Recovered memory

Authenticity

Our memories can be accurate, but they are not always accurate. For example, eyewitness testimony even of relatively recent dramatic events is notoriously unreliable. Misremembering results from confusion between memories for perceived and imagined events, which may result from overlap between particular features of the stored information comprising memories for perceived and imagined events. Our memories of events are always a mix of factual traces of sensory information overlaid with emotions, mingled with interpretation and "filled in" with imaginings. Thus there is always skepticism about how valid a memory is as evidence of factual detail. Some believe that accurate memories of traumatic events are often repressed, but remain in the subconscious mind, from where they can be recovered by appropriate therapy. Others believe that truly traumatic events are never forgotten in this way, although often people may not disclose their memories to others. This is a difficult area to study, and unambiguous conclusions are hard to draw, hence there continue to be very divergent opinions. In one study where victims of documented child abuse were reinterviewed many years later as adults, a high proportion of the women denied any memory of the abuse.

Those who doubt the existence of "traumatic amnesia" note that various manipulations can be used to implant false memories (sometimes called "pseudomemories"). These can be quite compelling for those who develop them, and can include details that make them seem credible to others. A classic experiment in memory research, conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, became widely known as "Lost in the Mall"; in this, subjects were given a booklet containing three accounts of real childhood events written by family members and a fourth account of a wholly fictitious event of being lost in a shopping mall. A quarter of the subjects reported remembering the fictitious event, and elaborated on it with extensive circumstantial detail. This experiment inspired many others, and in one of these, Porter et al. could convince about half of his subjects that they had survived a vicious animal attack in childhood.

Such experimental studies have been criticized in particular about whether the findings are really relevant to trauma memories and psychotherapeutic situations. Nevertheless, these studies prompted public and professional concern about recovered memory therapy for past sexual abuse. When memories are 'recovered' after long periods of amnesia, particularly when extraordinary means were used to secure the recovery of memory, it is now widely (but not universally) accepted that the memories are quite likely to be false, i.e. of incidents that had not occurred. It is thus recognised by professional organizations that a risk of implanting false memories is associated with some types of therapy. The American Psychiatric Association advises that "...most leaders in the field agree that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later. However, these leaders also agree that it is possible to construct convincing pseudomemories for events that never occurred. The mechanism(s) by which both of these phenomena happen are not well understood and, at this point it is impossible, without other corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one."

Obviously, not all therapists agree that false memories are a major risk with psychotherapy and they argue that this idea overstates the data and is untested. Several studies have reported high percentages of the corroboration of recovered memories., and some authors have claimed that the false memory movement has tended to conceal or omit evidence of (the) corroboration" of recovered memories. Herman in her theory of recovery from chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder writes that one of the major recovery stages is the remembering and mourning of the repressed material of traumatic events.

Both true and false 'memories' can be recovered using memory work techniques, but there is no evidence that reliable discriminations can be made between them. Some believe that memories "recovered" under hypnotism are particularly likely to be false. According to The Council on Scientific Affairs for the American Medical Association, recollections obtained during hypnosis can involve confabulations and pseudomemories and appear to be less reliable than nonhypnotic recall. Brown et al. estimate that 3 to 5% of laboratory subjects are vulnerable to post-event misinformation suggestions. They state that 5 - 8% of the general population is the range of high-hypnotizability. Twenty-five percent of those in this range are vulnerable to suggestion of psuedomemories for peripheral details, which can rise to 80% with a combination of other social influence factors. They conclude that the rates of memory errors run 0 - 5% in adult studies, 3 - 5% in children's studies and that the rates of false allegations of child abuse allegations run 4 - 8% in the general population .