Memory Distortion and False Memory Creation http cogprints ecs soton ac uk archive 00000599 00 199802009 Loftus Elizabeth 1996 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 24 3 281 295 Memory Distortion and False Memory Creation Elizabeth Loftus Psychology Department Box 351525 University of Washington Seattle Washington 98195 1525 USA e mail eloftus u washington edu www http weber u washington edu eloftus Scientific work on memory distortion has captured the attention of the the wider mental health field of the legal profession and of the general public One reason is this In the last decade hundreds if not thousands of patients have emerged from psychotherapy accusing their fathers and mothers their uncles and grandfathers their former neighbors their former teachers and therapists and countless others of sexually abusing them years before The patients often claim that they have repressed or dissociated the memories until various therapeutic interventions excavated the mental contents and made their presence known After recovering these new memories patients have confronted their alleged abusers and sometimes taken them to court forcing them to pay sizable sums in damages In many cases accused people have found themselves dragged through the criminal justice system and occasionally to their shock sent off to prison One representative case received multi page coverage in Time Magazine Gorman 1995 This daughter against father case was that of Laura B who claimed that her father Joel Hungerford molested her from the ages of 5 to 23 including raping her just days before her wedding She allegedly totally repressed all memories of her abuse until she entered therapy a couple of years later and the violent ordeals resurfaced She 1 of 19 9 10 02 4 16 PM Memory Distortion and False Memory Creation http cogprints ecs soton ac uk archive 00000599 00 199802009 recounted her detailed recollections in a small courtroom in New Hampshire in a 1995 criminal case against her father In the United States the vast majority of repressed memory cases have been brought in the civil courts In 1989 legislation went into effect in the State of Washington that permitted people to sue for recovery of damages for injury suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse any time within three years of the time they remembered the abuse Washington 1989 The legislature invoked a novel application of the delayed discovery doctrine that essentially says that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the plaintiff has discovered the facts that are essential to the cause of action The argument in repressed memory cases was that the memory for abuse was hidden away sometimes for decades until it was ultimately discovered and only then does the plaintiff possess the facts that are essential to the cause of action Washington State which gives plaintiffs three years from the time the victim discovered or reasonably should have discovered the abuse and its causal connection to adult psychological problems See Wash Rev Code Ann 4 16 340 West Supp 1994 Since Washington s original statute at least 28 other states have adopted similar legislation An excellent discussion of the positions taken by various state legislatures and of their uncritical proclamations about the reality of repressed memories can be found in a recent law review article Of the 28 statutes at least 25 provide for a period ranging from two to ten years to bring suit after the discovery of the sex abuse injury In Wisconsin it is two in Nevada it is 10 Several statutes do not follow Washington s model precisely but instead provide for lengthened periods after a triggering event such as the age of majority In Connecticut for example it is l7 years after the age of majority in Idaho it is 5 years after the age of majority As a consequence of this recent legislative activity juries are now hearing cases in which plaintiffs are suing their parents relatives neighbors teachers and others for acts of childhood sexual abuse that allegedly occurred 10 20 30 even 40 years earlier but were only recently remembered Often after developing new memories accusers also sue the cruise ship or day care or hospital or school where they claim that the abuse occurred These cases are difficult to defend Typically defendants try to show the highly suggestive nature of the therapeutic process Frequently that process of excavating the repressed memories involves invasive 2 of 19 9 10 02 4 16 PM Memory Distortion and False Memory Creation http cogprints ecs soton ac uk archive 00000599 00 199802009 therapeutic techniques such as age regression guided visualization trance writing dream work body work hypnosis and sodium amytal truth serum One psychiatrist has explicitly cautioned that pseudomemories can result from suggestion social contagion hypnosis misdiagnosis and the misapplication of hypnosis dreamwork or regressive therapies Coons 1994 p 1377 Numerous research and clinical psychologists have raised grave concerns that these activities are fostering the creation of false beliefs and memories that implicate innocent people Frankel 1993 Hochman 1994 Lindsay Read 1994 The recovered memory therapy that accomplishes this tragic ending has been called the lobotomy for the 90s Ofshe 1995 p 21 a reference to the pre frontal lobotomy surgery procedure used by the medical profession in the 1940 s Types of Repressed Memory Cases At the heart of repressed memory cases is a fundamental set of assumptions That people routinely banish traumatic experiences from consciousness because they are too horrifying to contemplate that these forgotten experiences cannot be recalled by any normal process but only by special techniques that these special techniques produce reliable recovery of memory that before such recovery these forgotten experiences cause miserable symptoms that healing is possible only by digging out and reliving the forgotten experiences In point of fact there is no cogent scientific support for this repression folklore and and ample reason to believe that extraordinarily suggestive prolonged searches for hidden memories can be harmful There are grounds to believe that such practices while confined to a small minority of practitioners involve large numbers of patients given the sheer number of patients who seek psychotherapy in any given year This is not to say that people cannot forget horrible things that have happened to them most certainly they can But
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