Memories of Abuse Essay Example For Students

Memories of Abuse Essay Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. A repressed memory is one that is retained in the sub conscious mind, where one is not aware of it but where it can still affect both conscious thoughts When memory is distorted or confabulated, the result can be what has been called the False Memory Syndrome: a condition in which a persons identity and interpersonal relationships are entered around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false but in which the person strongly believes. Note that the syndrome is not characterized by false memories as such. We all have memories that are inaccurate. Rather, the syndrome may be diagnosed when the memory is so deeply ingrained that it orients the individuals entire personality and lifestyle, in turn disrupting all sorts of other adaptive behaviors. The analogy to personality disorder is intentional. False memory syndrome is especially destructive because the person assiduously avoids confrontation with any evidence that might challenge the memory. Thus it takes on a life of its own, encapsulated and resistant to correction. The person may become so focused on the memory that he or she may be effectively distracted from coping with real problems in There are many models which try to explain how memory works. Nevertheless, we do not know exactly how memory works. One of the most questionable models of memory is the one which assumes that every experience a person has had is recorded in memory and that some of these memories are of traumatic events too terrible to want to remember. These terrible memories are locked away in the sub conscious mind, i.e. repressed, only to be remembered in adulthood when some triggering event opens the door to the unconscious. And, both before and after the repressed memory is remembered, it causes physical and Some people have made an effort to explain their pain, even cancer, as coming from repressed memories of incest in the body. Scientists have studied related phenomenon such as people whose hands bleed in certain religious settings. Presumably such people, called stigmatics, are not revealing unconscious memories of being crucified as young children, but rather are demonstrating a fascinating psychogenic anomaly that springs from their conscious fixation on the suffering of Christ. Similarly, it is possible that conscious fixation on the idea that one was sexually abused might increase the frequency of some physical symptoms, regardless of whether or not the abuse really occurred. (Lindsay Read, 1994) This view of memory has two elements: (1) the accuracy element and (2) the causal element. The reason this model is questionable is not because people dont have unpleasant or painful experiences they would rather forget, nor is it claiming that children often experience both wonderful and brutal things for which they have no conceptual or linguistic framework and hence are incapable of understanding them, much less relating it to others. It is questionable because this model maintains that because (a) one is having problems of functioning as a healthy human being and (b) one remembers being abused as a child that therefore (A) one was abused as a child and (B) the childhood abuse is the cause of ones adulthood problems. There is no evidence that supports the claim that we remember everything that we experience. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that it is impossible for us to even attend to all the perceptual elements of any given experience, much less to recall them all. There is no evidence to support the claim that all memories of experiences happened as they remembered to have happened or that they have even happened at all. And there is no evidence to support the claim that subjective certainty about the accuracy of memories or the vividness of memories significantly correlates with accuracy. Finally, the claim of a causal connection between abuse and health or behavior does not warrant concluding that ill health, mental or physical, is a sign of having been abused. This model is the basis for a number of pseudoscientific works on child abuse by self-proclaimed experts such as Ellen Bass, E. Sue Blum, Laura Davis, Beverly Engel, Beverly Holman, Wendy Maltz and Mary Jane Williams. Through communal reinforcement many empirically unsupported notions, including the claim that about half of all women have been sexually abused, get treated as a fact by many people. Psychologist Carol Tavris writes In what can only be called an incestuous arrangement, the authors of these books all rely on one anothers work as supporting evidence for their own; they all recommend one anothers books to their readers. If one of them comes up with a concocted statisticsuch as more than half of all women survivors of childhood sexual trauma the numbers are traded like baseball cards, reprinted in every book and eventually enshrined as fact. Thus the cycle of misinformation, faulty statistics and unvalidated assertions maintains itself. (Tavris, 1993) The only difference between this group of experts and say, a group of physicists is that the child abuse experts have achieved their status as authorities not by scientific training but by either (a) experience they were victims themselves or they have treated victims of abuse in their capacity as social workers or (b) they wrote a book on child abuse. The child abuse experts are not trained in scientific research which is not a comment on their ability to write or to do therapy, but which does seem to be one reason for their scientific illiteracy. (Tavris, 1993) Here are a few of the unproved, unscientifically researched notions that are being bandied around by these child abuse experts: One, if you doubt that you were abused as a child or think that it might be your imagination, this is a sign of post-incest syndrome. Two, if you can not remember any specific instances of being abused, but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did. Three, when a person can not remember his or her childhood or have very fuzzy memories, incest must always be considered as a possibility. And four, If you have any suspicion at all, if you have any memory, no matter how vague, it probably really happened. crime ; punishment Essay Also, contrary to what many believe, hypnosis does not aid memorys accuracy because subjects are extremely suggestible while under hypnosis. (Loftus, 1980) It is possible to create false memories in peoples minds by suggestion. The mind does not record every detail of an event, but only a few features; we fill in the rest on what must have been. For an event to make it to long term storage, a person has to perceive it, encode it and rehearse it tell about it or it decays. (This seems to be the major mechanism behind childhood amnesia, the fact that children do not develop long term memory until roughly age three.) Otherwise, research finds, even emotional experiences we are sure we will never forget the Kennedy assassination, the Challenger explosion will fade from memory, and errors will creep into the account that remain.