Recovered Memories and False Memories
Chris R. Brewin
Clinicians working with survivors of traumatic experiences have frequently noted the existence of memory loss with no obvious physical cause and the recovery of additional memories during clinical sessions. Indeed, amnesia is described in diagnostic manuals as a feature of post-traumatic stress disorder, although its presence is not necessary for this diagnosis. In the majority of these cases, people forget details of the traumatic event or events, or forget how they reacted at the time, although they remember that the event happened. They typically report that they have endeavoured not to think about the event, but have never forgotten that it occurred. Controversy is centred on memories of traumatic events, particularly concerning child abuse, that appear to be recovered after a long period of time in which there was complete forgetting that they had ever happened. It has sometimes been suggested that many, if not all, of these apparent recovered memories are the product of inappropriate therapeutic suggestion. This argument has been promulgated in particular by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in the United States, by its counterpart, the British False Memory Society, and by their scientific advisors.
The ‘false memory’ position
Loftus(1) suggested that at least some of the memories of child sexual abuse recovered in therapy after apparent total amnesia may not be veridical, but may be false memories encouraged or ‘implanted’ by therapists who have prematurely decided that the patient is an abuse victim and who use inappropriate therapeutic techniques to persuade him or her to recover corresponding ‘memories’. The false memory societies have claimed that there are many cases known to them in which previously happy families have been disrupted by accusations of abuse that were only triggered when an adult child entered therapy. Particular scepticism has been levelled at reports of repeated abuse, all of which has apparently been forgotten, and it has been claimed that such reports are contradicted by what is known scientifically about memory. Reports of ‘repressed’ memories of childhood abuse are generally regarded as clinical speculations and the psychoanalytical concept of repression as one that has no credible scientific support.
Several reviewers claim that there is no empirical support for repression or dissociative amnesia in trauma victims.(2, 3 and 4)
Several reviewers claim that there is no empirical support for repression or dissociative amnesia in trauma victims.(2, 3 and 4)
Lindsay and Read(5) have marshalled evidence to suggest that the creation of false memories within therapy is a possibility that must be taken seriously. For example, they review experimental studies conducted with non-clinical subjects concerning the fallibility and malleability of memory, and note the potential for inaccurate recall involved in techniques such as hypnosis. Experiments have demonstrated that people are sometimes confused about whether a recent event in the laboratory actually happened, or whether they only imagined it happening. Other experiments have repeatedly succeeded in implanting apparent childhood memories of single non-abusive events in approximately 25 to 30 per cent of subjects, particularly in those who score highly on measures of hypnotizability or suggestibility.(6) Further evidence comes from individuals who claim to remember impossible events such as being kidnapped by aliens.(4)
Critics have argued that these experiments are a long way from being evidence that therapists could implant false memories of child abuse, and even the experimental studies have shown that successful suggestion depends on the plausibility of the event subjects are asked to believe in. Nevertheless, although no one has performed experiments in an attempt to implant the notion that abuse occurred, it is reasonable to argue that some patients may be highly suggestible and inclined to go along with the beliefs of therapists who may be their only source of support. If their therapist was convinced that abuse had occurred, put overt or covert pressure on their patient to ‘remember’ this abuse, and was insufficiently alert to the unreliability of memory, there would be a greatly increased risk of false memories occurring.
In conclusion, the recently developed ‘false memory’ position goes beyond previous concerns of a general nature about errors in memory, and specifically identifies a process whereby errors arise after a person has been subjected to repeated suggestive influences that the explanation for their symptoms lies in forgotten child sexual abuse. These influences are usually thought to occur in therapy, although it has been proposed that exposure to certain books or broadcast media may have the same effect. This position relies partly on information from the false memory societies about their members, and partly on experimental evidence from non-traumatic procedures in the laboratory. There has been little independent scrutiny of the data from members of false memory societies, and many of their claims, for example that parents have been falsely accused, that accusations only follow entry into therapy, or that there is a ‘false memory syndrome’, are anecdotal and have not been empirically verified.(7)
Evidence for genuine ‘recovered memories’
Over 20 longitudinal and retrospective studies have now found that a substantial proportion of people reporting child sexual abuse (somewhere between 20 and 60 per cent) report periods in their lives (often lasting for several years) when they could not remember that the abuse had taken place.(8,9) Although the rates vary between studies, broadly similar findings have been obtained by clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and cognitive psychologists in both clinical and community samples. As has been pointed out by critics of these studies, this evidence supports the forgetting of trauma, but does not yet have much to say about the mechanism (for example ‘repression’) by which it occurs. Thus it would be true to say that while there is evidence for forgetting, there is little evidence for ‘repression’ as such.
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