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Chapter Eleven
Recovered Memories
James Ost
Department of Psychology
University of Portsmouth
When she was 27, Alice, a successful businesswoman, embarked upon a course
of hypnotherapy to help her overcome an eating disorder. The hypnotherapist
told her, ‘ You will start to remember things – things that you won ’ t want to
remember but they still come fl ooding back. ’ After six or seven sessions of hyp-
notherapy, Alice indeed began to recover memories of being sexually abused by
her uncle sixteen years previously. Whilst Alice claimed to have always been aware
that something was not right in her life, she also claimed that, prior to the hyp-
notherapy, she had had no memory of any episodes of abuse. (Ost,
2000 :
10 – 15)
In the last 20 years psychologists were involved in the ‘ memory wars ’ , one
of the most contentious debates to date – contentious enough that Pezdek &
Banks ( 1996 : xii) refer to it as close to a ‘ religious war ’ (see also Brown,
Goldstein & Bjorklund, 2000 ; Ost, 2003 ). The question that has caused such
a divide in professional opinion concerns the extent to which memories, such
as those ‘ recovered ’ by Alice, refl ect events that actually occurred. Partly due
to the uncertainties surrounding cases like these, the statutes of limitations,
previously barring such cases from being tried in court, were lifted in many
states in the USA (there are no time restrictions to bringing such charges under
UK law). These changes enabled individuals like Alice to sue or bring criminal
charges against their parents or other alleged abusers where the only evidence
was previously ‘ repressed ’ or ‘ dissociated ’ memories of childhood abuse that
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing: Current Developments and Future Directions
Edited by Ray Bull, Tim Valentine and Tom Williamson
© 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
the individual had allegedly ‘ recovered ’ in adulthood (Loftus & Ketcham,
1994 ; Underwager & Wakefi eld, 1998 ). One problem with allowing such
testimony is that there is, in fact, no reliable evidence that individuals ‘ repress ’
or ‘ dissociate ’ memories of traumatic events, although they may choose not
to report such events (see McNally, 2003 ; cf. Brown, Schefl in & Hammond,
1998 ). A further problem is that research has shown that it is possible f
or
people to come to report compelling and vivid ‘ memories ’ of events that did
not happen (Porter, Yuille & Lehman, 1999 ). This raises the serious possibility
that at least some of these ‘ recovered memories ’ might, in fact, be iatrogenic
products of the therapeutic process itself – hence the term ‘ false memories ’ .
Indeed, there have been a number of high - profi le malpractice cases in the
USA where patients have taken legal action against their former therapists,
accusing them of implanting ‘ false ’ memories of abuse, sometimes winning
considerable damage settlements (see Loftus, 1997a ). Furthermore, in one
case an accused father was allowed, as a third party, to bring malpractice
charges against his daughter ’ s former therapist and was awarded $500,000 in
damages (see Johnston,
1997 ). In a recent case in England, the General
Medical Council (GMC) disciplined a general practitioner for using inappro-
priate questions and suggestions to lead a 13 - year - old patient to believe falsely
that she had been sexually assaulted (Catchpole, 2003 ). These, and other cases
like them, highlight the importance of raising awareness amongst practitioners
and policy - makers of the issues surrounding such cases in order that potential
miscarriages of justice are avoided and that genuine victims of abuse receive
the support they need. However, the issues are far from straightforward.
One concern is that claims of childhood abuse are sometimes made follow-
ing, or during, an individual ’ s participation in so - called ‘ recovered memory
therapy ’ . Recovered memory therapy, although contentious to some, is a
blanket term covering any therapeutic treatment in which the prime goal is to
uncover repressed, dissociated or otherwise unavailable ‘ memories ’ of trauma,
in order to resolve present
- day psychological problems (Lindsay
& Read,
1994; 2001 ). Professional opinion, however, is sharply divided over the risks
associated with such therapy. On the one hand, there are researchers who claim
that certain traumatic experiences are permanently stored in one form or
another, that it is possible to revive ‘ memories ’ of these long - forgotten events
and that such ‘ memories ’ are generally accurate (see Cameron, 1996 ; Freyd,
1998 ; Salter, 1998 ). If this argument is wrong, then families can be torn apart
and individuals falsely branded as paedophiles and, sometimes, wrongly incar-
cerated (see Pendergrast, 1996 ; Brand, 2007 ) on the basis of such ‘ recovered
memories ’ . On the other hand, there are researchers who claim that some
‘ recovered memories ’ arise as a result of inappropriate and highly suggestive
therapeutic techniques (Lindsay & Read, 1994; 2001 ; Brandon et al. , 1997 ;
Hyman & Loftus, 1997 ; Tsai, Loftus & Polage, 2000 ; Lynn, Lock, Loftus,
Krackow & Lilienfeld, 2003 ; see also Hyman, 2000 ). But if this claim is wrong,
the results are equally tragic, not only in individual cases, but also at a wider
level. As Conway (1997) states, one concern is that genuine victims of child-
Recovered Memories
183
hood sexual assault will be less willing to come forward if there is a risk that
their testimony may be dismissed as a case of ‘ false memory ’ . Despite the
polarized nature of the debate there is some evidence that a middle ground is
emerging (Read, 1999 ; Shobe & Schooler, 2001 ; Ost, 2003 ) with researchers
on both sides acknowledging the possibility that some long - delayed claims of
childhood abuse are genuine, whilst some are not.
