THE FUTURE OF REMEMBERING

Many women in the United States report incest to the police after they remember the damage through therapy. And in Europe just like in America there is an increasing resistance against these claims. In Holland and several other European countries, advisers of the government report the situation of repressed memories as 'total nonsense'.

A Dutch legal psychologist working for the Ministry of Justice did some research and examined a hundred cases in which recovered memories of sexual misuse was an issue. Only once it had come to a conviction; the suspect had confessed. (Apparently the recovered memories with this victim turned out to be right.) Of course the rest stays silent. There is no hard proof and after all those years who will admit to have raped or sexually used his little daughter or son? These acts of misuse occur by the grace of secrecy. The perpetrator got off Scots-free and hopes to stay that. Because of his shame, he also wouldn't confess to himself, not to mention someone else. And why would he? The traces have been erased a long time ago and there are no witnesses.

In Belgium there's a project where they treat the perpetrators of incest by another method, namely with some understanding. In the beginning they all deny the accusations but by giving them understanding, they all confess in a later stage. Remembering is selective.

Sometimes the perpetrator does confess however. That proves the horror of sexual abuse. Like for example the newspapers in Holland showed in 1997, in which a 68-year old man and his 40-year old son confessed seventeen incest and rape offences, committed between 1980 and 1996. The father had sexually molested five former neighbors and two daughters for years, from which some had been raped. One daughter was made pregnant three times by the father from whom two children were born. The third pregnancy was terminated by an abortion when the daughter was 14 years old. Also five grandchildren were sexually misused and raped. The 40-year old son was suspected of rapes and incest with another five family members. If there was no confession or evidence, who would have believed the woman who eventually reported these gruesome crimes to the police? This is unfortunately not an exception in civilized countries like Holland.

If it's up to the Dutch government, the police has soon the right to immediately dismiss any report of incest and blame the accusations on imagination. The Dutch governmental adviser who did some research on repressed memory concluded: 'many non-suspecting women return from their therapist with a horrible and imagined past'. First of all nobody gets saddled up with a horrible and made-up past just like that. The frequent misuse by therapists is something else. I agree that people should be protected against wrong therapy. But let us do that by giving them the RIGHT information. Do you really think that a child who has been respected, protected, loved and taken seriously by his parents goes later in his life, for whatever reason, to a therapist and gets suddenly pinned on a 'horrible and imagined' past?

Opponents of repressed memory claim that there is no empirical proof of it. There is neither for being in love, for example. Even the images and sounds which come to us in our dreams have never been scientifically proven. Is it then the way just to jump to the conclusion that there is no such thing as repressed memories? Patients who go through a cautious revealing therapy come out of it with remaining physiological changes, such as a lowering of the blood pressure and the heart rhythm, body temperature and a changed electro-chemical activity in the brain. The opponents put these facts aside as coincidences. Even neuro-surgery, drugs and medicines or daily meditation has never accomplished that. The fact that survivors of child abuse have a smaller hippocampus (the organ that regulates the explicit memory) gets also ignored. The exact location of the memory is until this very day still unknown and research of Joseph Ledoux (connected to the university of New York) shows that the amygdala, a little organ in the brain, can store primitive emotional reactions, independent from the hippocampus. But how would science like to have it? In a laboratory abusing a child so they can examine the results?

Is it without result when a baby gets beaten, misused and neglected because the memory hasn't formed itself yet? A baby cannot go to court. The perpetrator knows how to pick his victim. Later when the victim tries to get justice, more often she gets told it's a lost case even before it comes to trial. And soon even before the first report to the police. That's a strange interpretation of the criminal law.

As often the case in the research of repressed memory, many advisers have been much influenced by the American psychologist Elisabeth F. Loftus who discovered the so-called False Memory Syndrome (FMS). According to her, you can implant memories fairly simple into a group of individuals who consequently defend those memories as real. George Orwell couldn't have made it up better.

