Psychological Science, Victim Advocates, and the Problem of Recovered Memories
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800801500205 |
| Author | Mary Anne Garry,Melanie K.T. Takarangi,Elizabeth F. Loftus,Devon L.L. Polaschek |
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
International
ReviewofVictimology.
2008,
Vol.
15,
pp.
147-163
0269-7580/08$10
C A 8
Academic
Publishers
-
Printed
in
Great
Britain
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE, VICTIM
ADVOCATES,
AND
THE PROBLEM
OF
RECOVERED
MEMORIES
MELANIE K. T. T AKARANGI\
DEVON
L.L. POLASCHEK\
MARY
ANNE
GARRYt and ELIZABETH
F.
LOFTUS**
t
University
of
Leicester,
UK
*
University
of
California,
Irvine,
USA
ABSTRACT
Defined
in
hazy
tenns
by
Freud
and
bereft
of
attention
for
a
century
afterwards,
the
concept
of
repression
suddenly
gained
public
prominence
in
the
1980s,
at
the
same
time
that
child
sexual
abuse
(CSA)
was
finally
achieving
widespread
recognition
as
an
important
societal
problem.
However,
despite
its
public
and
therapeutic
popularity,
a
convincing
scientific
case
still
has
not
been
made
for
the
existence
of
repression.
Recent
research
establishes
that
some
of
the
techniques
used
by
therapists
to
aid
in
recovering
sexual
abuse
memories
can
cause
a
third
of
people
to
'remembet
events
that
never
happened
to
them.
Lastly,
we
have
known
since
the
1880s
that
human
memory
is
capable
of
substantial
and
rapid
forgetting:
no
special
mechanism
is
necessary
to
explain
cases
in
which
people
forget
trauma,
and
also
sometimes
forget
that
they
have
previously
told
others
about
it
We
conclude
by
noting
how
research
that
disputes
the
existence
of a
special
mechanism
-
repression
-
and
cautions
against
using
techniques
that
may
lead
people
to
confuse
imagination
with
reality
have
been
misinterpreted
as
suggesting
that
sexual
abuse
should
not
be
taken
seriously.
Key
words:
repression,
recovered
memory, false
memory,
victims,
science
There
are
in
fact
two
things,
science
and
opinion;
the
former
begets
knowledge,
the
latter
ignorance.
(Hippocrates,
Law)
Throughout
history,
the
divide
between
scientific
knowledge
and
opinions
held
as
articles of
faith-
those
things
we
believe
to
be
true
because
they
make
sense
to
us
despite a lack of
evidence-
has
caused
fear,
crimes,
and
social
unrest.
Take
for
example,
the
case
ofGalileo.
In
the
17th
century,
the
Italian
astronomer
faced
the
wrath
of
the
church
for
his
assertion
that
the
Sun,
not the
Earth,
is
the
center
of
the
universe.
Galileo
was
ultimately convicted of
heresy
and
forbidden
to
release
the
scientific
evidence
he
had
documented
to
support
his
theory.
Five
centuries
later,
while
we
may
now
accept that
Galileo
was
right,
we
are
still
faced
with
what
may
be
an
unsurmountable
divide
between
science
and
public
• Please address all correspondence
to:
Melanie Takarangi, University
of
Leicester, I 06
New
Walk, Leicester LEI
7EA,
UK (mkttl@leicester.ac.uk).
We
are
extremely
grateful to
Deryn
Strange for her
many
insightful comments on earlier versions
of
this
manuscript.
148
belief.
One
particularly
salient
modem
example
is
the
case
of
repression.
Beginning
with
Freud,
but
finding
momentum
in
the
1990s,
the
concept
of
repression
and
later
memory
recovery
became,
as
Crews
(
1994)
observed,
'not
just a
diagnosis
but a
formidable
sociopolitical
movement'
(p.
54).
Despite
the
fact
that
there
is
no
scientific
evidence
to
support
that
repression
ever
occurs
-
as
we
detail
in
the
current
paper-
the
word
'repression'
became
as
engrained
in
popular
culture
as
Freud
himself
and
was
served
up
as
the
explanation
for
all
manner
of
mental
health
problems.
HOW
IS
REPRESSION
SUPPOSED
TO
WORK?
The
concept
of
repression
is
predominantly
associated
with
the
work
of
Freud.
He
introduced
the
term
in
the
19th
century,
as
part
of
his
'seduction
theory',
developed
to
explain
symptoms
of
'hysteria'
that
he
saw
in
his
patients.
However,
Freud
was
never
completely
clear
about
what
was
represseed,
when
it
was
repressed,
or
how
repression
actually
worked.
The
clinical
psychologist
Richard
McNally
has
written
extensively
about
Freud's
forays
into
repression
(see,
for
example,
McNally,
2003),
and
shows
that
in
Freud's
initial
take
on
the
concept,
he
posited
that
symptoms
of
hysteria
developed
as
a
result
of a
sexual
experience
occurring
around
the
time
of
puberty,
so
traumatic
that
it
was
repressed.
Yet
when
his
work
with
patients
failed
to
support
this
notion,
Freud
instead
decided
that
patients
actually
repressed
traumatic
memories
from
early
childhood
that
were
sexual
in
nature
(e.g.,
witnessing
their
parents
having
sex).
In
Freud's
views,
then,
the
aim
of
his
therapy
was
to
draw
out
from
his
patients
their
details
of
these
'primal
scenes'
(see
also
Crews,
1993;
Watters
and
Ofshe,
1999).
Later,
however,
Freud
changed
his
mind
yet
again,
deciding
that
these
scenes
were
really
fantasies
rather
than
memories
of
real
events.
To
add
to
the
confusion,
Freud
also
failed
to
disentangle
whether
the
process
of
shuttling
disturbing
material
out
of
awareness
was
a
conscious,
intentional
process-
one
often
called
suppression
-or
an
'unconscious'
one.
Although
Freud
himself
was
hazy
about
the
details
of
repression,
modem
psychotherapists
have
largely
settled
on
a
definition.
In
their
view,
when
people
are
faced
with
events
that
are
too
traumatic
to
deal
with
immediately
(e.g.,
sexual
abuse),
they
repress
the
event,
meaning
that
they
push
the
memory
out
of
conscious
awareness.
Far
from
lying
idle,
however,
the
trauma
is
said
to
have
an
ongoing,
negative
effect
on
their
psychological
well-being,
often
manifesting
itself
in
depressive
and
anxiety
related
symptoms.
Eventually,
some
people
read
self-help
books;
others
join
groups,
and
still
others
might
seek
therapy.
Yet
wherever
they
go,
recovered
memory
techniques
are
all
basically
the
same:
to
deal
with
the
trauma
today,
people
must
return
to
the
past-
they
must
'recover'
the
original
traumatic
memory.
When
it
is
finally
uncovered,
the
formerly
repressed
memory
is
thought
to
return
with
all
the
clarity
and
detail
of
the
original
experience.
In
other
words,
the
memory
is
not
subject
to
the
decay
that
occurs
with
other,
more
everyday
events.
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