(Travis, 1993) Research articles and court testimony confirm the wide spread use of memory enhancement techniques, in the belief that these will help recover accurate memories. These techniques include hypnosis, sodium amytal, dream interpretation, guided imagery, journaling, body massages, participation in survivor groups and reading of self help books. In the summer of 1993, the American Medical Association passed a resolution warning of the dangers of misapplication in the use of these techniques. In June of 1994 they issued a warning about all recovered memories. Both the AMA and the American Psychiatric Association have stated: .. there is no completely accurate way of determining the validity of reports in the absence of corroborating information.note 3 The problem with the practices mentioned above is that when they are used they increase the risk of influence and suggestibility. Why would someone remember something so horrible if it really did not happen? This is a haunting question, but there are several possible explanations which might shed light on some of the false memories. A pseudomemory, for example, may be a kind of symbolic expression of troubled family relationships. There may be a cultural climate in our society in which the belief in the relationship between sexual abuse and individual pathology is nurtured. It may be that in such a climate people more readily believe things happened when they didnt. When people enter therapy, they do so to get better. They want to change. People also tend to look for some explanation for why they have a problem. Clients come to trust the person they have chosen to help them. Because they are trying to get better, clients tend to rely on the therapists opinion. If the therapist believes that the reason that the client has a problem is because of some past trauma, and especially if the therapist believes that the patient will not get better unless he or she remembers the trauma, the patient will work to find what he or she thinks is a trauma memory in order to get better. Richard Ofshe, Ph.D. and Ethan Watters noted that, No one not the patients, therapists, parents or critics of recovered memory therapy question that this therapy is an intensely difficult and painful experience. That the pain of therapy is real should not be accepted, however, as an argument that the memories uncovered are accurate. Ones emotional reaction to a perceived memory need not correlate with the veracity of that event, but rather only to whether one believes that event to be true.note 4 Therapists may believe that they are helping clients and improving a culture in which sex abuse is far too prevalent. A patient may find group acceptance in the cadre of survivors and find the reason for problems. Patients suffering from severe psychological symptoms are known to engage in what is called, effort after meaning (Bass Davis, 1988), in that they seek some explanation, however remote, for suffering. So, should accounts of repressed memory be dismissed out of hand? Of course not! But there should be an attempt to corroborate such memories with independent evidence and testimony before drawing conclusions about actual abuses or crimes. Such accounts should be taken very seriously and should be critically examined, giving them all the attention and investigative analysis we would give to any allegation of crime. But we should not rush to judgement, either about the accuracy of the memories of about the causal connection between past experiences and present problems. We should neither automatically reject as false memories which have been repressed for years and are suddenly recollected, nor should we automatically accept such memories as true. In terms of verification of their accuracy, these memories should not be treated any differently than any other type of memory. 1. Yet, it has happened. In a modern version of the Salem witch hunts, the McMartin pre-school case exemplifies the very worst in institutionalized justice on the hunt for child molesters. See, Mason, M. (Sept. 1991). The McMartin case revisited: the conflict between social work and criminal justice, Social Work, v. 36, no.5. 391-396. on evaluating the credibility of children as witnesses in sexual 2. See, Council on Scientific Affairs, (1994). American Medical 3. See, Council on Scientific Affairs, (1994). American Medical 4. See, Ofshe, R., Watters, E., (1994). Making Monsters: False Memory, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria. p.109. Bibliography:REFERENCES Bass, E. Davis, L. , (1988). The Courage To Heal, p.173. Council on Scientific Affairs, (1994). American Medical Association, June 16. Hyman, I.E. Jr. , Husband, T.H. Billings, F.J. , (1995). Prompting false childhood memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, pp.181-197. Lindsay, S. Read, D., (1994). Applied Cognitive Psychology, 8, p. 302. London., (1995). Independent Practitioner, March 1, 64. Loftus, E., (1980). Memory, Surprising New Insights Into How We Remember and Why We Forget, Reading, Mass,: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. Loftus, E., Ketcham, K., (1987). Eye Witness Testimony: Civil and Criminal, New York, N. Y.: Kluwer Law Book Publishers. Loftus, E., (1980). Eye Witness Testimony, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Mason, M., (Sept. 1991). The McMartin case revisited: the conflict between social work and criminal justice, Social Work, 36, no. 5, pp.391-396. Ofshe, R., ; Watters, E., (1994). Making Monsters: False Memory, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria. p.109. Tavris, C., (1993). Hysteria and the Incest Survivor Machine, Sacramento Bee, Forum section, January 17, p.1.