False Memories

The Repression Phenomenon

According to the Harvard scientist and clinician Richard McNally, for many decades mental health professionals in the United States generally believed that once victims of childhood sexual abuse reached adulthood, they often did not like to talk about their abuse; yet by the end of the 1980s, he notes, the reluctance to disclose became an inability to remember. Many therapists, convinced that their clients were repressing experiences of long-ago trauma, began using techniques designed to dig up these buried memories—techniques such as imagination, guided imagery, hypnosis, and dream interpretation.

Many of these therapeutic techniques appeared in a mass-market book called The Courage to Heal, by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. First published in 1988, it was the biggest gear in what Carol Tavris has called the “abuse-survivor machine.” It still ranks among http://Amazon.com's bestsellers, and even a cursory browse through Amazon's customer reviews reveals that the book is surely among their most controversial. On the one hand, the book has given comfort to genuine victims; on the other, it encourages beliefs that can create a legion of pseudovictims.

For example, readers who wonder if they might be repressing memories of childhood abuse are told that the lack of such memories does not mean that they were not abused. In fact, memories are unnecessary: The belief that one was abused and the presence of certain symptoms in one's life are enough to confirm that the abuse happened. Other therapists concurred. A few years later, in 1992, Renee Fredrickson suggested that the very absence of memories was proof enough; that is, those who remember very little of their childhood or a period of their childhood (e.g., between the ages of 10 and 14) have repressed memories.

Scientific Research on False Memories