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         MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 56a * [Part 1 of 2 parts]
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         V E R I C O M M / MindNet         "Quid veritas est?"
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    The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the
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    The following is reproduced here with the permission of
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    Editor: Mike Coyle

    Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler

    Research: Darrell Bross

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    A REPLY TO THE FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME FOUNDATION

    By John Backus and Barbara Stannard

    Oct. 1993

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    (c) Copyright 1993 by John Backus, Sc.D., and Barbara Stannard,
    Ph.D. This article may be reproduced in its entirety or in part
    for no-profit distribution provided this copyright notice is
    reproduced with it. Written permission is required for all other
    uses of this article; please contact the authors at (415)
    731-8155.

    Introduction

       Recently newspapers, magazine articles and TV have been
    publicizing the work of an organization called the "False Memory
    Syndrome Foundation" (FMSF), which makes the following claims:
    that many memories of incest recovered by adults are "false
    memories" implanted or suggested by therapists, that getting
    these memories is just a current fad, and that the "false
    memory syndrome," to quote the FMSF, destroys "the psychological
    well-being not only of the primary victim but--through false
    accusations of incest and sexual abuse--other members of the
    primary victim's family."
       Here are some answers to the FMSF's claims:

    I. A few basic observations.

    The False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

       1. Much of the energy and money supporting the False Memory
    Syndrome Foundation comes from people who maintain they have been
    falsely accused of molesting children.[2] The FMSF founders are
    Peter Freyd and his wife Pamela, whose daughter has accused Peter
    of molesting her as a child.[3] A member of the FMSF Advisory
    Board who appears to have been an active partner in forming the
    FMSF is the psychologist Dr. Ralph Underwager.[4]  Dr. Underwager
    is on record as a defender of pedophelia:[5] he was interviewed
    in _Paidika_, "The Journal of Paedophilia" (Winter 1993) as
    follows. Question: Is choosing paedophilia for you a responsible
    choice for the individual? Answer by Underwager: "Certainly it is
    responsible." (p3). When asked how pedophiles might seek
    decriminalization, Underwager replies: "...Paedophiles need to...
    make the claim that paedophilia is an acceptable expression of
    God's will for love and unity among human beings" (p12).
    Underwager's wife, Hollida Wakefield, another FMSF board member
    who took part in this interview, favors "...a longitudinal study
    of, let's say, a hundred twelve-year-old boys in relationships
    with loving paedophiles." (p12).
       Much of the rest of FMSF support comes from old-line
    psychiatrists who still agree with a now discredited theory of
    Freud, the "drive theory," according to which children
    instinctively want sex with their parents and therefore make up
    fantasies about it actually happening. Because of that false
    theory, for over half a century therapists believed their
    patients were making up fantasies of abuse and were therefore
    unable to help them. The FMSF is basically attempting to revive
    the belief that memories of sexual abuse are "fantasies."

    Science and the FMSF.

       2. The FMSF wants us to believe that their claims about false
    memories of incest are based on scientific research into the
    mechanisms of memory. The evidence they use to build their case
    actually represents just a few common sense facts about memory:
    for example, that our memories are often mistaken about details
    (we get sequences of events wrong, dates, colors, what age we
    were, etc.). Persons remembering an accident often do get the
    color of the car, or the number of people involved, wrong but
    they are never wrong about the important facts: that there was an
    accident or that someone was hurt.
       The FMSF also wants us to believe that memories can be
    implanted, and experiments have shown that suggestible people can
    be tricked into falsely believing, let us say, that they got lost
    in a shopping mall when they were children. But these implanted
    memories deal with non-traumatic events that might normally have
    happened.
       From these simple experiments the FMSF falsely concludes: (a)
    that a person's memories are likely to be wrong about crucial
    events that had a serious impact on their lives and (b) that
    someone can falsely suggest that a major traumatic event happened
    to a person, who will then docilely produce detailed memories
    about it.
       There is no solid evidence that incest survivors[6] are
    mistaken about the major events they remember or that they have
    generated their memories of abuse at the mere suggestion of a
    therapist. While there may be a few cases to support the FMSF's
    view, cases that involve unscrupulous therapists or unprincipled
    or simple-minded clients, the preponderance of evidence (some of
    which is given below) supports the fact that childhood sexual
    abuse is common, that people often suppress the memory of it and
    then recover its essential details as adults.

