Hidden Memories: Fact or Fantasy? Rational Enquirer Vol 6, No. 2/3, Nov 93 By Barry L. Bey

Hidden Memories: Fact or Fantasy?

Rational Enquirer
Vol 6, No. 2/3, Nov 93
By Barry L. Beyerstein and James R. P. Ogloff, 
Department of Psychology, S.F.U.

It has been estimated that, annually in Canada, as  many as 20,000
children are sexually abused. Concern about child abuse  began to grow
in the early 1960s when the ground-breaking work of  Dr. Kempe and his
colleagues first came to the public's attention.  Since that time, every
jurisdiction in North America has adopted statutes  for mandatory
reporting of child abuse. Substantive, evidentiary,  and procedural
changes have been made to the legal system to improve  how the courts
and the justice system work with children who have  been abused. Social
workers, teachers, and medical staff have been  taught to look for
signs. Sadly, child abuse remains a pressing national  problem.

In the vast majority of cases of child abuse and child sexual abuse 
that are reported and result in prosecution the victims vividly remember
 the brutalities they endured (even if, for any of a number of
understandable  reasons, they choose not to make a public accusation for
a long time  thereafter). Like many Holocaust survivors, torture
victims, or those  who have witnessed gruesome deaths of loved ones,
these adult victims  of childhood abuse often wish they could forget the
horrible experiences  that intrude mercilessly on their everyday
thoughts. In contrast to  these cases where obsessive ruminations about
past traumas cannot  be put aside, a relatively new problem has recently
come to the fore.  It has begun to affect the legal system and has
piqued the curiosity  and concern of the media and the public. The issue
is that of allegedly  "hidden" or "repressed" memories of child abuse or
 child sexual abuse. In cases of this sort, the victim reports no
awareness  of the abuse until long after it supposedly occurred. Often,
this  newfound knowledge only surfaces in early or middle adulthood when
 recollection is triggered during therapy for other problems or after 
the individual has read one of a spate of "pop-psychology"  books on the
topic (e.g., Ellen Bass and Laura Davis' Courage  to Heal).
Only then does he or she suddenly become aware of the  traumatic
episodes. Such cases present a dilemma for the legal system  and they
have engendered heated controversy among memory researchers  as well as
psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals  who
work with victims of abuse.

Once again we are faced with the age old enigma of how to decide
whether  any memory is accurate or not. In cases of allegedly reinstated
hidden  memories, several additional difficulties arise. A scenario that
has  been reported to us several times is one where a client contacts a 
therapist seeking help for feelings of general unhappiness, depression, 
or anxiety, or for other problems of living. If the therapist happens 
to believe that ill-focused malaise of this sort is frequently due  to
childhood sexual abuse, this possibility might be suggested to  the
client who is likely to be in a vulnerable and suggestible state  at the
time. Given the usual ways that clients become paired with  a particular
therapist, it is unlikely that many would be aware in  advance of this
theoretical orientation on the part of the therapist  or that it is not
shared by all in the helping professions (some therapists  have acquired
a reputation for such leanings, however, and self-diagnosed  clients are
increasingly beginning to seek them out to validate their  suspicions).
The client who arrives with no inkling that he or she  could have been
abused may well reject the therapist's suggestion  at first, especially
in light of the realization of who the perpetrators  would need to have
been. In the topsy-turvey world of hidden memories  this refusal
actually becomes evidence for the hypothesized abuse  rather than a
reason to question it-- denial is considered further  proof that the
memories have been repressed. Several videotapes we  have seen of
therapists of this bent in action show that they can  be very insistent
indeed. Former clients who have contacted us tell  of concerted efforts
by their ex-therapists to convince them that  they must have been
molested and of how, in the process of counselling,  they came to
believe that they had been. They also recall their satisfaction  at the
time at finally arriving at an all-encompassing explanation  for their
despondency and having someone other than themselves or  "fate" to
blame, as well as having a target for the negative  flood of emotions
that ensues.

