Recovered memories: hot buttons and lukewarm evidence

Using ambiguous scientific evidence to attack or defend a touchy emotional and political subject in the press is a recipe for disaster. Few subjects highlight the implicit tensions between the media and the research community as clearly as the phenomenon of repressed or falsely recovered memories of childhood abuse.

Beginning in about the mid-1980s, stories began surfacing about adults who, in the course of psychotherapy, remembered incidents of abuse (usually sexual) during childhood and accused the perpetrator (usually the father) publicly, sometimes suing for damages. Some therapists have used hypnosis and visualization techniques to elicit memories. Neither of these methods has been shown to be a reliable guide to the truth, distortion, or falsity of memory. In 1992, the parents of Jennifer Freyd, a psychology professor who accused her father of such abuse, started the False Memory Syndrome Foundation to combat what they saw as unfair, unscrupulous smearing of innocent people by unscrupulous therapists. On the other side, people who have fought to establish the rights of abused people to be heard and treated have seen the FMSF's activities as a backlash, another attempt by abusers to suppress the truth. The recovered-memory issue has crumbled families, sent mental health professionals into a state approaching civil war, and added to the groaning stack of costly lawsuits burdening the country's courts.

Media treatment of the subject has followed predictable lines. A look at transcripts from two 1993 television talk shows on false memory syndrome ("Donahue," Oct. 28, and "Sally Jessy Raphael," Dec. 10) reveals that both programs relied on sensational anecdotal material from people who had accused their parents of abuse and then retracted their charges. Both shows included mental health professionals but little discussion of their credentials or the specific research supporting their opinions. Each show posted the phone number of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Print media have presented more balanced and thorough reporting, such as Frederick Crews' extended review of six books about the subject,(1) Lawrence Wright's case study of an Olympia, Wash., family in which the father "remembered" inflicting fictitious Satanic ritual abuse on his daughters,(2) and Ellen Coughlin's portrait of the discipline of psychology splintered by controversy.(3) Shorter pieces combining colorful personal stories with information about the questionable evidence on both sides have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time, among other publications.

Columbia journalism professor James W. Carey believes that journalists must cope with the time and space constraints that sap context from their work by following up on incidents initially treated as breaking news, which, he says, tends to consist of "the charges and the countercharges" without an assessment of the strength of the evidence. "When these charges and countercharges have big holes in them that can be filled in by doing a story about what the research and the evidence tells us, that's one of the things [reporters] ought to do," Carey says.

Scientific evidence about genuine or false memories is painfully inconclusive. In 1995 the American Psychological Association created a task force to review the research about memory and repression. Its conclusion, according to APA Director of Communications Rhea Farberman, was that "absent other corroborating evidence, it is impossible to tell whether a memory is a real memory, partially real, or false, and that because of this point there is no way for science to determine the differences there." Farberman says the task force found that "recovered memories are extremely rare but that they can happen. The bottom-line recommendation is caution and education." Until better research is performed, the APA takes the position that the courts are not the best place to resolve questions of childhood abuse based on such memories.

Columbia psychiatry professor Robert Spitzer believes that very few memories recovered in therapy can be genuine. "My impression is that most of [the] therapists are not familiar with the most elementary principle of scientific investigation, which is that you have to be cautious and skeptical," he says. "You can't take on face value people's supposed memories unless there is corroboration." Dr. Spitzer views eagerness by some therapists to guide patients toward the repressed-memory explanation of their troubles as a disservice to the patients, who may have suffered genuine trauma but will probably never be able to pin it to such memories.

Last year's discovery that local patterns of cerebral blood flow on PET scans differ between accurate and inaccurate recollections(4) suggests that neuroimaging research may eventually help confirm assertions about the truth or falsity of memories. Harvard's Daniel Schacter, author of the well-received Searching for Memory (NY: Basic Books, 1996) and head of the team that made this discovery, has warned against extrapolations between his group's observations and other categories of memory, such as past experiences. However, further work in this field may deepen public controversies over the verification of memory and the possibility of biological "lie detection."

In an area that has been the subject of much popular attention but inconclusive research, journalists need to deepen their understanding of scientific principles as a way to evaluate competing claims and resist pressure from interest groups to advance their agendas through the media, according to Carey. "We live in a scientific civilization, where science has great authority," he says. "We need to sort out what the real opinions of the scientific community are and to report that, and not to be surprised if they disagree with one another." -- Valerie Brown