In her research, test persons were shown images and pictures and were interviewed about that once or more times. About a quarter of the tested people claimed to have remembered things which demonstrable proved to be wrong. Some for example had claimed to see Minnie Mouse when it was actually Mickey Mouse. This gets taken now a few steps and a couple of leaps further and used as evidence that people can have false memories in cases as child abuse and incest. 'False memories implanted by sly therapists in innocent women, who next sue their fathers for sexual misuse in their childhood.'

When Freud discovered that rich female patients from Vienna all had been sexually misused, he made the same mistake. Sophisticated people don't do things like that and he invented the seduction theory with all its consequences. 

An example that Loftus gladly uses is the one of the FBI having examined more than a thousand cases of satanic rituals and never found one trace of evidence. (And J. Edgar Hoover always denied the existence of the Mafia.) In the meantime in Belgium, there has been found evidence (partly of the temporal collapse of high level corruption) of satanic rituals with children.

Loftus mentions also regularly the argument that veterans from the Vietnam War and victims of the concentration camps never had any repressed memories. The opposite had occurred; namely the memory never lets them go. 'There is no reason to think why lasting sexual misuse would led to repression', Loftus claims.

In opposite to what a small child has to experience when he gets misused by his parent(s), an adult can recognize however the cruelty of a war or a camp guard. Repression is not necessary. For a small child it is because he's depending on his parents and can only 'love' his parents out of self-preservation and seeks the guilt with himself. But nevertheless, very well documented cases of concentration camp victims who had repressed their whole stay DO exist. The well-known Dutch writer G. J. Durlacher confessed once on television that he had organized a reunion with the men who had been with him in a concentration camp and survived many horrors together. One of these 19 men, recognized by the others and known as a fellow prisoner, didn't remember anything anymore. Still he came to the reunion. The stories didn't do anything to him and the others just let it be - for his protection. Until they started to sing their own camp song. The man stood up and sung at the top of his lungs with them. It scared the others, thinking that all misery would break through with him. But that didn't happen. Later he did succeed to remember the buildings, but the memory of abuse or other horrors didn't return. Even with adult victims, repression does occur.

The measure in which repression of abuse takes place is depending on time (length and age) and intensity. For example, you can always have memories of a father who continuously has beaten you. Apparently just as it happened. What gets repressed here is the feeling. Many rationalize it. 'I happened to be a difficult child', 'In the end it had brought me enough self-discipline' or 'My father had a difficult life'. The feelings of pain and humiliation are buried. Buried under aggression, neuroses, depressions or more often, a shallow emotional life.

Supporters of FMS are proud of their examples of clear false testimonies, like the case of Nadean Cool, a nurse's aide from Wisconsin. She sought help from a psychiatrist to help her with bulimia and to cope with her reaction to a traumatic event experienced by her daughter. The psychiatrist used hypnosis, age regression and drugs, which caused hallucinations, to dig out buried memories of abuse that Cool herself had allegedly experienced. During the therapy, Cool became convinced that she had repressed memories of having been in a satanic cult, of eating babies, of being raped, of having sex with animals and of being forced to watch the murder of her eight-year-old friend. She came to believe that she had more than 120 personalities - children, adults, angels and even a duck - all because, Cool was told, she had experienced severe childhood sexual and physical abuse. The psychiatrist also performed exorcisms on her, one of which lasted for five hours and included the sprinkling of holy water and cries for Satan to leave Cool's body.

Cool realized that false memories had been planted and sued the psychiatrist for malpractice. In March 1997, after five weeks of trial, her case was settled out of court for $2.4 million.

Cases, in which women remembered to have been raped but turned out to be virgins, contribute to the improbability of their story. There is however a whole lot more going on.

