Recovered Memories: The Current Weight of the Evidence in Science and in the Courts

Abstract

The authors critically review the main strategies that false-memory proponents have used to challenge the admissibility of testimony regarding recovered abuse memories in the courts: that the laboratory evidence fails to prove the existence of repression, that people rarely forget trauma, and that scientific studies claiming amnesia for trauma and abuse are fraught with a variety of methodological weaknesses. False-memory proponents who have advanced these arguments have made serious logical errors in their arguments and have misused the available scientific evidence. The authors review 68 data-based studies specifically on amnesia and later recovery of memories for childhood sexual abuse, each of which presents evidence favoring amnesia and recovered memories for sexual abuse in certain individuals. These studies were conducted using a variety of methodological approaches and progressive improvements in research design that addressed and answered each criticism advanced by false-memory proponents. These studies also include a number of recent studies using a clarifying interview strategy that demonstrated that the mechanisms operative in substantial forgetting and later recovery of abuse memories typically include a mixture of dissociative amnesia, cognitive avoidance, and misappraisal of the abuse, and rarely include ordinary forgetting. Data-based studies on the accuracy of recovered memories have demonstrated that recovered memories are no more or less accurate than continuous memories of childhood abuse and generally are reliable, except when a specific pattern of suggestive influences may have contaminated the memory. The authors offer a set of evidentiary criteria by which the court can assess suggestive influences. The authors also review the Frye-Daubert standards that have been applied in the courts. They argue that the current weight of the available scientific evidence on amnesia for childhood sexual abuse clearly meets the Daubert standards of admissibility.

Conceptual Problems with the DSM‐IV Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

“…DSM-III (1980) did acknowledge that memory trauma survivors complain about ordinary forgetfulness in everyday life, as embodied in the symptom of "memory impairment or trouble concentrating" (p. 238). Contrary to the misconceptions of some psychotherapists (e.g., Brown, Scheflin, & Whitfield, 1999), this symptom has nothing whatsoever to do with "repressed" memories of trauma, a concept that refers to an inability to access dissociated traumatic experiences. Such authors confuse everyday forgetfulness occurring after a trauma with an inability to remember the trauma itself.…”

The state of betrayal trauma theory: Reply to McNally—Conceptual issues, and future directions

“…Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield (1999) reviewed the literature, concluding: ''in just this past decade alone, 68 research studies have been conducted on naturally occurring dissociative or traumatic amnesia for childhood sexual abuse. Not a single one of the 68 data-based studies failed to find it'' (p. 126).…”

Tracking Scientific Interest in the Dissociative Disorders: A Study of Scientific Publication Output 1984–2003

“…painful emotions [5,6] . Some writers have argued that in extreme cases, such as the experience of traumatic events, dissociation may become so pronounced that the individual develops amnesia for these events -hence the term 'dissociative amnesia'.…”