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False Memory Syndrome is a dangerous phenomenon that is gaining tremendous momentum in this country. Truth or Fantasy? is a powerful look at this shocking trend. The book tells the story of this crisis through the voices of retractors, backed up by psychiatrists, psychologists, and memory experts.
Since about 1992, an astonishingly fierce scientific professional and legal controversy has arisen around the allegation that psychotherapists may sometimes have fostered false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Some have blamed Freud for this, arguing that he sowed the seeds of false memory syndrome 100 years ago. He has been accused by some critics of abandoning, out of professional cowardice, his original recongition of the prevalence of sexual abuse amongst his patients, substituting his theory of childhood sexuality and the Oedipus complex, and by others of fabricating and implanting false memories of abuse in his patientes' minds.
When psychologists began hearing adults tell harrowing tales of childhood abuse, some dismissed the stories as false. Other therapists, however, recognized that the hidden memories might indicate multiple personality disorder, a complex coping strategy that helps victims deal with severe abuse. In The Truth about False Memory Syndrome, Dr. Jim Friesen, a pioneer in the treatment of multiple personality disorder, tackles the subject of FMS with clarity and knowledge no tabloid or talk show can muster. An experienced and compassionate psychologist, Friesen takes the reader along as he helps his clients piece their lives back together and recover from abuse. Through engrossing, yet unnerving, case studies of various patients, dealing with everything from sexual to satanic ritual abuse, Friesen draws a distinction between memory and fantasy, truth and falsehood. In the process, our misconceptions about the victims of abuse, and FMS, are dispelled.
Recovered memory therapy, which has become a rapidly-growing industry in the past ten years, is based on the controversial theory that adults often suffer emotional problems because of forgotten childhood traumas. People who experience everyday difficulties like anxiety of overeating are now often told by therapists that the root of their trouble is a 'repressed memory' of abuse in childhood. The cure is to bring back the memory - a process that usually takes many months - and then publicly humiliate the alleged perpetrators of the abuse, most often the victim's parents. But are the supposed memories recovered in therapy genuine? Or are they concocted by therapists and clients in the course of therapy? Attempts to find independent corroboration of recovered memories have drawn a blank. Contrary to folklore, there is not a shred of scientific evidence for the notion that a memory can be repressed, and there is plenty of evidence that false memories can be created.
In this opening chapter, Gwen Adshead provides a careful overview of the research literature concerning the main issues in this debate. She includes legal issues and child and adult memory in her remit.
In the last decade, reports of incest have exploded into the national consciousness. Magazines, talk shows, and mass market paperbacks have taken on the subject as many Americans, primarily women, have come forward with graphic memories of childhood abuse. Making Monsters examines the methods of therapists who treat patients for depression by working to draw out memories or, with the use of hypnosis, to encourage fantasies of childhood abuse the patients are told they have repressed. Since this therapy may leave the patient more depressed and alienated than before, questions are appropriately raised here about the ethics and efficacy of such treatment. In the last decade, reports of incest h...
Examining the validity of recovered memories of past events which are of sexual abuse and other traumatic experiences, this study asks are these "memories" real? Examples from current literature as well as report from the American and British Psychological Associations are included.
The phenomenon of recovered memories has excited much controversy in recent years amongst professionals with extreme positions being held: either all such memories are, by definition false, or any such claim is an attempt to deny the victims of abuse their rights to confront their abusers. In this refreshing new approach to the problem Graham Davies and Tim Dalgleish have assembled leading figures from both sides of the debate to provide a balanced overview of empirical evidence as well as evidence from clinical practice. Recovered Memories: Seeking the middle ground, unlike most other writing on the topic, eschews extreme positions. It provides clinicians with findings from the latest resea...
Our memories shape how we think about the past, how we plan for the future, and how we think about ourselves. Yet our memories are also constantly being reinvented: we often remember our experiences differently from how they truly happened, and can even remember experiences that never happened at all. False and Distorted Memories provides an overview of recent and ongoing developments in the science of false memory. World-leading researchers unpick questions about flawed recollections, discussing issues as varied as the reliability of highly emotional memories, why we sometimes begin to remember fictional experiences that we have deliberately fabricated, and what happens when we stop believi...