Of course there is good documented evidence of false memories. Opponents of FMS do admit that. But there's also very good evidence of repressed memories. The two sisters Anne en Rolande (Our Secret) in Holland who wrote independently their strange experiences on paper which showed later an unmistakable proof that their repressed memories were based on truth. Supporters of FMS have never, not even once, admitted that there is such a thing as repressed memories. Why should they? They found an almost perfect alternative to talk away their own fears together with its memories.

There are also known cases of women who completely had 'forgotten' they had given birth to a child in their teens (and immediately given the baby away). Physical proof for repression!

Why the élite academic world rewards Loftus fully for her 'it's all nonsense' research in regard to childhood abuse is not unexpected. After all, it's the academic who has a strong aversion against the feeling. That the élite likes to engage in oppression is a fact shown by history. The higher social classes dispose of more defense-possibilities against the trauma thanks to schooling and often one-sided intellectual development, and that yet the defense of the trauma (for example repression, aversion of the feeling against the memory, denial with help of idealism) causes the neuroses. The big papers seem eager to publish articles that minimize child abuse. Also many (intellectual) journalists have to deal with a damaged emotional life.

Since a few years, the science élite has started a worldwide foundation, The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, which demonstrates itself as a personal crusade against evil. Strategies are used of which many sects can be jealous. The members are continuously bombed (ten times a year a long newsletter) with examples that only prove their theories. Next to the personal confessions of people - usually parents who have been accused of child abuse - who have found the truth and are converted with a stream of tears. A large propaganda machine costs a lot of money. Besides the annual contribution, you can also become a 'Friend of the FMS Foundation'. It costs you $500 a year but you get something really special for it. Namely 'the primary benefit is the knowledge that your personal commitment to the Foundation is helping to break down an extraordinarily evil and destructive belief system and to restore broken families'. But you get more for your $500... 'From time to time, special mailings will be sent by the executive director to keep you updated on items of importance.' And 'special functions' for 'friends' are promised. And finally the newsletter will be mailed to you FIRST class.

That the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the Foundation solely exists out of academics has to create the impression that one deals with serious work. In reality they are scientists and doctors with debatable backgrounds. Most of them are former military doctors specialized in behavior modification and currently employed by major universities. One, who sticks out a little bit more than the others, is Dr. Louis Jolyon West from UCLA School of Medicine. In the Sixties this doctor achieved notoriety for his injection of a massive dose of LSD into an elephant at the Oklahoma Zoo. The elephant died when dr. West tried to revive it by administering a combination of drugs. Dr. West was director and department head of the Psychiatric Department at UCLA and carried out with other doctors and scientists experiments on ignorant civilians in the area of hallucinating drugs (incl. LSD). This under the authority of the CIA for the secret program Mk-Ultra, the program to manipulate the memory of man. Furtherly dr. West was involved in the 1970's with plans to start a Violence Center, which had to deal with experiments on prisoners and hyperkinetic children. Experiments with violence-producing and violent inhibiting drugs, studies of pre-delinquent children and the encouraging of law enforcement to keep computer files of pre-delinquent children, which would make the treatment of children possible BEFORE they became delinquents. With the support of Governor Ronald Reagan among others, Dr. West got approval to experiment in full in the Californian prisons Vacaville and Alascadero with prisoners from which some were barely different than those done by the Nazi's in the concentration camps. The list of Dr. West lugubrious past doesn't end with this. However since three years FMSF has taken his name away from the list though he's still a member of the Board. It looks that the scientific élite is very much benefited if they could manage to convince the majority if their memories are false. By doing so, you can practically get away with anything.

Another bizarre element in the Foundation is the fact that most members of the Board have legal accusations against them of child abuse. Even one of the founders, Peter Freyd (whose wife Pamela is the current executive director), has to deal with the accusation from his daughter Jennifer (a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon) who publicly announced in 1993 that her father abused her (including incest). The memory of the abuse was not connected with repression or recovery. She also kept a detailed diary as a teenager. Her parents together with her therapist Dr. Harold Lief (who's also a member of the Board) accused her of lying and making everything up. The motives of the members of the foundation seem to be clear.

