Repressed memories of childhood trauma: could some of them be suggested?

GLORIA GRADY is the child of devil-worshippers. Around an altar in their home, her family would don black robes and perform Satanic rituals led by her father, a Baptist minister. Grady's father raped her repeatedly from the time she was 10 until she was in college, and her mother, brother, and grandfather sexually abused her. She was a "breeder" for the cult, providing them with aborted fetuses, and even an incestuous child when she was 14. The child was tossed into a fire as a sacrificial devil-offering. Now in her 30s, Grady has vivid memories of these childhood event, but, as reported in D Magazine (October, 1991), there is no evidence that any of these memories are true.

Grady didn't have these memories until she was about 27, shortly after she began "Christian counseling" at a Dallas-area clinic to grapple with what had been a lifelong weight problem. After an intensive hospitalization, she continued with weekly individual and group counseling. At first, her therapist suggested that she write down all the bad things that had happened in her life. A friend says Grady's list originally had rather benign entries, like the time her parents refused to let her square dance as a first-grader. Eventually, however, Grady came to remember incidents that were far worse. She began to have horrifying flashbacks, claiming that her father sexually abused her. With ensuing therapy sessions, she remembered more of these previously "repressed" memories, transforming her model Baptist family into a cult of child-eating Satanic ritualistic monsters. Her accusations left virtually no one in her family unaccused except a favorite aunt.

Grady's parents denied all the allegations. Their attempts to intervene directly were unsuccessful, so they enlisted the aunt's help. When the group attempted to visit Grady at a halfway house, an altercation ensued and the police eventually ordered the relatives to leave. Shortly afterwards, the District Attorney's office served the family with papers requesting a protective order to prohibit any contact with Grady.

At the hearing, Grady's charges were refuted by other evidence. Her gynecological records revealed no indication of any sexual activity, let alone abortion or childbirth, during the period of alleged systematic rape. Grady remembered her mother hitting her so hard that she broke her collarbone; her orthopedic records showed the break to be the result of a spill in her walker as a nine-month-old child. Finally, photographs of Grady taken a few days before she supposedly gave birth showed that, although overweight, she most certainly was not pregnant.

Her therapist never testified, because of what Grady said was a joint agreement to end the relationship just prior to trial. Ultimately, the protective order request was turned down for lack of evidence, but Grady and her parents have not seen each other since. Most important, there still is no evidence that her memories are real.

Gloria Grady's is only one instance of litigation involving repressed memories for childhood abuse. At age 28, Eileen Franklin accused her father of murdering her best friend 20 years earlier. She claimed to have flashbacks of the murder when looking at her own five-year-old daughter. Franklin's recollection changed over time to maintain consistency with what was known to be true and offered nothing in the way of new proof. Her father was tried and convicted of the murder. The verdict was based solely on Eileen Franklin's memory.

Repressed memories are not just an experience of ordinary people; many famous individuals are going public with their own stories. Actress Roseanne Arnold made the cover of People magazine with her recollections of sexual abuse. Arnold said that, while in therapy, she began to recover memories of her mother abusing her from infancy to the time she was about six or seven years old. Three months earlier, former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur appeared in the same magazine, claiming to have repressed memories of sexual abuse by her father until she was 24 and he had died. Indeed, the phenomenon seems so widespread among the rich and famous that a few sessions with a therapist to recover lost childhood memories may become the 1990s version of checking into the Betty Ford Clinic.

Childhood sexual abuse is a genuine, horrendous problem by even the most conservative estimates. For a long time in our society, the general abuse and neglect of children virtually was ignored, or thought of as "undefined" in the way that it was impossible for a husband to rape his wife. In Massachusetts, it became illegal to abuse an animal before it was against the law to abuse a child. Enormous progress has been made in forcing society to recognize the reality of child abuse.

Perhaps previous generations have left a legacy of collective national guilt, because the reality of childhood sexual abuse was ignored for so long. Now, some are wondering if the pendulum hasn't swung too far in the direction of seeing sexual abuse everywhere. When memories are absent for decades, some therapists are insistent that sexual abuse must have occurred. They propose that the client is in "denial" or has otherwise "split off" from the pain of the incident, and thus can not remember anything. These therapists maintain that they can use a variety of strategies to help unearth the lost memories they see as a necessary step for resolving the pain and imbalance the client has carried forward to the present.

