Angela: >'repressed memories', which is to say that term that comes into being >as a juridical proof of a crime, is of course, rubbish, and for many >of the reasons that freud pointed out: namely, that rememberances are >always fantastic rememberances, or at the very least tainted, and >would hardly consitute proof in the juridical sense. The Observer June 8, 1997, Sunday THE WEEK IN REVIEWS: BOOKS: CALL IN THE FREUD SQUAD By Anthony Clare There is no more bitter dispute in the field of mental health than that about 'false' memories. What intensifies the bitterness is that at its core is the stomach-churning issue of child sexual abuse. Those whose memories are challenged include many patients alleging serious sexual abuse at the hands of parents, siblings and guardians. Those challenging retrieved memories of abuse include parents and relatives accused of CSA, some innocent, some almost certainly guilty. There are those who insist that some traumatic experiences are so psychologically destructive that the sufferer, consciously or not, 'represses' them and lives a life seemingly indifferent to them unless, usually with the help of a sympathetic therapist, the memories are unearthed. Others argue with equal vehemence that there is no such thing as 'repressed' memory, that it is yet another spurious Freudian dogma, and that therapists use questionable methods of interrogation to suggest and insert false memories that are the allegedly buried ones. At the heart of the controversy is a scientific question can the mind completely and involuntarily pack in the unconscious memories of repeated traumatic events and recover them with accuracy and in detail many years later? A formidable protagonist in this battle is Frederick Crews, an emeritus professor not of psychology or psychiatry, but of English. In common with many literary academics in the postwar years, Crews was, as he describes himself, 'a one-time Freudian' who has since seen the light. In 1993, he published an article, 'The Unknown Freud', in the New York Review of Books, in which he argued that the founder of psychoanalysis was 'a saturnine self-dramatiser' who showed a cavalier disdain for facts, invariably preferred an arcane explanation to an obvious one, brazenly interfered with the marriage of a patient in order to get his hands on an heiress's money, doctored his data and manipulated his clients, and who, in the words of an American psychoanalyst trained by Freud, 'would wait until he found an association that would fit his scheme of interpretation and pick it up like a detective at a line-up who waits until he sees his man'. In that same article, Crews studied several Freudian case histories, and concluded that Freud did not elicit repressed memories from his patients, but constructed them and proceeded to create a therapeutic arrangement in which these 'repressed' memories were uncovered. As Allen Esterson reminds us, in his powerful book Seductive Mirage, the controversy over Freud's seduction theory has tended to focus on whether the accusatory tales of childhood sexual abuse recounted by his patients were believable. Jeffrey Masson held that the stories were true and that Freud showed a failure of nerve in renouncing them. Peter Gay asserts that the stories were false and that Freud had been taken in by his own patients. But, argued Crews, drawing heavily on Esterson, both parties have missed the point. The question is not whether the stories are true but, rather, what stories. Freud asserted that 'almost all my women patients told me they had been seduced by their father'. He later decided such revelations were fantasies. His papers, however, revealed that before they came to analysis, these women knew nothing about such events until he suggested them. Freud described how he did it: 'Only the strongest compulsion of the treatment can induce them to embark on a reproduction of them.' Then, as Esterson describes it: 'Having decided that his own constructions (about childhood sexual abuse) are untrue, he concludes that they are not genuine occurrences, but fantasies of his patients.' Crews concludes that the coercive tactics by which Freud tried to win his patients' agreement to his own theory-driven surmises about their histories 'rendered him chief begetter of contemporary 'false memory syndrome'.' The essay, 'The Unknown Freud', together with the follow-up 'The Revenge of the Repressed', which also appeared in the New York Review of Books, are both contained in this book, and alone would make it worth a read. But what makes the book mandatory for anyone interested not just in the brutal skirmish over repressed memory but in the wider war over the status of psychoanalysis is that Crews has included substantial excerpts from one of the largest postbags of correspondence that any article in that literary journal has provoked. His assaults on psychoanalysis and its founder stirred passionate controversy. Here, luminaries of the psychoanalytic world lock horns with Crews, challenging his dismissal of the therapeutic bankruptcy of psychoanalysis and contesting his allegations of dishonesty against Freud. Several years ago, the British Psychological Society produced its Report on Recovered Memories, summarising the views of the society's 810 members who had responded to a questionnaire on the subject. The report came down on the side of recovered memories, concluding that complete or partial memory loss is an oft-reported consequence of experiencing certain kinds of psychological trauma, including childhood sexual abuse, and that such memories may be recovered within or independently of therapy. 'Memory recovery,' the report added, 'is reported by highly experienced and well-qualified therapists well aware of the dangers of inappropriate suggestion and interpretation.' The report did admit that therapists could create in their clients false memories of childhood sexual abuse, but felt there was no reliable evidence that this was a widespread phenomenon in the UK. Crews, however, challenges the wisdom of relying on what therapists believe derives from 'clinical experience' to sustain the view that 'the mind can shield itself from ugly experiences, thoughts or feelings by relegating them to a special 'timeless' region where they indefinitely retain a symptom-producing virulence'. He insists that only properly conducted scientific research can clarify the picture. His pugnacious and sturdy views have led critics to accuse him of arguing that there is no such thing as childhood sexual abuse. He rebuts the charge, but admits he is highly dubious of the notion of repressed memory. Memories can disappear because of factors other than repression. Memories can fade with time and, more problematically, the mind can readily incorporate post-event information. To forget is not the same as to repress. But the most difficult problem relates to the power of suggestion. Crews notes with despair the advice given, to a woman led to suspect early molestation, by the author of an influential and best-selling book in this area, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse: 'You may be convinced that your disbelief is a rational questioning of the reality versus the unreality of your memories, but it is partially a misguided attempt to repress the memories again.' Given such an approach, how can one put much faith in the independence and objectivity of therapists asked to give an opinion on whether repressed memories exist? Crews argues that the whole repressed memory controversy is the logical consequence of the inability of therapists, mainly of a psychoanalytic persuasion, to accept that the theory of repression is just that, a theory, still awaiting scientific corroboration. He is no doubt correct, but that is not the whole story. Many clinicians, including myself, remain sceptical concerning repressed memories but are only too conscious of our history and the distasteful fact that, until recently, we paid little attention to the possibilities of childhood sexual abuse and remained relatively indifferent to its prevalence, presentation and consequences. While most of us accept that survivors of CSA recall their trauma with little difficulty, we cannot completely dismiss the possibility that, for some, the catastrophic nature of the event is so appalling that they shut out all recollections and in that sense repress. But there is some common ground in the debate. There is, for example, agreement that false memories can occur, that most people can remember their abuse and that the only reliable way to distinguish between true and false memories is by independent external corroboration. Otherwise, the battle continues. This book is a stylishly written and persuasive summary of the state of the argument. © 1999, LEXIS®-NEXIS®, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