In the early days, psychologists and other professionals were ill - equipped to
answer questions about the veracity of these claims as there was only a handful
of directly relevant studies (Wright, Ost & French, 2006 ). The aim of this
chapter is to provide an overview of the research conducted over the last 20
years that has enabled psychologists to begin answering these questions. The
fi rst section addresses the question of whether people can ‘ repress ’ and then
‘ recover ’ memories of trauma. The second section focuses on whether people
can come to falsely believe, or falsely remember, traumatic events that did not
happen.
Can p eople r epress or s uppress m emories of t rauma?
The work of Sigmund Freud is usually credited as the source of the idea that
the mind is somehow capable of blocking out memories of threatening, emo-
tional and traumatic events, banishing them to a dark recess of the mind.
Freud ’ s term ‘ repression ’ is commonly used to explain why trauma survivors
might have no memory for the events that they allegedly experienced. Despite
continued efforts to demonstrate that repression occurs (e.g. Erdelyi, 2006 )
there is no convincing evidence for its existence (Kihlstrom, 2002 ; Loftus &
Guyer, 2002a; 2002b ; Hayne, Garry & Loftus, 2006 ). A second mechanism,
dissociative amnesia, is also often cited to explain why people might not remem-
ber traumatic events. Initially credited to Pierre Janet (who later retracted the
idea), dissociative amnesia allegedly occurs when the traumatic nature of the
event leads people ’ s consciousness to ‘ split ’ , keeping the memory of the trauma
out of conscious awareness. Some argue that, in extreme cases, this can lead to
Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) where
these ‘ splits ’ in consciousness develop into full - blown alter - personalities (see
Mollon, 1996 ). In this situation the ‘ core ’ personality would have no memory
for the traumatic events stored in the alter - personality. However, rigorous cri-
tiques point strongly to the iatrogenic character of the disorder (Merckelbach,
Devilly & Rassin, 2002 ), as well as the culture - bound nature of dissociative
amnesia (Pope, Poliakoff, Parker, Boynes & Hudson, 2007 ).
So, while the existence of these two mechanisms is controversial at best,
they nevertheless continue to have considerable infl uence in explaining alleged
memory loss in survivors of trauma (Brown et al. , 1998 ). Why is this? One
possibility, as McNally (2003) argues, is that an unwillingness to report trauma
has been confused with an inability to do so. We know that some individuals
with documented histories of trauma sometimes do not report , even when
184
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
directly questioned, that they remember those events years later (e.g. Goodman
et al. , 2003 ). Yet research strongly suggests that not disclosing , due to embar-
rassment, lack of rapport with the interviewer, consciously trying not to think
about the events or ordinary processes of forgetting (Goodman et al. , 2003 ;
McNally, 2006 ), rather than an inability to remember , is the most parsimonious
explanation of such cases (Kihlstrom, 2002 ; McNally, 2006 ; Porter & Peace,
2007 ). If the non - disclosure of known trauma victims can be accounted for
in terms of relatively ‘ ordinary ’ explanations (e.g., childhood amnesia or an
unwillingness to report), then there is simply no reason to posit the existence
of ‘ extraordinary mechanisms ’ of memory loss, such as
repression or disso-
ciative amnesia.
One ‘ ordinary ’ mechanism that might account for the non - reporting of some
traumatic episodes is
suppression . Suppression, which refers to our natural
tendency to try to avoid thinking about unpleasant events, has been studied
extensively by psychologists (see Wegner & Schneider, 2003 ). A recent line
of research has examined whether suppressing memories of events can indeed
lead to them becoming less accessible. This research, and the problematic
interpretations that have been made as a result, will now be critically
evaluated.
In 2001, Anderson and Green published a paper in Nature in which they
claimed to have found strong evidence that the brain can suppress unpleasant
memories. In their study, participants were fi rst asked to learn sets of word
pairs (e.g. ordeal – roach), so that presenting the cue word (e.g. ordeal) would
lead participants to respond with the target word (e.g. roach). Next, partici-
pants were presented with the cue word of each pair followed by a cue either
to ‘ remember ’ or ‘ forget ’ the target word. This is referred to as the Think/
No Think (T/NT) paradigm. In the fi nal stage, participants were presented
with all the cue words and asked to recall all the target words. Anderson &
Green (2001) found that participants recalled fewer of the target words that
they had been instructed to forget than the target words that they had been
instructed to remember. This, they argued, was evidence that people can learn
to selectively ‘ block out ’ certain memories. In a follow - up study, published in
Science , Anderson et al. (2004) repeated the experiment. This time, however,
whilst participants were attempting to ‘ remember ’ or ‘ forget ’ target words
(e.g. roach) the experimenters used f MRI to measure participants ’ blood fl ow
to different parts of the brain. As a result of this new experiment, Anderson
et al. claimed that they had discovered which areas of the brain were respon-
sible for the suppression of unwanted material.
So had Anderson and colleagues fi nally found concrete evidence that the
mind can block out horrifi c events? Whilst some journalists appeared convinced
(one headline in the UK read ‘ Freud proved ’ ), psychologists were more cir-
cumspect (Garry & Loftus, 2004 ; Hayne et al. , 2006 ; Wade, 2007 ). Garry &
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