Memory Distortion and False Memory Creation

Types of Repressed Memory Cases At the heart of repressed memory cases is a fundamental set of assumptions: That people routinely banish traumatic experiences from consciousness because they are too horrifying to contemplate; that these forgotten experiences cannot be recalled by any normal process but only by special techniques; that these special techniques produce reliable recovery of memory; that before such recovery, these forgotten experiences cause miserable symptoms; that healing is possible only by digging out and reliving the forgotten experiences. In point of fact there is no cogent scientific support for this repression folklore, and and ample reason to believe that extraordinarily suggestive prolonged searches for hidden memories can be harmful. There are grounds to believe that such practices, while confined to a small minority of practitioners, involve large numbers of patients given the sheer number of patients who seek psychotherapy in any given year. This is not to say that people cannot forget horrible things that have happened to them; most certainly they can. But there is virtually no support for the idea that clients presenting for therapy routinely have extensive histories of abuse of which they are completely unaware. Yet an unfounded faith in the repressed memory ideology, has lead some clinicians to engage in practices that are risky if not dangerous in terms of their potential for creating false beliefs and memories. In numerous cases, patients have been encouraged towards litigation based upon these new-found recollections (Poole, Lindsay, Memon & Bull, 1995). Hundreds of civil plaintiffs have now taken advantage of new legislation and brought

suits in which they claim their memories resurfaced in therapy. A second wave of lawsuits has been brought by "retractors" who claim that they were led to believe they were sexually molested but now realize their memories are false. As of 1994, some 300 individuals had retracted their sex abuse allegations, some had sued their former therapists achieving six figure settlements or jury verdicts (Lindsay & Read, 1995). Invariably the process of therapy is on trial. The largest retractor verdict occurred in 1995 in a case against psychiatrist Diane Humenansky (deFiebe, 1995; Gustafson, 1995). Humenansky, a St. Paul psychiatrist, was accused of subjecting her patient to an increasingly suggestive and coercive program of mind- altering drugs, hypnosis, and threats designed to get her to remember abuse. The patient and her family were ultimately awarded over $2.6 million dollars, making this verdict the largest in the repressed memory domain to date for a retractor of sexual abuse allegations.

Psychological science on suggestibility Dr. Diane Humenansky testified repeatedly during her trial that she did not believe in false memories. She refused to acknowledge that anything she might have done could have led her patient to develop false recollections about the past, and to experience the devastation that such recollections caused. Yet in this case, expert witnesses brought to the table several forms of evidence to support the power of suggestion to create false memories. Converging evidence of the power of suggestion to produce false memories comes from the psychological literature on memory distortion, particularly that conducted over the last two decades, and supplemented by some new paradigms developed over the last few years. Misinformation studies In the last two decades, a body of research has been published showing that new, post- event information often becomes incorporated into memory, supplementing and altering a person's recollection. New "information" invades us, like a Trojan horse, precisely because we do not detect its influence. Understanding how we can become tricked by revised data about the past is central to answering questions about the role of suggestion in and out of psychotherapy that can lead to false memories of abuse. This body of research showing how memory can become skewed

when people assimilate new data utilizes a simple procedure. Participants witness a complex event, such as a simulated violent crime or automobile accident. Subsequently, half the participants receive new and misleading information about the event. The other half get no misinformation. Finally, all participants attempt to recall the original event. In virtually every study done using this paradigm, those who had not received the phony misinformation had more accurate memories. Large memory distortions have now been found in hundreds of studies, involving a wide variety of materials. People have recalled nonexistent broken glass and tape recorders, a clean- shaven man as having a mustache, straight hair as curly, and even something as large and conspicuous as a barn in a bucolic scene that contained no buildings at all. In short, misleading post-event information can alter a person's recollection in a powerful, even predictable manner. Many courtroom lawyers, political leaders, pollsters, and psychologists have understood this well. False childhood memories Several years ago I described the case of a 14 year old boy named Chris, who was led to believe, by his older brother Jim, that he had been lost in a shopping mall at about the age of five and ultimately rescued by an elderly person (Loftus, 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994).

