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False memories can have major legal consequences. See https://www.wired.co.uk/article/false-memory-syndrome-false-confessions-memories https://www.wired.co.uk/a

by btilly 4y ago

False memories can have major legal consequences. See https://www.wired.co.uk/article/false-memory-syndrome-false-confessions-memories https://www.wired.co.uk/article/false-memory-syndrome-false-... for some examples. It was particularly bad some 30 years ago when "recovered memory therapy" was popular. Which was a type of therapy designed to create false memories, particularly of abuse. The events remembered might be false, but the pain and trauma from the memories was emphatically real. For me, personally, this was a source of frustration. I came from a family with actual abuse. But when I went to read up on abuse, the literature at that time was dominated by accounts from those with "recovered memories". And what they described and went through looked absolutely nothing like my experience. Since learning how easily memories can be implanted, I came up with a simple litmus test to tell the false apart from the true for sexual abuse. People with recovered memories have memories that feel like they would expect. Very simple and stark emotions. By contrast people who have been through abuse have much more complex backgrounds that contain things that non-abused people wouldn't expect. For example abused children do not look at events with adult eyes and mark this as wrong. Instead at the time children try to accept events as normal, and wind up with a very confused picture of the world. For anyone who wants a picture of how it actually looks from a child's eyes, I highly recommend my sister's book, https://www.amazon.com/Singing-Songs-Meg-Tilly/dp/0929636627 https://www.amazon.com/Singing-Songs-Meg-Tilly/dp/0929636627. (I was the baby who winds up taken by "Richard" at the end of the book.)

int_19h 4y ago
The scary thing is that most of the people involved in manufacturing those scandals are still around peddling the same stuff. It remains marginal now, but I could totally see it making a resurgence on another moral panic wave in the future.
arbitrage 4y ago
You are so right about the consequences of memory recovery. Shared contexts like yours have helped me over the years come to terms with the fact that my memories are in fact not recovered (by which I mean 'recovered' in the problematic use of the word you're describing). I've been torn about whether or not "I made it up" for my entire life. The weird popular trend of "recovered memory therapy" is/was real, and indeed muddies the waters. Your litmus test resonates with me. I hope you read this and know you've helped at least one person. I'm sorry you went through what you did.
- btilly 4y ago
  Yeah, the fact that so many people actually don't know whether they were abused helps an abuser try to hide from consequences through gaslighting.
MotherBruce 4y ago
I'd be wary of putting too much stock in the conclusions of an article which portrays Elizabeth Loftus as an impartial and objective debunker of false memories, as this one does. She was paid large sums of money to defend scores of men accused of child sexual abuse, extrapolating from her experimental demonstration that it is possible to implant false memories to the conclusion that this was common and the true origin of most recovered memories This conflict of interest somehow always goes unmentioned in articles like the one from Wired. Many CSA survivors today now say that the obsessive focus on "false memories" has been a significant obstacle to healing from their trauma and being able to discuss it openly. https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/1211442594821001216 https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/1211442594821001216 https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controv...
- btilly 4y ago
  I know well how strong feelings run on this. But there is zero experimental evidence that memories get recovered, and lots of evidence about how easy it is to create false memories. We have lots of cases where recovered memories contradict objective evidence. Memories "recovered" tie to the therapist more than anything else (one will specialize in satanic rituals, the next in a series of terminated pregnancies). And so on. Therefore I concluded decades ago that we should presume recovered memories to be false unless there is specific evidence otherwise. Now you say, Many CSA survivors today now say that the obsessive focus on "false memories" has been a significant obstacle to healing from their trauma and being able to discuss it openly. But who are you counting as "CSA survivors"? Those like myself whose memories were never "recovered"? Or people who claim to have suppressed their memories and then later "recovered" them? Because those two groups have very different sets of experiences. And often very different opinions. Particularly about the phenomena of "recovered memories". Regardless of which definition you use, here is the most important lesson that I learned about recovery. What actually happened is not very important. The dynamics which enabled the abuse, come from it, and with which we harm ourselves ARE important. And these are things that exist and can be dealt with in the present, with no regard to our unreliable memories of the past. Indeed the act of dwelling on those past memories brings grief and unhappiness, and elaborating on them serves no useful purpose. Related, I learned the hard way that what feels good for me, and what IS good for me, are often very different. As https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713 https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv... says in its backward law, "Desiring a positive experience is itself a negative experience; accepting a negative experience is a positive experience." Trying to place the blame for my problems entirely on an external abuser, no matter how real that abuser is, becomes a negative experience. By contrast accepting the ways in which I have perpetuated the experience of being abused becomes a positive experience. Therefore while publicly rehearsing the details of a person's recovered memories may feel good in the moment, I firmly believe that the act of doing so CAUSES trauma, and works AGAINST healing. And indeed the belief that it is helpful is due to incorrect theories about therapy - the same theories by which false memories can wind up implanted.