A variation on the theme, familiar to readers of The
Skeptical  Inquirer, is the related brand of therapist who is
inclined to  interpret psychological symptoms as evidence of alien
abduction. With  similar encouragements, alleged abductees can also
supply detailed  recollections of their capture, the extraterrestrials
who snatched  them, and the indignities they suffered. Interestingly,
the tales  abductees relate often have a theme of sexual violation to
them as  well. The belief that abductees have been rendered amnesic for
their  period of confinement and that this wall can only be breached by
specially-  trained counsellors who know what to look for sounds eerily
like the  received wisdom among those whose mission is to reveal hidden
memories  of child sexual abuse. If one has talked for any length of
time with  an alleged abductee, it is quite apparent that they fervently
believe  their stories. Unfortunately, obvious sincerity and commitment
to  an account are not particularly good indicators of its
believability.

It is likely that abductees did have an experience, just as they
describe  it, but this by itself does not prove that it occurred outside
of  the theatre of their own minds. Recent research on so-called
"fantasy-prone  personalities" has shown that there is a small
proportion of the  non-psychiatric population whose mental imagery is so
vivid and invasive  that they frequently generate compellingly real
subjective experiences  that are mixtures of real percepts and detailed
hallucinations. Because  they cope well enough in family, social, and
work settings, such individuals  rarely come to the attention of
psychiatrists or psychologists. They  seem quite normal to all outward
appearances. Fantasy-prone individuals  were only discovered because
they appeared in large numbers in a research  study that actively sought
those with the very highest degree of hypnotic  susceptibility.

An important difference between the alien abduction and child sexual
 abuse cases is that aliens, if they exist, are not close friends or 
family of the victims--and at any rate they are, at least for the  time
being, beyond the insufficiently long arm of the earthbound law.  This
difference makes the stakes much higher in the latter cases,  for both
the accuser and the accused. As one might expect, emotions  run very
high--not a situation well-suited to dispassionate search  for the
truth. This was quite evident recently when Harold Lief, a  psychiatrist
critical of the hidden memory concept, was shouted down  and prevented
from giving a scholarly address on the subject at McGill  University's
Department of Psychiatry. The angry demonstrators who  disrupted this
lecture were activists committed to helping victims  of sexual abuse.
They came equipped with party noisemakers to drown  out the proceedings.
This unruly mob refused even to hear the speaker's  evidence, accusing
him in advance of merely wanting to help perverts  escape justice. It
was even reported that death threats had been uttered.  The issue which
so often gets lost in this inflamed rhetoric is not  whether adults
sexually abuse children. Sadly, it happens. Rather  it is whether
coaxing out supposedly hidden memories from adults who  were previously
unaware of such abuse is a sound basis on which to  lay one of the most
serious charges that can be levelled against an  individual in our
society. To help us unravel such a thorny issue,  it would be well to
consider what the last hundred years of research  has taught us about
the nature of human memory.

Human Memory for Personal Histories

The veracity of autobiographical memories is a perennial problem in 
criminal and accident investigations, court proceedings, historical 
research, psychotherapy, and everyday life. Skeptical researchers  are
rarely surprised to find that the recollections of responsible, 
well-educated people who have no intent to deceive can still be
glaringly  inaccurate when they try to remember exactly what they saw
during  a UFO sighting or the precise details of a self-professed
psychic's  performance. On the other hand, as was demonstrated by the
testimony  of the Watergate witness, John Dean (when Richard Nixon's
tapes were  finally released), human memory is also capable of great
precision  and accuracy under the right conditions. Note, however, that
the events  Dean recounted were relatively recent and he never claimed
to have  been amnesic for them at any time. Generalizations about such
abilities  are made difficult by the fact that individuals vary greatly
in this  regard, as they do in athletic prowess or any other trait.
Given the  major penalties and payoffs that society apportions on the
basis of  believability of people's recollections, it is not surprising
that  the search for an understanding of what promotes accuracy or
failure  of memory has long attracted many of the best minds in
experimental  psychology.

