Can a Survey of British False Memory Society Members Reliably Inform the Recovered Memory Debate?

This paper will explore ways in which self identified survivors of childhood sexual abuse and false memory syndrome appropriate therapeutic discourses which both encourage women to hold themselves responsible for their own unhappiness and provide a way to alleviate that responsibility. Although I look critically at women's engagement with abuse narratives the intention is not to enter the ‘recovered memory wars’ but rather to explore the consequences of locating adult victims of childhood sexual abuse within a therapeutic rather than a political framework. Within this therapeutic culture priority is given to self-actualisation and personal fulfilment and the self is increasingly seen as a project to be worked on. A pervasive theme within the therapeutic literature is a particular linkage between women's ‘inferiority’ and their oppression. Women are not only shown an array of problems from which they suffer together with self-improving solutions but are encouraged to seek the ‘hidden’ causes of these problems in the past and to probe further and further back rather than look to the material conditions of their adult lives for explanations. Drawing on interview material I will look at how women invest in discourses which provide an explanation for hidden knowledge of abuse and may offer a way to alleviate responsibility but which also encourage them to (re)construct themselves as sick, damaged and ultimately responsible for their own unhappiness.

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‘Waking in the dark’:1 Remembering incest in A Thousand Acres (1991), Exposure (1993) and Beautiful Kate (2009)

Incest in contemporary literature ◽

10.7228/manchester/9781526122162.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 69-94

Author(s):

Rebecca White

Keyword(s):

False Memory ◽

Turning Point ◽

Recovered Memory ◽

The Real ◽

Female Patients ◽

False Memory Syndrome ◽

Film Version

During the 1990s, such inherent difficulties in recalling and expressing abuse were heightened by the so-called ‘Memory Wars’, as the Recovered Memory Movement (which advocated the validity of women’s rediscovered recollections of trauma) conflicted with the theories of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (which maintained the tendency for (misguided) therapists to implant experiences in their (generally female) patients’ minds). Working within this often volatile critical context, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres (1991) and Kathryn Harrison’s Exposure (1993), together with Rachel Ward’s film version of Newton Thornburg’s Beautiful Kate (2009), embody the tense interplay between the ‘real’ and the reconstructed that characterises debates about incest and memory. All three texts engage with the ambiguities associated with recounting incest, not least through their status as fictions-as fabrications. Recalling and reworking the very notion of False Memory Syndrome, Smiley and Harrison reclaim and rewrite male-authored stories, implanting them with the perspectives of subjugated daughters. However, over a decade later, Rachel Ward’s Beautiful Kate presents something of a turning point, as this critically-acclaimed film marries explicitness and artistry, and, in doing so, confronts openly the memory of incest.

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A Field Study of “False Memory Syndrome”: Construct Validity and Incidence

The Journal of Psychiatry & Law ◽

10.1177/009318539602400208 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 299-338 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Wendy E. Hovdestad ◽

Connie M. Kristiansen

Keyword(s):

Sexual Abuse ◽

False Memory ◽

Interpersonal Relationships ◽

Discriminant Validity ◽

Community Sample ◽

Recovered Memory ◽

Trauma Symptoms ◽

Recovered Memories ◽

False Memory Syndrome ◽

Using Data

False memory syndrome (FMS) is described as a serious form of psychopathology characterized by strongly believed pseudomemories of childhood sexual abuse. A literature review revealed four clusters of symptoms underlying the syndrome regarding victims' belief in their memories of abuse and their identity as survivors, their current interpersonal relationships, their trauma symptoms across the lifespan, and the characteristics of their therapy experiences. The validity of these clusters was examined using data from a community sample of 113 women who identified themselves as survivors of girlhood sexual abuse. Examining the discriminant validity of these criteria revealed that participants who had recovered memories of their abuse (n = 51), and who could therefore potentially have FMS, generally did not differ from participants with continuous memories (n = 49) on indicators of these criteria. Correlational analyses also indicated that these criteria typically failed to converge. Further, despite frequent claims that FMS is occurring in epidemic proportions, only 3.9%-13.6% of the women with a recovered memory satisfied the diagnostic criteria, and women with continuous memories were equally unlikely to meet these criteria. The implications of these findings for FMS theory and the delayed-memory debate more generally are discussed.

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The recovered memory controversy: An anthropologist's view

The Journal of Psychiatry & Law ◽

10.1177/009318539502300306 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 437-460 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Michael G. Kenny

Keyword(s):

False Memory ◽

Border Zone ◽

Recovered Memory ◽

Politics Of Knowledge ◽

Psychiatric Conditions ◽

Scientific Claims

The false memory controversy falls in the border zone between facts and values. Scientific claims are made that are also heavily influenced by moral and political convictions. Observations are offered on the sociology of this affair, on the politics of knowledge, and on the influence of the DSM rubric in setting up the terms of the debate. Several non-Western “psychiatric” conditions are discussed that reveal the interpenetration of theory and experience in the interpretation of illness, and that reciprocally tell us something about this relationship in the practice of Western psychiatry itself.

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