On the other hand, people are wondering whether these unburied memories could have arisen in some other way--say from the suggestions of therapists, books, and other sources. This is the repressed memory controversy.

Issues

Do we have the right to question the accuracy of these stories? Some psychologists think we do, focusing their criticism on the slippery concept of repression. David Holmes examined 60 years of research and could not find one scientific study showing that memories can be repressed and then unearthed in their pristine state. He described most of the psychological literature on repression as impressionistic, anecdotal, and speculative. In other words, scientists rely on the rigor of the scientific method to produce objective data and minimize interpretive bias. Yet, Holmes found no controlled-study laboratory support for the concept of repression. He suggested, only half jokingly, that any use of the concept be accompanied by a statement: "Warning. The concept of repression has not been validated with experimental research and its use may be hazardous to the accurate interpretation of clinical behavior."

Other studies purporting to document repressed memories are open to multiple interpretations. In 1993, researchers John Briere and Jon Conte surveyed 450 adults who had reported sexual abuse histories in therapy. The latter were asked if there ever was a time when they could not remember the specific incident of abuse. Approximately 60% of them said yes, and the researchers concluded that amnesia for abuse is a common occurrence. However, the fact that 60% of respondents now remember something that at one time they could not is no guarantee the memories were repressed or that what they now report reflects a genuine occurrence.

Nevertheless, many therapists embrace the concept of repressed memories and accept their clients' stories without question. In-depth interviews of clinicians who had seen at least one repressed memory case revealed that the vast majority (81%) usually believe their clients' claims. "I have no reason not to believe them," one therapist said. Another maintained, "If a woman said it happened, it happened." More than two-thirds of those surveyed believed it was not the therapist's job to determine whether a memory is authentic or inauthentic. Such a position is unsurprising, because one of the long-held tenets of psychotherapy is that people construct their own reality.

In one sense, "we construct our own reality" is a philosophical puzzle, but in the 1990s it is a clue to the upsurge in repressed memory cases. Could a therapist's assumptions, biases, questions, or comments play a role in the construction of false repressed memories for earlier abuse? Several psychologists believe the answer is yes.

Consider how some clients initially enter therapy. They do not typically begin group or individual sessions because they had a spontaneous flashback the day before; instead, the clinician tends to use a patient's symptoms (e.g., depression, lack of interest in sex) to approach the course of therapy. Psychologists usually subscribe to a particular philosophy, and these biases influence the nature of the process. A therapist who believes in the concept of repressed memories will be more likely to search for one. This is an example of the more general phenomenon social scientists call "bias confirmation."

What kinds of symptoms cause a therapist to suspect repressed childhood sexual abuse? Therapist Karen Ratican offers a checklist of 65 symptoms in 11 categories, ranging from "feeling down or blah most of the time" and "feelings of inadequacy/lack of self-confidence" to "sexualizes all relationships." The symptoms are weighted so that certain ones are "somewhat more indicative of sexual abuse history," others are "highly indicative of sexual abuse history," and some are not weighted at all. Suppose a hypothetical client, Rhonda, demonstrated only the weighted behaviors representative of all 11 categories. Rhonda is having suicidal thoughts; she feels worthless, isolated, and different; and she is excessively guilty and frequently angry for no apparent reason. Furthermore, she is afraid of being alone, has nightmares, gets-headaches, and tends to see sex as separate from affection and intimacy. She feels cut off from part of herself and does not remember pieces of her childhood. Based on this cluster of symptoms, if her therapist is using this particular 65-item checklist, Rhonda virtually is assured of being viewed as repressing sexual abuse memories.

How many people will read the list of Rhonda's characteristics and see themselves represented in some way? Indeed, apart from the suicidal thoughts and attempts, the remaining symptoms could describe any generic adjustment disorder--or, for that matter, any random 18-year-old college student. Therapists who conclude on the basis of a constellation of symptoms that a client is a victim of childhood sexual abuse are committing a logical error.