Following the pioneering research of the Cambridge psychologist, Sir
Frederick Bartlett, in the early part of this century, experts have 
come to accept that human memory is more reconstructive than previously 
thought. I.e., memory is not simply a perfect echo of past experience. 
What seems to be an unadorned replay of past events (often complete 
with detailed visual imagery) has, in fact, a substantial inferential 
component which has been shown to be affected by cognitive biases, 
short-cuts in reasoning strategies, social and contextual processes, 
and even personality factors. Unfortunately, by mid-century, the
competing  "videotape" theory of memory came, temporarily, to overshadow
 Bartlett's more valid conceptualizations. This was largely due to 
misinterpretations and exaggerations of some dramatic demonstrations  by
the Montreal neurosurgeon, Wilder Penfield. Penfield found that  vivid,
almost hallucinatory memories can be elicited by stimulating  the
temporal lobes of patients' brains with weak electrical currents  during
brain surgery. While the results of this procedure made it  appear to
some that everything a person ever experiences might be  recorded in
minute detail in the brain (and thus be waiting to be  triggered by the
right stimulus), this interpretation has since given  way under a
barrage of logical as well as empirical attacks. Nonetheless,  holdovers
from Penfield's conception of memory continue to influence  the thinking
of those who espouse the notion of hidden memories. In  recent years, it
has been the work of Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues  at the
University of Washington that has done the most to cast doubt  on this
"store everything verbatim" school of memory and to  demonstrate the
superiority of Bartlett's reconstructive approach.

Since it is clearly impossible, even for the truly astonishing
capacities  of the human brain, to store every detail of a complex
situation,  memory must select and compress. Thus, it registers a few
salient  features of each episode, along with a label for what Bartlett
called  a "schema." A schema is a body of knowledge, acquired in the 
process of acculturation, that summarizes what typically occurs in 
events of various sorts. Which label is attached to the skeleton event 
stored in memory is a function of the meaning initially ascribed to  the
episode. Upon recall, the outline is "filled in" from  data contained in
the appropriate schema. Because these inferential  and reconstructive
processes are largely unconscious, this creative  aspect of memory
generally escapes our notice. Inasmuch as daily life  does include many
repetitious, role-governed situations, this way  of storing
autobiographical memories is economical of our limited  capacity to
handle information and, most often, leads to a sufficiently  accurate
account of what transpired. It can, however, also generate  egregious
errors on occasion, even among highly intelligent and honest 
individuals.

Potential sources of distorted memories have been discovered at all 
stages of memory processing. During the initial experience, one's 
beliefs, wishes, and expectations can direct attention toward certain 
features of the situation and away from others. This affects how the 
event is classified from the outset. Because this interpretation
influences  the label attached to the event in memory, it can bias the
selection  of the schema that will be engaged to flesh out any later
recollection.  Significant omissions or insertions can result. Errors
can also be  introduced at the recall stage when an interrogator's
leading questions  invite unsound inferences that seem to arise
spontaneously from the  recaller's own memory. These misinterpretations
can then feed back  into the system as this modified version of the
event re-enters memory  to become part of the "recollection" on
subsequent attempts.  Such tactics, known to stage magicians as "the
invited inference,"  are used very effectively in various mentalist
routines and are often  copied by charlatans who wish to impress people
with apparent psychic  powers.

Cryptomnesia

Confusions also arise from the fact that we frequently retain
factual  information while forgetting how and when it was learned. The
anomalous  memory phenomena known as paramnesia and cryptomnesia have
been studied  extensively by psychologists interested in personal
memories. They  contribute to many ostensibly paranormal experiences,
including the  occultists' old standby, deja vu. It is common for people
to experience  (during dreams, meditation, free association, daydreams,
or hypnosis,  for instance) detailed images of places and events that
they feel  certain they have never learned about or observed in person.
Because  they honestly cannot recall having been exposed to the
information,  they jump to the conclusion that it must have been fed to
them in  a supernatural way. The strong desire to believe in telepathy,
aliens,  or previous incarnations makes them seem more plausible sources
than  forgotten personal experiences or books, TV programs, or movies
seen  long ago. The BBC investigative reporter Melvin Harris presents a 
beautiful example of this in his book, Sorry--You've Been Duped.
 Jane Evans' "astonishing hypnotic remembrances" of her previous  life
in ancient France-- widely touted as some of the best-ever  evidence for
reincarnation--turned out to have an uncanny resemblance  to events in a
historical novel that was very popular at the time  she attended grammar
school. Evans' accounts contained a mixture of  accurate and inaccurate
depictions of the time and place that just  happened to parallel the
artistic licenses taken by the novelist.  Evans was thoroughly
convinced, as were the researchers who were avidly  seeking evidence for
reincarnation, that she was recalling true memories  of her previous
life.

