Memory Distortion and False Memory Creation http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000599/00/199802009...1 of 19 9/10/02 4:16 PMLoftus, Elizabeth (1996) Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatryand the Law, 24 (3) 281-295.Memory Distortion and False Memory CreationElizabeth Loftus Psychology Department Box 351525 University of Washington Seattle, Washington 98195-1525 USAe-mail: [email protected] www: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~eloftus/ Scientific work on memory distortion has captured the attention of thethe wider mental health field, of the legal profession, and of the generalpublic. One reason is this: In the last decade, hundreds if not thousands ofpatients have emerged from psychotherapy accusing their fathers andmothers, their uncles and grandfathers, their former neighbors, their former teachers and therapists, and countless others, of sexually abusingthem years before. The patients often claim that they have repressed ordissociated the "memories" until various therapeutic interventionsexcavated the mental contents and made their presence known. Afterrecovering these new memories, patients have confronted their allegedabusers, and sometimes taken them to court, forcing them to pay sizablesums in damages. In many cases, accused people have found themselvesdragged through the criminal justice system, and occasionally, to theirshock, 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 agesof 5 to 23, including raping her just days before her wedding. She allegedly totally repressed all memories of her abuse until she enteredtherapy a couple of years later and the violent ordeals resurfaced. SheMemory Distortion and False Memory Creation http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000599/00/199802009...2 of 19 9/10/02 4:16 PMrecounted her detailed recollections in a small courtroom in NewHampshire in a 1995 criminal case against her father. In the UnitedStates, the vast majority of repressed memory cases have been brought inthe civil courts.In 1989, legislation went into effect in the State of Washington thatpermitted people to sue for recovery of damages for injury suffered as aresult of childhood sexual abuse any time within three years of the timethey remembered the abuse (Washington, 1989). The legislature invoked anovel application of the "delayed discovery doctrine", that essentiallysays that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the plaintiff has discovered the facts that are essential to the cause ofaction. The argument in repressed memory cases was that the memory forabuse was hidden away - sometimes for decades- until it was ultimatelydiscovered and only then does the plaintiff possess the facts that areessential to the cause of action. Washington State which gives plaintiffsthree years from the time the victim discovered or reasonably should havediscovered the abuse and its causal connection to adult psychologicalproblems.(See Wash. Rev. Code Ann $4.16.340, West Supp. 1994).Since Washington's original statute, at least 28 other states have adoptedsimilar legislation. An excellent discussion of the positions taken byvarious state legislatures, and of their uncritical proclamations about thereality of repressed memories, can be found in a recent law reviewarticle. Of the 28 statutes, at least 25 provide for a period ranging fromtwo 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 notfollow Washington's model precisely, but instead provide for lengthenedperiods after a triggering event, such as the age of majority. (InConnecticut, for example, it is l7 years after the age of majority; in Idahoit is 5 years after the age of majority.) As a consequence of this recentlegislative activity, juries are now hearing cases in which plaintiffs aresuing their parents, relatives, neighbors, teachers, and others for acts ofchildhood sexual abuse that allegedly occurred 10, 20, 30 even 40 yearsearlier, but were only recently remembered.Often after developing new memories, accusers also sue the cruise ship orday care or hospital or school where they claim that the abuse occurred.These cases are difficult to defend. Typically, defendants try to show thehighly suggestive nature of the therapeutic process. Frequently thatprocess of excavating the "repressed" memories involves invasiveMemory Distortion and False Memory Creation http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000599/00/199802009...3 of 19 9/10/02 4:16 PMtherapeutic techniques such as age regression, guided visualization,trance writing, dream work, body work, hypnosis, and sodium amytal(truth serum). One psychiatrist has explicitly cautioned thatpseudomemories can result from "suggestion, social contagion, hypnosis,misdiagnosis, and the misapplication of hypnosis, dreamwork, orregressive therapies." (Coons, 1994, p 1377). Numerous research andclinical psychologists have raised grave concerns that these activities arefostering the creation of false beliefs and memories that implicateinnocent people (Frankel, 1993; Hochman, 1994; Lindsay & Read, 1994).The "recovered memory" therapy that accomplishes this tragic ending hasbeen called the "lobotomy for the 90s."(Ofshe, 1995, p. 21) - a reference tothe pre-frontal lobotomy surgery procedure used by the medical profession in the 1940's.Types of Repressed Memory CasesAt the heart of repressed memory cases is a fundamental set of assumptions: That people routinely banish traumatic experiences fromconsciousness because they are too horrifying to contemplate; that theseforgotten experiences cannot be recalled by any normal process but onlyby special techniques; that these special techniques produce reliablerecovery of memory; that before such recovery, these forgottenexperiences cause miserable symptoms; that healing is possible only bydigging out and reliving the forgotten experiences. In point of fact there isno cogent scientific support for this repression folklore, and and amplereason to believe that extraordinarily suggestive prolonged searches forhidden memories can be harmful. There are grounds to believe that suchpractices, while confined to a small minority of practitioners, involvelarge numbers of patients given the sheer number of patients who seekpsychotherapy in any
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