       3. The very name "False Memory Syndrome" is a
    pseudo-scientific sham, for "syndrome," defined by Webster's New
    World Dictionary as "a number of symptoms occurring together and
    characterizing a specific disease" suggests that "false memories"
    are symptoms of a newly discovered "disease."  But how can such a
    disease have a scientific basis when the truth or falsity of
    memories can rarely be proved?
       The literature of the FMSF pretends to be unbiased[7] and
    based on science, but the low-level scientific work they cite
    cannot support the theory that many memories about sexual abuse
    are false. For how can the situation faced by incest victims be
    reproduced in the laboratory? How does one scientifically
    determine whether accuser or accused is telling the truth? A real
    scientist is someone who searches for the truth, not someone who
    decides in advance what is true and then tries to convince others
    by whatever means he can find. If Science had been in the hands
    of groups like the FMSF, it would have got nowhere.

    Catching the "false memory syndrome."

       4. The FMSF implies that you can catch the "false memory
    syndrome" by the merest suggestion of a therapist or by reading a
    book, and that once you've caught this "disease" you're likely to
    make up false memories about childhood sexual abuse. The FMSF
    offers no explanation of why people would make up memories so
    painful that they themselves do not want to believe them. The
    FMSF also does not ask why, if the memories are false, people get
    better by remembering them. People are cured only by remembering
    the truth.
       Furthermore, the FMSF does not consider that a fair number of
    people always remembered their incest. (What they may not have
    dealt with are the feelings--the rage, the grief--associated with
    it.) The memories of those who have always remembered and those
    who recovered their memories are in every way comparable.
       Moreover, if you ask: "Who has the stronger motive for making
    things up, the person who remembers being abused or the person
    who is accused of the abuse?" the answer is clear.
       Incest memories are not a fad, not implanted, not a witch
    hunt.

       5. History shows that memories of incest are not just a
    current fad, as some claim. The fact is that sexual and other
    kinds of abuse have been going on throughout history. "The
    history of childhood," said Lloyd de Mause in _The History Of
    Childhood_ (1974), "is a nightmare from which we have only
    recently begun to awaken." De Mause's carefully researched book
    shows that sexual abuse, while tragically widespread today, was
    even more common in the past.

       6. Most incest survivors get at least some memories before
    they see a therapist or even read about incest, therefore their
    memories could not have been "implanted." Furthermore, brains
    may be capable of lies and fantasies, but can bodies lie? Almost
    everyone who has endured serious abuse has "body memories" in
    which a recurring physical pain or sensation insists on reminding
    them of some early abuse, a pain that continues until they
    re-experience the abuse, whereupon it disappears.[8] A false
    memory could not have this effect.

       7. Incest survivors' accusations of their abusers are compared
    by the FMSF to the Salem Witch Trials.[9] There are two crucial
    differences which they ignore. First, a girl who accused someone
    of being a witch got instant power and praise, whereas a person
    who accuses a relative of past sexual abuse gets disbelief,
    anger, anguish, and often separation from the family. Second,
    sexual abuse is a proven fact, but it is clearly impossible to
    prove that someone is a witch.

    Evidence for the validity of incest memories.

       8. There are probably a few thousand incest survivor self-help
    groups around the world. Anyone who attended their meetings would
    be struck by the intense pain, grief and anger that people suffer
    when they remember what happened to them as children. These
    feelings and memories become even more authentic when one sees
    the beneficial changes that come about from remembering. When the
    pain and grief are first felt people become dejected and often
    dysfunctional, but gradually the pain subsides and one sees the
    same people having more energy, self-confidence and
    self-responsibility than they ever had and become capable of
    better relationships. People also finally understand the origin
    of their addictions (like drinking) and begin to cope with their
    other psychological difficulties, difficulties they did not
    understand before or thought were innate. It becomes utterly
    clear that their intense emotions, their new self-knowledge and
    the remarkable changes in their lives could not possibly be the
    result of made-up fictions or implanted memories.

    II. About denial and the motives of abusers.

    The origins of denial.

       9. Most people have repressed a lot of emotional pain they
    suffered when they were children. If they were to believe that
    incest survivors' memories are true, they would be at risk of
    remembering their own lesser pain (for example, the pain of
    having been rejected). The greater the repressed pain, the more
    numb people become to the pain of others so as to avoid feeling
    their own hidden wounds. Denial of childhood pain is so common
    that even many therapists have not sufficiently dealt with their
    own pain, which means that they are not open to the truth of
    their clients' memories and therefore cannot help them. Such a
    therapist, of course, cannot be a reliable judge of "false
    memories".[10] Denial of childhood pain is the chief force
    behind the strong backlash against the incest survivor movement.