Chris's experience provided the idea for a formal study in which people might be led to have childhood memories for events that never happened. The study 24 individuals who were asked to recall events that were supplied by a close relative ( Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). Three of the events were true, and one was a research-crafted false event about getting lost in a shopping mall, department store, or other public place. The subjects, who ranged in age from l8 to 53, thought they were taking part in a study of childhood memories. In phase l, they completed a booklet containing four short stories about events from their childhood provided by a parent, sibling or other older relative. Three events actually happened, and the fourth, always in the third position, was false. The events were described in a single paragraph. The false event was constructed from information provided by the relative who gave us details about a plausible shopping trip. The relative was asked to provide the following kinds of information: l) where the family would have shopped when the subject was about five years old; 2) which members of the family usually went along on shopping trips; 3) what kinds of stores might have attracted the subject's interest; and 4) verification that the subject had not been lost in a mall around the age of five. The false event was then crafted from this information. The false events always included the following elements about the subject: l) lost for an extended period of time, 2) crying, 3) lost in a mall or large department store at about the age of five, 4) found and aided by an elderly woman, 5) reunited with the family. Subjects completed the booklets by reading what their relative had told us about each event, and then writing what they remembered about each event.

If they did not remember the event, they were told to write, "I do not remember this." When the booklets were returned, subjects were called and scheduled for two interviews. These occurred approximately 1-2 weeks apart. We told the subjects we were interested in examining how much detail they could remember, and how their memories compared with those of their relative. The event paragraphs were not read to them verbatim, but rather bits of them were provided as retrieval cues. When the subject had recalled as much as possible, they were asked to rate the clarity of their memory for the event on a scale of one to ten, with one being not clear at all and ten being extremely clear. In all, 72 true events were presented to subjects, and they remembered something about 49 (or 68%) of these. This figure did not change from the initial report through the two follow up interviews. The rate of "remembering" the false event was lower. Seven of 24 subjects "remembered" the false event - either fully or partially - in the initial booklet, but in the follow- up interviews only 6 subjects (25%) remembered the event. There were some differences between the true memories and the false ones. For example, subjects used more words when describing their true memories, whether these memories were fully or only partially recalled. Also, the clarity ratings for the false memories tended to be lower than for true memories produced by those same subjects. Interestingly, there was a tendency for the clarity ratings of the false memories to rise from the first interview to the second. Our results show that people can be led to believe that entire events happened to them after explicit suggestions to that effect. We make no claims about the percentage of people who might be able to be misled in this way, only that these cases provide an existence proof for the phenomenon of false memory formation.

Dreams and false memories Some psychotherapists believe that dreams give insights into an unremembered traumatic past (Delaney, 1994; Renik, 1981), or that dream material reflects the emergence of childhood trauma memories breaking through unconscious barriers (Wolf & Alpert, 1991; Frederickson, 1992), or that dreams should be used as a resource for reconstructing early sexual abuse (Alpert, 1994). In fact, a review of the scientific evidence related to whether dreams replicate traumatic experience concluded that there is no solid support for this notion (Brenneis, 1994). Despite the lack of evidence, some therapists treat their patients' dreams as if this were the case, interpreting dream images as a reliable replication of past trauma. Such activities could be creating a problem for their patients in the following way. If therapists discuss a topic during a waking session, material about this topic may, as a consequence, get into the patient's dreams at night. When the dreams are discussed at the next waking session, and (mis)interpreted as if they are evidence of a traumatic past, the patient may come to falsely believe and misremember a past that never happened, except in the patient's dream. Numerous commentators have worried about the potential harm that can occur as a result of sexualized dream interpretation (e.g., Lindsay & Read, 1995). Can dream material be mistaken for reality? Guiliana Mazzoni and I recently reported on three experiments that show that after a subtle suggestion, subjects falsely recognized items from their dreams, and thought these items had been presented during the waking state (Mazzoni & Loftus, 1995). The procedure used in these studies involved three phases

Subjects studied a list of items on Day l. On Day 2, they received a false suggestion that some items from their previously reported dreams had been presented on the list. On Day 3, they tried to recall only what had occurred on the initial list. Subjects falsely recognized their dream items at a very high rate - sometimes as often as they accurately recognized true items. They reported that they genuinely "remembered" the dream items, as opposed to simply "knowing" that they had been previously presented. These findings, which suggest that dreams can sometimes be mistaken for reality. Dream material might be especially problematic in the hands of a therapist who discusses sexual abuse during the day (causing sexual material to appear in the patient's dreams at night) and then uses dream material as a "resource" to reconstruct supposed past childhood sexual abuse. The danger that these questionable activities might lead a patient to a false belief and memory that sexual abuse actually occurred is more than a passing risk.