The inadvisability of concluding that just because you can't recall 
learning about something, your present knowledge of it must have
supernatural  origins will be obvious from the following example. Ask
yourself,  "Where is the Eiffel Tower?" Most likely, you instantly
replied,  "Paris." Can you now recall when and from whom you first
learned  the site of this famous landmark? Chances are you cannot,
despite  the fact that you would have been willing to place a very large
wager  on the veracity of your recollection. This is an example of
"source  amnesia" and it demonstrates that factual information is
somehow  stored separately from the autobiographical data concerned with
how  we came to know it. In such cases, we know something but not how we
 acquired it.

It is also possible to "know" things in our personal histories  that
aren't so. CSICOP Executive Council member James Alcock relates  the
story of reminiscing with old college chums about a fracas in  a
waterfront bar that had occurred back in their undergraduate days.  At
some point, Alcock chimed in, "And then remember when...?",  only to be
met with stunned silence, followed by a friend's retort,  "But Jim, you
weren't there!" On reflection, Alcock realized  that he had heard this
story so many times at previous reunions with  his college buddies that
he had unconsciously "written himself  into" the stored scenario for
this event that he now realized  he could not possibly have witnessed in
person. He was amazed to find  that the "memory" of the brawl he dredged
up included vivid  visual images, complete with himself at the scene.

The late developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget described a similar
 experience. As an adult, he was sure that his earliest childhood memory
 was that of being rescued from a kidnapper by his brave nanny. Only 
many years later did the repentant nanny come to visit her former 
charge and confess that she had made up the story to avoid the censure 
of Jean's parents for bringing him home late. Piaget too had "memories,"
 complete with detailed visual images of the nonexistent attacker and 
his nanny's stalwart defence. Similar to Alcock's "memories"  of the
barroom melee, this event had become part of Piaget's family  history,
retold to the point that it acquired the status of a real  event in his
mind. It is phenomena such as these that continue to  make the study of
memory one of the most active areas of experimental  psychology.

Repressed Memories and Motivated Forgetting

Returning to the issue of "hidden memories," an intense controversy 
has surfaced concerning the concept of "repression" or motivated 
forgetting of traumatic events. Also known as "inhibition," 
"dissociation," or a kind of "defence mechanism,"  repression denotes
amnesia for certain distressing experiences, usually  without any
conscious effort to forget them. Believers in hidden memories  contend
that the reason there has been no recent awareness of the  abuse is that
the victim has repressed it to spare him- or herself  the pain of
reminiscence.

A heated debate exists in the professional literature concerning the
 very existence of repression. Those who accept the notion are largely 
therapists with a psychoanalytic (i.e., Freudian) bent. Experimental 
psychologists, by and large, tend to have more doubts about the idea  of
repression. They note, for instance, how many people fervently  wish
they could repress terrible scenes from their childhood. Even  among
those who accept the reality of repression, there are still 
disagreements about how extensive it is and what techniques, if any, 
might bring repressed memories to light. Various clinicians have
advocated  free-association, dream analysis, hypnosis, dissociative
drugs, and  guided imagery in a trance-like reverie as ways to revive
these hidden  memories. Critics contend that these procedures are as
likely to produce  fantasy and confabulations that feel like valid
recollections as they  are to expose true hidden memories.

Can Hypnosis or Related Techniques do the Trick?