Suppose you are put in a room with a group of women, one of whom is Rhonda. You are told that 20% of them had experienced childhood sexual abuse. Of these 20%, half are repressing their memories of the experience. The remaining 80% never experienced childhood sexual abuse, but do have some other personal problems--some recently are divorced, others have eating disorders, and some are young and having trouble adjusting to college life. You do not know any of the women personally, thus do not know who belongs in what particular category.

If one woman, Andrea, is selected at random, what is the likelihood that she has a history of sexual abuse? With no other information, you are forced to make your guess on the basis of prior probability, so you say 20%. The likelihood that Andrea is repressing memories for the experience is even less, around 10%.

Now consider Rhonda's case. In this instance, you have some evidence on which you might choose to base your conclusions. On the basis of Rhonda's symptoms, which of the following is more likely: she is experiencing some type of adjustment disorder or is experiencing some type of adjustment disorder because she is repressing memories of childhood sexual abuse?

Your answer should be the same as with Andrea--the likelihood that Rhonda is a victim of sexual abuse is 20%; that of repression of the experience, 10%. Because Rhonda's symptoms actually apply to all the women in the room, they are essentially worthless as evidence of any particular subcategory of disorder.

This thought experiment is based on a 1973 study by research psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Instead of using a group of people with some type of psychological disorder, they utilized a mix that in some cases was 70 engineers and 30 lawyers; in others, it was reversed to 70 lawyers and 30 engineers. In the absence of any information, people tended to guess correctly that the prior probability of a random person's occupation was equal to the base rate of the sample--i.e., a 70% chance that the person is a lawyer for the latter sample. However, when people were given a brief, but ambiguous, description of Dick, a popular and ambitious 30-year-old, they tended to guess that there was a 50-50 chance he was a lawyer. Kahneman and Tversky concluded that, when people are given no information, they correctly use prior probabilities, but when they are given worthless data, they completely ignore the prior probabilities when they guessed.

The particular bias of the therapist probably is manifested most directly through questions and comments. One, who has treated more than 1,500 incest victims, openly discusses her method of approaching clients: "You know, in my experience, a lot of people who are struggling with many of the same problems you are have often had some kind of really painful things happen to them as kids--maybe they were beaten or molested. And I wonder if anything like that ever happened to you?" Other clinicians claim to know of therapists who say, "Your symptoms sound like you've been abused when you were a child. What can you tell me about that?" Or worse, "You sound to--me like the sort of person who must have been sexually abused. Tell me what that bastard did to you."

Therapists can "make" clients remember

What is to be done with the client who does not remember being sexually abused as a child? Well, that client is in "denial," repressing the memories, or has dissociated from the traumatic experience as a child so that the events never actually were recorded. In such cases, therapists have ways of "making" clients talk. Therapist Karen Olio recommends: "When the client does not remember what happened to her, the therapist's encouragement to ~guess' or ~tell a story' will help the survivor regain access to the lost material." She goes on to describe a client who suspected sexual abuse, but had no memories of it. The client had become extremely anxious at a social gathering in the presence of a three-year-old girl. She had no idea why she was upset except she wanted the little girl to keep her dress down. When encouraged in therapy to tell a story about what was going to happen to the little girl, the client ultimately related with tears and trembling one of the first memories of her own abuse. She used the story to "bypass her cognitive inhibitions and express the content of the memory." Later, she "integrated the awareness that she was indeed the little girl in the story."

Even if the therapist does not encourage the client to guess or tell a story, it sometimes get told in the form of dreams. One of the hallmarks of Freudian psychoanalytic theory is that day residue gets into the dreams at night. Thus, if there were incest occurring during the day, it would not be surprising to see that dreams of incest might result. However, in classic Freudian theory, literal translations from daily activities to dreams are too painful and therefore unlikely to occur. Instead, dreams are filled with symbols that represent more painful underlying issues. A 1989 book, Reclaiming Our Lives: Hope for Adult Survivors of Incest, describes a woman with "repressed memories" of incest who reported a dream about watching a little girl ice skate on a frozen river. In the dream, the woman tried desperately to warn the child that monsters and snakes were making their way through the ice to devour her. Although frightened, the woman was powerless and could not warn the innocent child. A few days later, the client began remembering incest from her childhood. Knowing she had "a trusted relationship with a therapist and a survivor's group that would understand and accept her, " the memories began to flow.

