Recovered-Memory Therapy and Robust Repression: Influence and Pseudomemories

Abstract

A subset of the psychotherapists practicing trauma-focused therapy predicate their treatment on the existence of a newly claimed, powerful form of repression that differs from repression as used in the psychoanalytic tradition and from amnesia in any of its recognized forms. Recovered-memory specialists assist patients to supposedly retrieve vast quantities of information (e.g., utterly new dramatic life histories) that were allegedly unavailable to consciousness for years or decades. We refer to the hypothesized mental mechanism as "robust repression" and call attention to the absence of evidence documenting its validity and to the differences between it and other mental mechanisms and memory features. No recovered-memory practitioner has ever published a full specification of the attributes of this mechanism. That is, the properties it would have to have for the narratives developed during therapy to be historically accurate to any significant degree. This article reports a specification of the properties of the robust repression mechanism based on interviews with current and former patients, practitioners' writings, and reports to researchers and clinicians. The spread of reliance on the robust repression mechanism over the past 20 years through portions of the clinical community is traced. While involved in therapy, patients of recovered-memory practitioners come to believe that they have either instantly repressed large numbers of discrete events or simultaneously repressed all information about abuse they may have endured for as long as a decade.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Recalling the Unrecallable: Should Hypnosis Be Used to Recover Memories in Psychotherapy?

“…First, although research has not compared hypnotic versus nonhypnotic recall in the presence of traumatic stimuli, studies with emotional and arousing yet not personally threatening stimuli (e.g., films of shop accidents and fatal stabbings, a mock "live" assassination, and a murder videotaped serendipitously) yield an unambiguous conclusion: Hypnosis does not improve recall of emotionally arousing events, and arousal level does not affect hypnotic recall (Lynn et al, in press). Second, controversy exists (Ofshe & Singer, 1994;Scheflin & Brown, 1996) regarding whether and to what degree emt>tional trauma can block memory for single, repeated, or prolonged events. And third, as Shobe and Kihistrom note in this issue, hypnosis often involves relaxation suggestions that would not be expected to reinstate the traumatic context.…”

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

“…Ofshe (1992;see also Wright, 1994) described a case study of a suspect who gave an apparently false confession to allegations of ritual abuse after' 'meditating'' on events that he did not remember having observed. Ofshe and Singer (1994) voiced criticisms of several removal techniques that have been used to uncover' 'repressed'' memories in therapy: hypnosis, interpreting dreams as literal or symbolic representations of past trauma, treating speculative or confabulated scenarios as memories. Bowers and Farvolden (1996) also criticized the use of dreams and hypnosis to recall trauma.…”

“The Reality of Repressed Memories” Revisited and Principles of Science

“…233) elevates the article (Loftus, 1993), that for most part does not rise much above the level of speculation, to "an authoritative work in this field." Ofshe and Singer (1994;p. 393) inform their audience that therapists "use group-processes, role-playing, leading questions to classify frankly speculative or confabulated scenarios as memory."…”