Hypnosis researchers such as Ernest Hilgard, Martin Orne, Nicholas 
Spanos, and Robert Baker have shown numerous times how easy it is  to
produce pseudomemories in experimental subjects who will state  with
great conviction that the suggested events actually occurred.  Another
respected researcher, Kenneth Bowers, has shown that when  people are
required to identify previously seen objects in a group  that contains a
mixture of new and old items, hypnosis can slightly  improve their hit
rate in correctly identifying the previously-shown  stimuli. However, it
also raises the false alarm rate --i.e., hypnotized  subjects were also
more likely to label as repeats stimuli that they  had not been shown
before. Hypnosis, in general, is more likely to  raise the person's
confidence that his or her recollections are true  than the actual
probability of their being true.

There is a voluminous literature on so-called "demand
characteristics"  that shows that overt suggestions are not necessary to
create pseudomemories--hypnotic  subjects are adept at picking up and
complying with very subtle cues  as to what the hypnotist wants or
expects. Two of the worlds leading  hypnosis researchers, Martin Orne
and Nicholas Spanos, have become  convinced, in addition, that formal
hypnotic procedures are not required  to produce such compliance
effects. For instance, the Berkeley researcher,  Richard Ofshe, in an
article entitled Inadvertent Hypnosis During  Interrogation,
demonstrated how repeated suggestions by insistent  interrogators can
elicit admissions to non-existent crimes. The foregoing  kinds of
research support the contention that many of the techniques  used by
poorly trained therapists to ferret out possible histories  of abuse are
quite capable of producing what Orne has dubbed a "false  memory
syndrome." A foundation by that name has been founded by  Orne and
others who feel that at least some of the allegations based  on hidden
memory enhancement are being generated by sincere but deluded  clients
of questionably qualified therapists.

Predictably, The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) has become 
the lightning rod for victims' rights groups protesting that the
organization  is merely giving aid and comfort to those seeking to evade
punishment  for their actions. On a recent CBC radio program, the
foundation was  accused of being part of a well-funded right-wing
fascist conspiracy!  These critics tend to forget that, although members
of the FMSF do  say that accusations based on hidden memories should not
be granted  automatic credence just because they seem so real to the
percipient,  they also freely admit that they cannot rule out, in any
given case,  the possibility that abuse did take place. The point is
that there  is no royal road to the truth and in the current climate
that sometimes  verges on hysteria, we need to be reminded that the
possibility exists  for unfairly convicting the accused as well as for
denying justice  to the alleged victim. One of the researchers (not
connected with  the FMSF) who has demonstrated under controlled
conditions how unreliable  children's apparently heartfelt recollections
can be, Stephen Ceci  of Cornell University, refuses to testify as an
expert witness on  behalf of either the prosecution or the defence in
such cases because  he feels, quite rightly, that showing how inaccurate
memories can  be in no way speaks to the truth or falsity of any
particular accusation.

In an excellent article in the Fall, 1993 issue of The
Skeptical  Inquirer, Scott Lilienfeld details the shortcomings of
polygraphs,  "honesty tests," hypnosis and other techniques touted as
sure-fire  arbiters of the truth. As one might expect, none of these
quick fixes  lives up to its advance billing. Unfortunately, assessing
witness  credibility in the absence of corroborative evidence remains an
inexact  process. The dilemma is not helped by crackpot schemes such as
a recent  seminar, advertised for continuing education credit for
registered  psychologists, that offered to teach therapists to diagnose
repressed  memories of childhood abuse from clients' handwriting!

The time-honored rules of evidence and other due process
requirements  that have come down to us through English Common Law are
far from  perfect, but throwing them away because it is very hard to
prove certain  kinds of guilt is fraught with far greater perils in the
long run.  The old adage that it is better for a dozen guilty men to
walk free  than for a single innocent one to be convicted is in danger
of being  stood on its head in the rush to make amends for our culture's
belated  recognition of the problem of child sexual abuse. We do not
serve  the cause of justice by abandoning the demand for "proof beyond 
a reasonable doubt."

The Therapist's Burden

When apparent memories, elicited by the "enhancement" techniques 
discussed earlier, generate allegations of abuse suffered long ago,  but
for which there has been no awareness in the interim, the courts, 
clinicians, researchers and various advocacy groups are forced to 
wrestle with the ethics of acting on accusations based solely on this 
kind of evidence. This is especially so if the newly convinced victim 
initially entered psychotherapy to deal with different complaints  and
the therapist happens to have a strong commitment to the theory  that
early sexual abuse underlies many, if not most, adult psychological 
problems.