       10. Society in general has a tendency to deny the existence
    of horrendous acts of evil. The followers of FMSF, in denying
    the reality of incest survivors' memories, are not unlike the
    growing number of people who deny or minimize the reality of the
    Holocaust, people like neo-Nazi David Duke, the president of
    Croatia, and the Republican columnist Pat Buchanan, who assert,
    for example, that only a few hundred thousand died in Nazi
    concentration camps.[11]

    Sexual abuse: the consequences of denial, the agony of recovery.

       11. Consequences of denial: Dr. Richard Berendzen, the former
    president of American University, had always known that his
    mother had sexually abused him as a child. He thought he had
    "handled" it. But in his fifties, not knowing why he was
    compelled to do it, he began making obscene phone calls to women
    he knew were mothers. Dr. Berendzen had always overworked, but
    when his obsession hit him, he began working 120 hours a
    week.[12]
       Denial of the emotional pain of sexual abuse results in many
    other kinds of life-defeating behaviors. For example, many
    sexually abused children grow up to be as sexually obsessed as
    their abusers.[13] Some become prostitutes or in other ways are
    easily sexually exploited. A minority become abusers themselves.
    Because their self-esteem is so damaged, many adults who were
    sexually abused in childhood cannot properly assert themselves
    and use their talents. In order to run from the intense hidden
    pain that lurks just below the surface, a great number of sexual
    abuse victims become alcoholics, drug addicts, or workaholics.
    The pain is so unbearable for many that they kill themselves.
    Some suffer from dangerous bouts of rage, some from chronic
    depression. Although a few have successful careers, they remain
    numb and emotionally dead in large areas of their lives.
       The agony of recovery: For those who face the pain of their
    childhood sexual abuse, recovery often means years of working
    through intense fear, grief and anger as they uncover their
    memories and relive what happened to them. The process is so
    difficult that some can barely function for a long time. One of
    the worst pains suffered by survivors who remember their abuse is
    exclusion by their family, who deny the truth of their memories.

    The psychology of abusers: why they do it and why they cannot
    admit it.

       12. At present, few people in our society understand that the
    very abuse of children is a form of denial. Child abusers (who
    are themselves victims of child abuse) usually do not remember
    what happened to them. They repress the original abuse by means
    of a psychological escape called fusion. When a child is
    molested, the trauma is often so unbearable that instead of
    remaining the helpless, hurt victim, the child merges with the
    abuser and experiences his/her sexual thrills and delight in
    power. Child abusers continue to handle the pain of the original
    abuse in the same way. Whenever the pain begins to surface (and
    it always does), abusers pass on the pain to another child,
    turning the child into the victim they once were and themselves
    into the powerful abuser. (It is important to note that only a
    small percentage of people who were molested become child
    abusers; most victims handle their pain in other ways.)
       Instead of understanding the psychology of abusers, society
    prefers to believe that abusers are examples of "original sin" or
    "bad seeds." Society is therefore unable to deal with the causes
    of abuse and is unable to prevent its continuation. (Child
    molesters are let out of prison after short sentences because it
    is not understood that they are unable to stop molesting children
    unless they remember their own abuse and experience the pain of
    it.)

       13. The FMSF does not understand why most abusers are
    compelled to deny what they did (beyond wanting to escape prison
    and not wanting to face the shame of what they did). If an abuser
    were simply to confess what he did, ant bald, plain facts would
    remind him of the pain of his original abuse, whereas when he is
    molesting a child, he is identified with his abuser and feels
    only sexual arousal and power.

    III. Rebuttal of the FMSF's claims.

    The case of the family of Peter and Pamela Freyd, the founders
    of the FMSF.