by btilly 4y ago

int_19h 4y ago

The scary thing is that most of the people involved in manufacturing those scandals are still around peddling the same stuff. It remains marginal now, but I could totally see it making a resurgence on another moral panic wave in the future.

arbitrage 4y ago

You are so right about the consequences of memory recovery. Shared contexts like yours have helped me over the years come to terms with the fact that my memories are in fact not recovered (by which I mean 'recovered' in the problematic use of the word you're describing). I've been torn about whether or not "I made it up" for my entire life. The weird popular trend of "recovered memory therapy" is/was real, and indeed muddies the waters. Your litmus test resonates with me. I hope you read this and know you've helped at least one person. I'm sorry you went through what you did.

btilly 4y ago
Yeah, the fact that so many people actually don't know whether they were abused helps an abuser try to hide from consequences through gaslighting.

MotherBruce 4y ago

I'd be wary of putting too much stock in the conclusions of an article which portrays Elizabeth Loftus as an impartial and objective debunker of false memories, as this one does. She was paid large sums of money to defend scores of men accused of child sexual abuse, extrapolating from her experimental demonstration that it is possible to implant false memories to the conclusion that this was common and the true origin of most recovered memories This conflict of interest somehow always goes unmentioned in articles like the one from Wired. Many CSA survivors today now say that the obsessive focus on "false memories" has been a significant obstacle to healing from their trauma and being able to discuss it openly. https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/1211442594821001216 https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/1211442594821001216 https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controv...

btilly 4y ago
I know well how strong feelings run on this. But there is zero experimental evidence that memories get recovered, and lots of evidence about how easy it is to create false memories. We have lots of cases where recovered memories contradict objective evidence. Memories "recovered" tie to the therapist more than anything else (one will specialize in satanic rituals, the next in a series of terminated pregnancies). And so on. Therefore I concluded decades ago that we should presume recovered memories to be false unless there is specific evidence otherwise. Now you say, Many CSA survivors today now say that the obsessive focus on "false memories" has been a significant obstacle to healing from their trauma and being able to discuss it openly. But who are you counting as "CSA survivors"? Those like myself whose memories were never "recovered"? Or people who claim to have suppressed their memories and then later "recovered" them? Because those two groups have very different sets of experiences. And often very different opinions. Particularly about the phenomena of "recovered memories". Regardless of which definition you use, here is the most important lesson that I learned about recovery. What actually happened is not very important. The dynamics which enabled the abuse, come from it, and with which we harm ourselves ARE important. And these are things that exist and can be dealt with in the present, with no regard to our unreliable memories of the past. Indeed the act of dwelling on those past memories brings grief and unhappiness, and elaborating on them serves no useful purpose. Related, I learned the hard way that what feels good for me, and what IS good for me, are often very different. As https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713 https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv... says in its backward law, "Desiring a positive experience is itself a negative experience; accepting a negative experience is a positive experience." Trying to place the blame for my problems entirely on an external abuser, no matter how real that abuser is, becomes a negative experience. By contrast accepting the ways in which I have perpetuated the experience of being abused becomes a positive experience. Therefore while publicly rehearsing the details of a person's recovered memories may feel good in the moment, I firmly believe that the act of doing so CAUSES trauma, and works AGAINST healing. And indeed the belief that it is helpful is due to incorrect theories about therapy - the same theories by which false memories can wind up implanted.