A further source of worry stems from the fact that many (but by no 
means all) practitioners who advocate uncritical acceptance of hidden 
memories are essentially self-taught counsellors with little formal 
training in psychology or psychiatry. In the time-honoured New Age 
tradition, many of them have "graduated" from a narrow apprenticeship 
in the one and only technique they know. "Watch one, do one, teach  one"
is their modus operandi. It is significant that those least  skeptical
of the hidden memory concept are often the least well informed  about
the relevant data in the scientific literature on human memory.  Be that
as it may, having talked to many of these counsellors, we  would be the
last to question their sincerity and their caring. They  empathize
deeply with their clients who are clearly suffering from  something and
who, on that basis alone, deserve our sympathy and our  help. The
question is not, "Should we try to help them rebuild  their lives?"--of
course we should. On the other hand, basic  fairness dictates that we
should demand reasonable confirmation before  conceding that their very
real malaise necessarily arises from past  sexual abuse for which
somebody deserves to be punished.

To muddy the waters further, there is often a considerable power
differential  between the accused and the accuser, and consciously or
not, the temptation  to bring down those in authority or to settle past
scores must play  a part in at least some accusations. In recent years,
allegations  of sexual abuse have been increasingly used, fairly or not,
as leverage  in child custody disputes. This has added to public
confusion over  just what the real incidence of abuse might be and fed
suspicion in  some quarters that many allegations are self-serving. The
recent mistrials  and acquittals in several cases involving daycare
workers accused  of ritually abusing children have revealed many shoddy
interviewing  practices on the part of overzealous investigators.
Moreover, certain  tenets of the radical feminist movement also dovetail
with the agenda  of the hidden memory camp to introduce another
explosive element into  the mix. Despite these reasons for caution,
however, it must be emphasized  yet again that sexual abuse and sexual
harassment do occur, more often  than many of us like to think. We must
be careful not to let legitimate  doubts about some accusations based
solely on supposedly reinstated  hidden memories lead us to discount
other accusations where large  amounts of time have not intervened, the
victims never had any difficulty  recalling their victimization, and
where, ideally, there would be  some corroborative evidence to bolster
the charges.

The Legal Climate

Traditionally, the justice system has been wary of accepting
unsupported  memories as evidence if the disputed events are remote in
time and/or  the recaller stands to gain from the recollections.
However, the tide  seems to have been turning of late. Increasingly,
criminal prosecutions  and civil cases have been allowed to proceed,
based solely on "recalled"  events that have not only been quite old but
which also surfaced only  after therapists had made concerted attempts
to "reveal" early  memories. The vast majority of Crown prosecutors are
conscientious  professionals who want to do the right thing. Many have
contacted  us seeking guidance--they are caught in an unenviable squeeze
between  alleged victims of the hidden memory type, clamoring for
prosecution  of their accused molesters, and the best traditions of
their profession  that say one does not lay extremely serious charges
without sufficient  evidence. Though the public does see some
prosecutions that should  never have gone to court, we do not see the
larger number that prosecutors  decline to pursue.

The admission that mental health professionals, the media, and the 
public have been unconscionably tardy in acknowledging that sexual  and
other abuse of youngsters is more prevalent than any of us wanted  to
believe has prompted a rebound and with it a growing public willingness 
to credit, uncritically, any accusation based on hidden memories.  Some
experts think, though, that the incidence of abuse, tragic as  it is,
has come to be exaggerated, and that the pendulum has swung  from undue
skepticism in the past all the way to today's overly credulous 
acceptance of allegations based on uncorroborated hidden memories.  In
other words, their worry is that the unfairness may have shifted  from
that of allowing perpetrators to go unpunished and their victims  to be
further victimized to the other extreme where an increasing  number of
innocent people are being denounced by sincere but mistaken  accusers.