Once they assert that some things symbolize or represent other things, therapists have free reign to define just what represents what. Based on somewhat dubious definitions, a host of virtually unlimited interpretations can be made from any dream.

Another source for such suggestions in therapy can be found in client accounts of what happened to them. Clients have reported that a therapist has suggested that childhood abuse was the cause of their current distress, but they have no memories. One woman wrote from Oregon: ". Three years ago, I began individual therapy to deal with symptoms which included depression and anxiety. Within a few months, my therapist suggested that the cause of my emotional distress could be a history of childhood sexual abuse. Since that time, he has become more and more certain of his diagnosis . . . I have no direct memories of this abuse . . . . The question I can't get past is how something so terrible could have happened to me without me remembering anything. For the past two years I have done little else but try to remember. I've tried self-hypnosis and light trance work with my therapist. And I even traveled to childhood homes . . . . in an attempt to trigger memories . . . ."

It is easy to find published accounts that describe the emergence of memories in therapy as well as the techniques therapists have used to uncover those memories. One, written under the pseudonym of Jill Morgan, told of a series of horrifying memories of abuse by her father. He raped her when she was four years old, again at age nine, at 13, for seven straight days and nights at 15, and for the final time at 18. For the next several years, all misery was withheld from conscious memory; then, at 29, she was helped to remember in therapy: "Through hypnosis and age regression, a skilled therapist gave me back my memory." The involvement of hypnosis and age regression prompt the natural inquiry into whether these techniques produce authentic memories. The evidence points the other way. There is extensive literature seriously questioning the reliability of hypnotically enhanced memory in general and hypnotic age regression in particular. With the latter, men and women have been known to recall being abducted by aliens aboard exotic spacecraft and other forgotten events!

Do researchers have any evidence that memories actually can be created? There are nearly 20 years of data on the creation of false memories though exposure to misleading information. On the basis of an experimenter's suggestions after an event has occurred, people have remembered seeing nonexistent broken glass, a clean-shaven man as having a mustache, and even something as large and conspicuous as a barn in a pastoral scene where there were no buildings at all. These memory-distortion researchers have theorized that misleading suggestions can influence, add to, and change a person's recollection of an episode.

Yet, is it possible to make people believe that an entire traumatic event occurred in their own lives when the event never happened? Elizabeth Loftus and colleagues have shown that, on the suggestion of a trusted family member, individuals can be made to remember childhood incidents that never took place. Jim Coan, chief research assistant on the project, convinced his younger brother Chris that he had been lost at age five in a shopping mall one day when out with his mother and brother. Jim asked Chris if he remembered being lost in the Spokane Mall when he was about five and having been found by a tall older man wearing a flannel shirt. Both Jim and his mother say the incident never happened, but Chris began to remember the episode over the course of the next five days. Each day, he recalled more and more of the incident that never was. When he finally was told of the true purpose of the experiment, he still clung to his false memory. "Really? I thought I remembered being lost . . . and looking around for you guys. I do remember that. And then crying, and Mom coming up and saying, ~Where were you? Don't you . . . Don't you ever do that again.

Of course, the fact that Chris had remembered a traumatic episode that never occurred does not prove unburied repressed memories are false. Nevertheless, the fact that a memory could be created and recounted with such detail and vividness does suggest that these characteristics alone are not indicators of authenticity. Furthermore, this type of study is important because it demonstrates a manner in which false memories can be created on the basis of the suggestions of a trusted other.

Sympathetic therapists like to argue that the repressed-memory controversy has been created by pedagogic professors who have no sense of the issue as having a human face. On the contrary, when these trauma memories are accepted uncritically by therapists, social workers, police officers, and attorneys in the absence of any corroborating evidence, the result is the wholesale destruction of families. The ultimate tragedy is that society will begin to disbelieve the cases of genuine abuse that need its vigilance.

Dr. Garry currently is doing postdoctoral psychology training at the University of Washington, Seattle, sponsored by the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Dr. Loftus is professor of psychology and adjunct professor of law, University of Washington.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Society for the Advancement of Education
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