Overview of files about

Lost or False memories

This overview is still not complete.

[About] Clancy, Susan cum suis:

Daily Mail, Woman who falsely accused her father of rape reveals 'doctors hijacked my mind'; 26th October 2007 
Eleven years ago, Katrina, now 37, accused the father [ ... ...] 
It would be several tortured months before it finally emerged that these unfolding memories were pure fantasy - the drug-induced ramblings of a woman pushed to the brink of sanity by a controversial form of psychotherapy known as recovered memory syndrome. 

D'Entremont, John, Mangled Memories; Is sex so uniquely powerful that people repress the memory of it? The Guide, November 2002 - With Editor's Note with References.
[... I]n the ongoing controversy over real and imagined sexual missteps by Catholic clergymen, repressed-memory issues are inescapably present. They figured in the early-'90s wave of cases that included the high-profile prosecution of ex-priest James Porter, who admits to sexual contact with dozens of children in the 1960s and early '70s -- but not the hundreds indicated by the recovered-memory testimony of scores of his alleged victims. [...]
A majority of mental-health professionals believe that in most -- perhaps all -- cases of supposed recovered memory, the shards of information bobbing to the surface are not recollections of actual events, but fantasies shaped by external stimuli -- usually in therapy, where therapist and patient can become coauthors of fictional narratives masquerading as fact. 

D'Entremont, John, Recovered memory's high priestesses; The Guide, November 2002 
The single most destructive text of the survivor movement is The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Sexual Abuse (1988) by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.

Furedi, Frank, History-as-Therapy; In an era when suffering is celebrated and we all must ‘Believe the Victim’, is it any wonder people make up wild stories about wolves and Nazis?  Spiked Online, 5 March 2008 
[...] In the current cultural climate, it is inevitable that abuse memoirs have a tendency to stretch the boundary between fact and fiction. Readers and critics usually feel awkward and inhibited about questioning the veracity of such memoirs.  Scepticism is discouraged in an era built upon the therapeutic ethos ‘Believe the child’, ‘Believe the patient’, ‘Believe the abused’ – today, such invocations are used to sacralise the claims of victims. [...]
Through the therapeutic manipulation of memory, the trauma is lived and relived, guaranteeing the individual the status of a morally interesting victim-for-life.

The Guide, Clearer Memory, Editorial from The Guide, November 2002
All memories exist in a context. When that context is warped by beliefs that sex itself -- especially gay sex -- is fundamentally wicked, memories are inevitably distorted. Our struggle as gay people has always been to correct that distortion, to see sex more clearly, and to share with a troubled world a less fearful vision of our sexual present, future ... and past.

Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Kirsch, I., Chaves, J. F., Sarbin, Th. R., Ganaway, G. K. & Powell, R. A.: Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Socio-cognitive Model: Recalling the Lessons of the Past; Psychological Bulletin, 1999, 125-5, 507-523.
In a recent article in this journal, D. H. Gleaves (1996) criticized the socio-cognitive model (SCM; N. P. Spanos, 1994) of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and argued in favor of a posttraumatic model (PTM) in which DID is conceptualized as a consequence of childhood abuse and other traumatic events. The present authors demonstrate that

The present authors conclude that Gleaves's analysis underemphasized the cultural manifestations of multiple role enactments and that the history of DID imparts a valuable lesson to contemporary psychotherapists.

Loftus, Elisabeth F., Creating False memories; Scientific American, September 1997, vol 277, p 70-75.
Researchers are showing how suggestion and imagination can be used to create "memories" of events that did not actually occur.

Loftus, Elisabeth, 
The FMS (False Memory Syndrome) Foundation Newsletter of July/August 2001, 10/4, gives the text of a speech by memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, who helped discredit recovered memories. Loftus received an award from the American Psychological Society.

About
Loftus, Elisabeth's new research:
Study: False Memories Easily Implanted; By THE AP, February 17, 2003 
The research demonstrates that police interrogators and people investigating sexual-abuse allegations must be careful not to plant suggestions into their subjects, said University of California-Irvine psychologist Elizabeth Loftus. She presented preliminary results of recent false memory experiments Sunday at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

About
Palmer, Ken: Biological Basis for False Memories Revealed; Did you really see that? An image from a test for false memories developed by Ken Paller and colleagues of Northwestern University.
It's easy enough to forget something that happened. It's also possible to remember something that didn't happen.

Wilson, Amy, War & remembrance - Controversy is a constant for memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, newly installed at UCI. The Orange County Register, November 3, 2002 - With References to more of Loftus' work.
Academics can debate anything. It's healthy. It's what, among other things, they are paid to do.
They can also go to war. Which is something different altogether.
War has casualties. It also produces gladiators.
Elizabeth Loftus is a cognitive psychologist whose research into how memory works is so deep and so wide and so highly regarded that the April issue of The Review of General Psychology ranked her 58th among the top 100 psychologists of the 20th century. She is the highest-ranking woman on the list. She is also one of the 25 psychologists most often cited in psychology textbooks. She is also controversial.

Wypijewski,, JoAnn,