Here is an excellent study from 2001 by Loftus. I quote this often in my lectures on memory.

Bugs Bunny Invades Disneyland

Pickrell and Loftus lined up a group of 120 persons and told them they were going to participate in an advertising evaluation program, one of those group meetings where you’re supposed to sit around and tell what works and why.

All of the participants had visited either Disneyland or Disney World. (The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABCNEWS.)

“The subjects thought we were working for Disney,” Pickrell says, but they weren’t. They just wanted to find out if they could toy with someone else’s memories.

The participants were divided into four groups, and asked to read a printed ad for Disneyland.

The first group read an ad about the theme park that made no mention of cartoon characters.

The second group read the same ad, but a 4-foot-tall cardboard cutout of Bugs Bunny was placed in the room.

The third group, which the researchers refer to as the “Bugs Group,” read a fake Disneyland ad featuring Bugs Bunny.

The fourth group got a double whammy: both the Bugs ad and the cardboard cutout.

After reading through the ad, which featured a picture of Bugs just outside the Magic Kingdom, the participants were asked whether they had met Bugs while on a visit to the theme park, and whether they had shaken his hand.

About one-third of the participants who had read the phony ad featuring Bugs said they either remembered, or at least knew, they had indeed met Bugs at Disneyland and shaken his hand. Or foot, as the case may be.

But here’s the rub. Bugs Bunny wouldn’t be caught dead at Disneyland. He belongs to Warner Brothers.

Measuring Memory’s Vulnerability

By contrast, only eight percent of the first group, and four percent of the second, thought they had met the Wascally Wabbit at Disneyland. The difference, the researchers say, was in the ads. The mere suggestion of Bugs invading the land of Mickey was enough to convince a surprisingly high percentage of the participants that they had met him there.

The specific tally for those with memory implants was 30 percent for the third group and 40 percent for the fourth.

I work with memory deprogramming using techniques similar to depth psychology in psychoanalytic practice.

I stress that we are dealing with perception and not necessarily reality. I will NEVER confirm a recovered memory as actually happening.

For example, when my daughter was still in diapers we went to the beach. She got severe diaper rash and the salt water and sand made it worse. I took her to the motor home and washed her private area, removing all the sand and applied lotion to assist the healing process.

Now roll forward 30 years and she recalls the memory. “My father touched my private parts and it hurt.”

While the beach event was real, the recalled memory fills in memory gaps creatively. Thankfully the recall problem did not happen in my situation and I only use this as an example.

Compound this situation with divorce, custody battles and bad therapists and you have a recipe for disaster. It has happened to many fathers.

Therapists often use hypnosis, guided imagery, muscle testing (kinesiology) and many other techniques in an attempt to assist in memory recall. They are all potentially very dangerous. I’ve cleaned up many therapist’s damages caused by bad techniques.

I once observed a man who had attempted suicide jump to the conclusion that maybe he had molested his daughter when she was young and that is why his wife and daughter rejected him. He was an inpatient in group therapy as a result of the suicide attempt and had just listened to a woman in the group emotionally recall how her uncle had molested her when she was young.

He was emotionally unstable, on medication and grasping for answers as to why his wife and daughter left him.

I worked with a 13 year old with psychological blindness since age two. When two years old, the boy saw his father beat his mother.

No one ever realized the origin event and the eye specialists could not find any reason for the blindness.

By finding the memory and removing the negative emotion attached to the memory, his sight returned instantly. I never told the boy or his mother what I had found as it would have complicated matters and discussions about the beating could potentially cause the blindness to return.

THey were at a family therapist when this was first remembered allegedly ive surmised that she has transferred trouble real or not real from her current marriage that and the weight of he being a psychologist /psychiatrist shes transferred as well maybe memories from other cases she has worked on !

Some people should not be in certain medical fields period transference can happen to anyone if exposed enough to it and you have emotional troubles at home !

Just common sense on my part i dont know and seems politicians won’t entertain anything but gospel truth from her because she’s a woman !

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