Everyone's life includes horrid embarrassments, for instance. It might be better to cover these horrid embarrassments with something more palatable. On the other hand, there are elements in one's history that are better to be remembered clearly, and better that one deal with them (and not just abuse issues). For instance, IF one attended a really crappy public school, it could very well have impeded one's progress in life. Better to understand that, then placing all the blame on one's self for for not being a brilliant success. On the other hand, maybe one attended a bad public school, and was also lazy. One has to face one's past (stored up there in the memory banks) and try to arrive at the truth.