"Memory work" and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse: Scientific evidence and public, professional, and personal issues.

Abstract

The authors review and critically evaluate scientific evidence regarding recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse and discuss the implications of this evidence for professional psychology, public policy, and the law. The discussion focuses primarily on abuse memories recovered through "memory work" by people who previously believed that they were not sexually abused as children. The authors argue that memory work can yield both veridical memories and illusory memories or false beliefs, and they discuss factors that could be used to weigh the credibility of allegations based on recovered memories. The article offers tentative recommendations regarding public education, training and certification of psychotherapists, guidelines for trauma-oriented psychotherapy, research initiatives, legislative actions, and legal proceedings.The controversy about psychotherapeutic and self-help techniques used to help clients/readers remember hidden histories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is the issue at the intersection of psychology, public policy, and the law in the 1990s. 1 Debate centers on the questions of whether many clients are amnesic for histories of CSA and whether "memory work" (techniques used to recover suspected hidden histories of childhood traumas) can lead people who were not sexually abused as children to believe that they were. This topic bristles with complexities and is charged with political tensions and personal emotions. From any perspective, the stakes are high. Victim advocates understandably fear that charges of iatrogenic pseudomemories of CSA threaten therapists and undermine our society's fledgling efforts to

Changing beliefs and memories through dream interpretation

“…If even our subjects, who were not clients and did not have such strong expectations, were ready to accept dream interpretations from a total stranger, to change their beliefs, and in some cases to produce what might be true or false memory reports, then extreme caution in oering interpretations would be in order. Recognizing the power of the type of suggestion we have studied here would be an important ®rst step in resisting the temptation to engage in it, and would go a long way towards minimizing the use of risky practices that have so concerned recent commentators (Lindsay and Read, 1995;Poole et al, 1995).…”

More than suggestion: The effect of interviewing techniques from the McMartin Preschool case.

“…Ofshe (1989) argued that some criminal suspects give false confessions because they are persuaded that the stress of confessing will be less than the stress of not confessing: That is, they confess because they anticipate the removal of aversive stimuli (negative reinforcement). Similarly, Lindsay and Read (1995) argued that a client in trauma-focused therapy may be motivated to uncover "recovered memories" because he or she believes that the experience will lead to healing. Bowers and Farvolden (1996, p. 367) speculated how a client in trauma therapy may feel motivated to recover memories of abuse: "Unless something bad eventually surfaces, she is apt to experience herself as having failed therapy.…”

“…J. S. Shaw et al (1997) found that a witness's initial and subsequent reports could be influenced by false information from another witness. Bowers and Farvolden (1996) and Lindsay and Read (1995) argued that social influence techniques in traumafocused therapy may encourage false reports of childhood abuse: (a) suggestions by a trusted authority (the therapist) that the client is likely to have been abused, and (b) participation in groups where descriptions of abuse are encouraged and rewarded.…”

False claims about false memory research

“…Instead, they are often a fusion of imagined, real and suggested information (Lindsay & Read, 1995;Read & Lindsay, 1994;Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay, 2002).…”