Why does someone like dr. Loftus fights so intensely against the existence of repressed memories? In an interview conducted by Psychology Today (January 1996) she confides to the journalist that she got molested by a baby-sitter herself when she was six years old and answers stone-cold: 'It was not that big of a deal'. She starts crying every time the death of her mother (a possible suicide when Loftus was 14 years old) gets dragged up. A mother who had been before committed at a psychiatric clinic for treatment on a depression. Growing up in Bel Air, California, it didn't become easier for Loftus when her father (who was known as a cold man) married again two years after the death of her mother. A stepmother from whom she claims in that same interview that she was much nicer to her own three kids than to her and her two brothers. Loftus still idealizes her failed marriage and keeps a large part of her ex-husband's possessions in her home, up to his cradle he was rocked in as a baby.

Loftus completely ignores with her scientific accounted tests on memory the emotional impact. And that's exactly the point that she and her academic colleagues lack of: empathy. It's a world of difference if you rationally get a memory implanted or a woman shows with her whole body and soul/subconscious that an immense pain is being experienced. A deep hurt has taken place, which couldn't be felt by the child at the time (that's why the repression!), but surely was stored in the subconscious. Life threatening experiences, which one cannot avoid, can be stored by its survival mechanism. That's important for the survival of the individual and the species. That's why there are many symptoms with victims.

Strange enough, even Loftus doubts her own research sometimes. Like the Hungerford case, in which a woman claimed her father raped her from the age of five until 23, including just days before her wedding, and then repressed all the memories until a few years later, when she entered therapy. 'Even that I wouldn't say was impossible', says the proclaimed expert in the area of false memories.

Loftus doesn't talk about the cases in which people have spontaneously remembered childhood abuse without therapy. The leap she makes in her research where she examines single implanted false memories and then compares them with long-time repressed childhood abuse and incest is not based on proper science. It has not been proven in scientific research that it is possible to implant memories of incest and severe child abuse.

Dr. Loftus has by the way no explanation why some test-persons are susceptible to false memories and others not. When another person (usually a family member) contributes in the false event, the belief in it gets strengthened. Like for example Saul M. Kassin and his colleagues at Williams College have shown with their research in which they examined the reactions of individuals who were falsely accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong button. The innocent participants initially denied the charge, but when a confederate said that she had seen them perform the action, many participants signed a confession, internalized guilt for the act and went on to confabulate details that were consistent with that belief. These results show that false incriminating evidence can induce people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit and even develop memories to support their guilty feelings.

This research shows how simple it is to manipulate adult innocents. However the irony of it is, when you put it in the context of child rearing, the same thing happens but with stronger results. When a child gets misused, it will not get told that his parent is bad, petty-minded and weak. But the child hears it's his entire fault (hand in hand with the help of religion and pedagogy). The parent slaps his child. Child is innocent and feels quite rightly pain and hatred to the parent. The parent however impresses the child that the slap is meant for his own good, that his parents love him and that he had to listen. When this happens time after time, it has of course a huge impact on the growing child. The natural reaction he originally felt, has to be suppressed and he receives a entire wrong view of love with it. Of course a slap is not the only thing an abused child has to deal with. It goes together with punishing, lying, manipulation, neglect, humiliation, isolation, which all has to contribute to the fact that a child may never notice what has been done to him.

All by all, if research has proved that it is possible to have false memories about childhood abuse, it is also possible to have false memories about a happy childhood. Certainly the latter as the indoctrination on that is far more severe than the opposite.

The title 'Ignorance is Strength' would do it very well on the office door of Dr. Loftus and all those other supporters of the False Memory theory. Now we just have to wait until there is a Ministry of Truth.

© 1998 Dennis Rodie

The original Dutch article appeared in Kleintje Muurkrant, March 1998

Note: Dr. West passed away in January 1999