       14. The FMSF presents itself as objective but it was founded
    by Peter Freyd and his wife Pamela when Peter was accused by
    their daughter of sexually molesting her.[14] The daughter
    Jennifer is a distinguished psychology professor who did not
    recover memories of outright incest until 1990 when her mother
    and father planned a visit. Jennifer became anxious. She did not
    know why and consulted a therapist. On the second visit the
    therapist asked her if she had been sexually abused as a child.
    She said no, but them memories began to come up. She had always
    remembered that her alcoholic father constantly talked about sex
    when she was a child, sat in his robe with his genitals exposed,
    and when she was nine or ten suggested she read Lolita. Even
    when she was married her father continued his sexual behavior
    toward her; he once threw a condom at her, and when she gave
    him a modeling toy, he made a replica of his genitals which he
    displayed in his living room. In 1990 she remembered he sexually
    fondled her when she was three or four and raped her when she
    was sixteen. When Jennifer tried to validate her memories with
    her sister, her sister asked "Is that why you had all those
    locks on your bedroom door?"
       Jennifer Freyd recalls that her father used to discuss his
    own sexual abuse, which occurred when he was eleven years old.
    He did not call it abuse however; instead he believed he was
    sexually precocious. He referred to himself as a "kept boy" and
    said he later became a "male prostitute."[15]  (He later decided
    to become heterosexual.)
       Jennifer Freyd also provides convincing evidence that her
    parents were untruthful in their efforts to damage her reputation
    with her colleagues: Her mother wrote an anonymous article by
    "Jane Doe" giving her version of the family story. She sent it to
    Jennifer's colleagues and made it clear it was about Jennifer by
    identifying herself as Jane Doe. It states that Jennifer was
    denied tenure at a previous university because she had not
    published enough. The fact is that Jennifer moved to the
    University of Oregon as a tenured Associate Professor when her
    previous university declined to match the tenure offer from
    Oregon. Her mother sent the Jane Doe article to Jennifer's Oregon
    colleagues during the year she was up for promotion to Professor.
    Her father later admitted to her that "...fictional elements were
    deliberately inserted...". Jennifer cites several other instances
    of her parents' untruthfulness in using the FMSF to harass her.
       The Freyds' claim that Jennifer's memories were "implanted"
    seems ludicrous in light of Jennifer's story. How could the mere
    question "were you sexually abused as a child?" have implanted
    Jennifer's memories of what happened? She is very clear that even
    when she wanted her therapist to help her have more memories, the
    therapist was unable to do so.
       In spite of the dysfunctional family history, in spite of
    their untruthful efforts to damage their daughter's career and
    reputation, and in spite of the fact that both their daughters
    and Peter's older brother do not want to have anything to do with
    them, Pamela and Peter Freyd nevertheless insist that theirs is a
    loving family torn apart by inaccurate memories and false
    allegations.[16]
       Pamela Freyd must have seen the many locks on Jennifer's
    bedroom door, she must have known about her husband's sexual
    abuse as a child, his claim of sexual precocity and his
    predilection for sexual talk with Jennifer and acting out in her
    presence. If she were truly a loving mother how could she then
    dismiss her daughter's memories so totally? Pamela Freyd's
    attitude about her family is _denial_,[17] which is why the FMSF
    insists that families of accused abusers are "loving families"
    who have lost a "loved" daughter through "inaccurate memories
    and false accusations."
       Pamela and Peter Freyd are clearly struggling, by every means
    they can find, to impugn their daughter's very convincing
    evidence that her father molested her as a child. And it appears
    that they have created the FMSF as a means of doing so.

    Very early memories are possible.

       15. The FMSF claims there is general agreement that "most
    people cannot remember anything that happened" before about two
    years of age.[18] However, there is a great amount of evidence
    that most people remember a lot, even events before their birth,
    when they are in various altered states of consciousness, such as
    those induced by hypnosis, mediation, drugs such as LSD, or
    certain breathing exercises. Memories occurring in this way show
    that most of us have early memories and that we can retrieve
    them. For example, the psychologist David Chamberlain studies 10
    mother-child pairs in which the adult child consciously knew
    nothing about the details of its birth; yet under hypnosis _all_
    the children recalled many of those details. In the least
    accurate case the child remembered seventeen details, such as:
    instruments used, head or feet first, people present, etc.;
    thirteen of these were confirmed independently by the mother,
    four were incorrect. Another adult child remembered 24 birth
    details with no contradiction with the mother's account. Two
    daughters gave accurate descriptions of their mothers' hairstyles
    when they were born.[19]
       The psychiatrist Stanislov Grof provides an example of an
    independently verified pre-birth memory elicited under LSD when
    it was legal.[20]  A respected Buddhist meditation teacher, Jack
    Kornfield, reports that students who practice serious meditation
    often have experiences like this: "...suddenly I was one year
    old. I was back there with my spoon, banging on the table."[21]
    The FMSF's assertion that very early memories are virtually
    non-existent is another example of its ignorance and its bias:
    the FMSF seeks only to verify its beliefs; it ignores the volumes
    of evidence that contradict its position.

    Repressed memories are real.

       16. The FMSF also implies that there is no such thing as
    repressed memories.[22] They cite Freud[23] (without references)
    claiming that he felt "impulse and desire are repressed--not
    memories." But they ignore all the data about Vietnam vets, who
    often repressed memories of traumatic battles, memories they had
    to remember in order to get well. Many Holocaust survivors also
    repressed memories of atrocities, which only surfaced later.

    [Continued to part 2]
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