A Proposed Conference

The Psychology Department at Simon Fraser University has proposed  a
symposium that will assemble a group of noted experts to investigate 
the scholarly and practical issues raised by the hidden memory
controversy.  Several of the best researchers in relevant fields have
already expressed  an interest in participating if money can be found to
stage the conference.  The authors of this article are among the program
planners; they have  raised some of the necessary funds and are awaiting
the outcome of  other pending requests. If they are successful, the
conference will  most likely be held in March of 1994. Part of the
proceedings will  be academic papers and discussions, for which,
unfortunately, there  will have to be a registration fee and perhaps
some restriction on  admission, based on professional credentials, in
order to allow for  fruitful discussions among the experts. Other parts
of the conference  will be open to the public and a serious effort will
be made to give  advocacy groups on all sides an opportunity to present
their case.  In this way, we hope to minimize the likelihood of another
debacle  such as the recent near riot at McGill's Psychiatry Department.

The SFU program intends to place the various positions in context 
by beginning with authorities on the basic mechanisms of memory and  on
autobiographical memory and eyewitness testimony. This will be  followed
by specialists in the ethical and legal implications of this  research.
In addition, the organizers intend to invite presentations  from
clinicians experienced in dealing with abuse victims who will  discuss
how they assess the believability of accusations of abuse  that arise
during psychotherapy. They will interact with academic  researchers
interested in areas such as hypnosis and social demand  characteristics.
And finally, advocacy groups on both sides of the  controversy will be
allowed to interact with the invited experts--i.e.,  spokespersons for
those who believe that "enhancement" reliably  exposes real abuse, and
for those who doubt this is possible. Responsible  and fair-minded
advocates will be sought to represent the views of  the allegedly abused
and well as those claiming they were falsely  accused. As mentioned
above, supporters of the latter argue that at  least some accusations
are derived from flawed methods that can produce  a "false memory
syndrome." They assert that such illusory  but sincerely believed
"memories" frequently result in undeserved  loss of reputations, family
relationships, friendships, and livelihoods.  Their opponents, on the
other hand, accuse them of providing shelter  for felons.

Aid and Comfort to the Abusers?

The organizers of the proposed symposium are well aware of the
trauma  that surrounds child abuse and child sexual abuse. Obviously,
they  do not wish to compound the suffering of those who have been
mistreated.  Rather, their intention is to examine, in an objective and
scholarly  forum, the theoretical, practical, legal, and ethical issues
raised  by the hidden memory controversy. The sponsors wish to restrict
discussion  to cases where the claimant professed no recollection of
maltreatment  until memory enhancement was attempted. They agree that
all accusations  of sexual abuse should be thoroughly investigated,
first by competent  clinicians working with the accuser and, if
indicated, by the best  methods of police procedure and forensic
science. The actual incidence  of such molestations is a matter for
careful research--it is not  the intention of this symposium to question
a priori whether popular  estimates accurately reflect the real
prevalence.

The organizers believe that, ultimately, it is in the best interests
 of real survivors of abuse for the hidden memory issue to be explored 
dispassionately and in detail. It would be most unfortunate for real 
victims if the growing public awareness of some demonstrably false 
accusations and of the existence of a false memory syndrome were to 
engender another backlash that would hinder their efforts to achieve 
justice and to alleviate their suffering. There is a danger that,  left
exclusively to debate in the media, the high academic credentials  of
those who can demonstrate that false memories are possible and  the
questionable behaviour of some therapists of the opposite persuasion 
will lead the public to conclude, quite unfairly, that most accusations 
of child molestation are bogus. It is also hoped that out of the
conference  will come a greater public understanding and compassion for
those  who feel, even if mistakenly, that they were victims of abuse.
Like  so many of us, they are searching for solutions to their very real
 unhappiness. Sexual abuse has become a trendy explanation for all 
sorts of ills and these people should not be castigated if the
suggestion  rings true for them, even if it is not. If, in trying to
spare other  innocent parties the horrors of false accusation, we deny
these troubled  souls this rationale and course of action, we owe them
no less compassionate  and competent help to discover and deal with the
real causes of their  distress. It is our hope that the proposed
symposium will produce  a reliable guide for researchers, practitioners,
the media, and policy  makers who must deal with this pressing social
issue.