The Memory Game

the recovered/false memory controversy

In the early 1990s reports began to emerge in the United States of horrific crimes. Patients undergoing analysis were recovering memories of horrific abuse committed against them years earlier in childhood. These ranged from sexual abuse by close relatives to baroque accusations of satanic rituals and human sacrifices. Families were torn apart by the revelations and there were even arrests, convictions and long jail sentences based solely on the evidence of these recovered memories. There then ensued a ferocious battle between those – mainly therapists – who insisted that the victims must be believed and those who doubted the basic trustworthiness of recovered memory.

We came across the controversy in 1994 and we had the dual reaction that is perhaps characteristic of writers. We were shocked by the suffering involved and also saw it as compelling material for a thriller. We had a feeling of urgency also, because we thought we had better get a move on, because other people might have the same idea.

As it turned out, the part of the subject that most engaged us was not the subject of sexual abuse but the possible manipulation of the relationship between patient and therapist.

The controversy seems to have passed into history now. The decisive weapons against the therapists who specialized in recovering memories proved to be not dissenting arguments but, as so often, the financial penalties. These took the form of litigation from their damaged patients and the refusal of the medical insurance companies to pay for the therapy.

Even so, some of the factual books on the subject are still well worth reading. Remembering Satan by Lawrence Wright, an account of satantic abuse accusations in a small American town, reads like a thriller in its own right. Victims of Memory by Mark Pendergast is a brilliant, intensely painful account of the subject by a writer who was himself the subject of unfounded accusations. Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Waters gives a lucid account of the controversy. The Memory Wars by Frederick Crews joins his analysis of the subject with a devastating critique of the legacy of Sigmund Freud.