Recovered Memories: Context and Controversy

With the article "Recovered Memory Therapy: A Dubious Practice Technique" by J. T. Stocks (September 1998, pp. 423-436), Social Work has acknowledged, belatedly and obliquely, the controversy about trauma victims' recovered memories. I use the term "belatedly" because many professional publications, some with special editions, have, for several years now, focused directly on this extended and heated debate; for example, the Harvard Mental Health Letter (1993, 1994, 1995); almost all of the Winter 1995 Journal of Psychohistory; Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (October 1996); American Psychologist (September 1996, September, 1997). I use the term "obliquely" because Stocks never outright mentioned the controversy and thus failed to place the Social Work article in context. Most obviously, Stocks neglected to mention the main protagonists in the recovered memory or false memory debate: Peter and Pamela Freyd and their daughter, Jennifer Freyd. In 1990 Jennifer, a psychologist, recalled childhood sexual abuse by her father, a mathematics professor. In response, her mother, an educator, founded in 1992, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), now with more than 18,000 members, people allegedly falsely accused of sexually abusing children (Brown, Scheftin, & Hammond, 1998). The foundation helps link alleged abusers with attorneys, who specialize in portraying therapists as false memory implanters, and with prominent scientist-experts, such as Elizabeth Loftus, who testify on the ease of implanting false memories of childhood trauma. Thus, a woman charging her father with molesting her as a child may face a well-orchestrated defense team, expert at discrediting her accusations and memories. This is the context never mentioned in Stocks's (1998) article, which began: "Throughout most of this century, public response to sexual abuse of children had been to disregard, minimize, or deny allegations of child sexual abuse" (p. 423). In fact, the tactics of FMSF are a new and apparently scientific way of disregarding, minimizing, or denying allegations of child abuse. Not surprisingly, those accused of abuse, innocent or guilty, are likely to deny. Also, according to Rubin (1996), abusers, and not just victims, may have false memories; abusers certainly are strongly motivated to have false memories. They also are motivated to implant false memories in their victims. And they have considerable opportunity to influence or brainwash a child whom they may be with 24 hours a day by withholding or dispensing primary reinforcers, such as food or security. Compare this with a therapist working with an adult, an hour a week, withholding or dispensing secondary reinforcers, such as praise. Who has more power to implant so-called false memories? Who is more strongly motivated? Yes, some therapists may persuade some clients of abuse that never happened. But some perpetrators may persuade victims - as well as courts or researchers - that the abuse never happened. As Rubin has cautioned, perpetrator denial should not be denied: A balanced discussion must include consideration of explanations for forgetting episodes of perpetrating childhood sexual abuse, because accused perpetrators are certainly motivated not to admit abusive acts. . . . The longstanding denial of childhood sexual abuse harms society by permitting future victims. Denial harms perpetrators by ignoring the need and opportunity for treatment. . . . As psychologists, we must not perpetrate the denial of any aspect of sexual victimization. (p. 450) A very effective way of denying or muting charges of sexual abuse is to focus on so-called false memories. A very misleading term, false memory confuses two separate measures of memory: completeness and accuracy. As Brown et al. (1998) noted, a given memory may be incomplete yet highly accurate, as is often the case in young children's memory reports, or a given memory may be complete yet highly inaccurate. …