20 - Recovered and false memories

Summary

The question of how people remember traumatic events has recently come to the focus of international attention with the recovered memory debate. Adults claim to recover memories of being sexually abused as children after having amnesia for these events. The question of whether or not memories of childhood events can be recovered in adulthood has divided professionals. In this chapter a brief account is given of the background to the debate and some of the major issues are discussed. The impact of the debate on psychology is considered, and future directions that research on recovered memories might take are explored.

Background

One of the first contemporary cases of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse was reported in the United States. The accuser, a female academic, recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse by her father. In her second therapeutic session she had expressed anxiety about a forthcoming family visit; the therapist asked her if she had been sexually abused as a child. This threw her into a state of crisis, and at home a few hours after the session, she experienced intense flashbacks. Prior to this, she had no memories of actual sexual abuse, although she did have memories of years of living in a dysfunctional family with boundary violations and inappropriate sexual behaviour by her father (Freyd, 1993).

Her parents, also academics, disputed the truth of her accusations. They claimed that her ‘memories’ were the product of confabulation, brought about by leading and interpretative suggestions made during therapy and the general climate of abuse hysteria, generated in part by survivor ‘self-help’ books such as Bass and Davis' (1988) ‘Courage to Heal’ (Calof, 1993).