TIPsters....<sigh> I'm so tired of hearing this little psychology
Urban Myth. I was doing my postdoc with Beth Loftus when this drama
started--and so every once in a while someone still emails me with
this rumour and says "ooooh, tell me what really happened!" The thing
is, what really happened is that nothing happened. About the recent
post: by now you know that the link for fmsf.net directs you to a
propaganda site and is obviously designed to capture (and then
intimidate) people who are looking for the FMSF and don't know the
correct URL. Anyway, I managed to find this editorial that appeared
in Psych Today. Apologies if you've already seen it or if someone has
posted it before.
----
Psychology Today
page 6, May/June, 1996
________________________________
DISPATCH FROM THE MEMORY WAR
As we were going to press, Contributing Editor Jill Neimark sent this
important note:
I've been covering the subject of memory for this
magazine since 1994, when I profiled John Mack, M.D., the Harvard
psychiatrist who has "helped" hundreds of individuals recover buried
memories of alien abduction. You'd think that memory would be the
stuff of dry academia, but it turns out to be one of the most
illuminating and terrifying stories of our time.
The most recent burst of gunfire was sent in my direction, though its
real target was Elizabeth Loftus, the eminent University of Washington
psychologist whom I profiled in the January/February 1996 issue. Her
work is dedicated to demonstrating the inherent malleability of
memory, its distortions, its suggestibility. She has testified on just
that point as an expert witness in some infamous trials of the 80s and
90s. It turns out that's a dangerous line of work, for it flies in the
face of the recovered memory movement, which has allied itself with
feminism and child abuse.
If anyone should be revered by feminists and therapists, it is Loftus,
a brilliant woman who has put herself on the firing line with decades
of ingenious and sound research. But instead she is violently hated by
some women and psychotherapists.
Lately they've been trying to destroy her reputation, actually filing
ethics complaints alleging scientific misconduct, threatening to sue
an organization that is bringing her to speak, and using a few
sentences from my article to try and censure her publicly. An
astounding recent posting on the Internet gives a feel for the vitriol
behind this. It came from a self-proclaimed "insider" at the
University of Maryland who claimed he had copies of 11 confidential
letters within the American Psychological Association, alerted readers
to two current ethics complaints against Loftus, and blasted a
rallying call: "If you or anyone you know has been on the wrong end of
Loftus' testimony, you or your friend should pin their courage to the
sticking place and file an ethics complaint against Loftus....This
window of opportunity won't last forever....Let's go gang!"
Here's what happened: On January 16, Loftus resigned from the APA,
noting that it had moved "disturbingly far from scientific thinking."
Her resignation came after completing a report for a special task
force on recovered memory. Its six psychologists had become so
polarized -- along exactly the same fault lines as the culture at
large -- that they produced two separate reports.
By a most bizarre coincidence, two women at opposite ends of the
country filed formal complaints against Loftus within weeks of each
other, just before she resigned. Both had won civil suits after
recovering long-buried memories of sexual abuse. Jennifer Hoult, a
harpist in New York, said she sent a 30-page complaint with 100 pages
of backup to the APA on November 20. Lynn Crook, of Washington state,
filed on December 8. Both claimed Loftus had publicly misrepresented
their cases. Rumors flew that the two women had been in cahoots, and
were egged on by a network of incest survivors and psychotherapists.
Meanwhile, rumors flew that Loftus had been tipped off and resigned
before the APA could investigate the complaints, leaving them moot. An
article in the Toronto Star suggested just that.
But the complaints, when studied, are baseless. Nobody would resign
over them. What they seem to poignantly reveal is the sound and fury
of women so enmeshed in pain and anger that, though both claim to have
wonderful lives, they cannot turn swords into plowshares and walk away
from a battle that gave their lives tremendous, if tormented, meaning.
Lynn Crook filed her complaint about three sentences in my
January/February 1995 article on memory. She actually referred to my
stated opinion as Loftus' "claim". She also cited a brief summary
Loftus made of an anonymous case. Crook recognized herself in one
detail: in her testimony, she stated that her father "made me put my
fist into the horse." Loftus' "misrepresentation" reads: "Daddy made
me stick my fist up the anus of a horse."
Why, nearly a year later, would Crook take a few dozen words about an
anonymous case in a long article on memory and draw attention to it?
Especially since that case was dissected in a 1994 book, MAKING
MONSTERS, by Pulitzer prizewinner Richard Ofshe, Ph.D., and Ethan
Watters. The book states: "The defense even called in a veterinarian
to tell the court what a horse's reaction might be if one were to
stand directly behind the animal and force an arm into its large
intestines."
I asked Crook why she never complained about Ofshe. "Because he's not
a member of the APA." (He is.) And "Because he's a tenured professor."
(So is Loftus). Crook, along with Hoult, has requested that Loftus'
APA resignation be rescinded and a formal investigation begun. Crook
insists that in filing her complaint, she wasn't influenced by Hoult,
even though they are friendly. Recently, Hoult called Southwestern
Psychological Association officers about a possible lawsuit if they
allowed Loftus to discuss her case at an April conference.
Why Loftus? And why now? The tide has turned. Many recovered memory
convictions have been overturned. Much of this is due to Loftus; it
would help if she could be discredited as an expert witness. But far
more powerful a reason is that Loftus is a woman, a scientist,
unshakable, and widely liked; she's broken too many taboos. Women are
supposed to burn bras, weep, and yell, not marshall strong science in
powerfully argued debates. And no women is supposed to turn traitor
to the cause-the misguided feminist cause of other women as victims.
Columnist Ellen Goodman once wrote, "You don't have to check your
skepticism at the door of feminism any more than you have to check
your bra." Loftus has every right to engage in this debate, as do
Hoult and Crook. All sides need to be heard. That's what academic
freedom, journalism, and supposedly feminism are all about, aren't
they?
---------------------
Maryanne Garry
Senior Lecturer
Victoria University of Wellington
School of Psychology * Te Kura Maatai Hinengaro
Box 600 Wellington New Zealand
Direct: 64-4-463 5769
Fax: 64-4-463-5402
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/psyc/garry/garry.html
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
--George "Dubya" Bush, US presidential candidate
