Repression and Recovered Memories
•	Background
•	The issue
•	Validity
•	How to study
•	Data
Background
•	Several memory systems
•	Memories are not
–	Permanent 
–	Faithful renditions of events
•	Recall is 
–	Fallible
–	Often partial – implicit memory
•	Therefore what we remember is often a construction
The issue of recovered memories
•	As adults people recover memories of sexual abuse while children
–	Typically the abuse lasts for several years
–	Mostly female
–	Mostly in therapy
•	Some therapists believe gives rise to multiple personalities
•	Satanic ritual abuse 
•	Day care abuse
Recovering memories in therapy
•	Began in 1980s
•	Now several thousand cases
•	“Discovery” of sexual abuse of children
•	Day care cases also
The claims
•	Women repress the horror of sexual abuse
•	Leads to symptoms
–	Depression
–	Fear of relationships
–	Sexual dysfunction
–	Dissociation
•	Through therapy memories can be recovered
•	And patient can begin to confront problems
Dissociation
•	Defense mechanism and depersonalization
•	Creates another personality
•	Often several personalities
The Satanic abuse angle
•	Satanic cults engage in ritual abuse
–	Sexual
–	Killing and eating babies
•	Women are prime targets especially by family members who are involved 
A psychological approach
•	Get the facts
–	Does sexual abuse occur?
–	Is it harmful?
–	Do Satanic cults molest people?
•	The psychological mechanisms
–	Can people repress horrible experiences?
–	If so can memories be recovered?
–	Are such memories accurate?
–	Can multiple personalities be created
–	Can memories be implanted during therapy
•	Does therapy help?
Does sexual abuse occur?
–	Obviously it does
–	Slow to recognize this
–	Extent
•	Hard to know
•	Some surveys suggest as many as 30-40% of women remember having been abused
•	Trustworthy data?
Is sexual abuse harmful?
•	Easy to say “of course”
•	Actual data
–	Many studies find that some people are not harmed
–	Rule of thirds
•	Moral objections not affected by facts
Are Satanic cults involved?
•	Only evidence is first person accounts
–	Many proved to be fraudulent
–	Other improbable
•	No evidence for most claims
–	One claim was that 1,000, 000 babies a year are sacrificed
–	Involvement in pornography, etc. 
•	No evidence of Satanic cults 
The repression-recovery controversy
•	Does repression exist?
–	Clinical evidence
–	No experimental evidence
•	What is repression?
–	Freud inconsistent
–	Generally a shutting out of availability to consciousness
•	Anxiety
•	Primarily sexual
Repression versus forgetting
•	People forget important things
–	No cues for recall
–	Haven’t gone down that “memory path”
•	But forgetting is not the same as repression
What could lead to repression of such events
•	Dissociation processes 
–	Shutting down of part of personality
–	And perhaps creating another personality to take its place
•	Betrayal trauma – Freyd
A possible neurological basis
•	Hippocampus and amygdala close and connected
•	Emotional experiences register in amygdala
–	Makes amygdala active
–	May be stored there
•	Extreme amygdala activity can interfere with hippocampus
–	Reducing consolidation
–	Fragmentary
–	Few cues for retrieval
–	Explains blackouts
Recovering repressed memories
•	Could happen spontaneously
•	More often needs therapy
•	May take months or years
•	People do recover such memories usually after intensive guided therapy
Can we trust such memories?
•	The typical paradigm
–	Patient guided by therapist
–	Gradual recognition
–	Abuser denies the abuse
•	Three major questions
–	Can we trust such reports
–	Can people forget or repress such abuse?
–	Can people be led to believe that abuse took place when it didn’t – implanted memories
Can we trust reports from therapy?
•	Therapists claim yes
–	Patients often have vivid and convincing memories
–	Sometimes circumstantial evidence in favor
–	Occasional admissions by abuser
•	But ---
–	Therapists may have agendas
–	Patients often do not get better
–	And many patients feel they were “coned” into recovering abuse
The problems with therapists
•	Agendas 
•	Over zealous “faddish” identification
–	Almost any symptom is seen as due to abuse
–	Hence patient must have been abused
–	Recovered memory confirms and completes the cycle
•	Therefore therapist reports are not necessarily trustworthy
•	Need additional data
Some issues worth considering
•	Many (most?) people remember sexual abuse quite well
•	Could people repress prolonged abuse?
•	People do not repress other anxiety provoking issues – children of murdered mothers
•	People sometimes forget quite salient events such as operations
•	We often confabulate early memories
–	Most memories introduce “missing”material
–	Some error in memories is the rule
Collecting data
•	What kinds of data would be helpful
•	Retrospective reports unreliable unless independently confirmed
•	Best data are confirmed reports ad subsequent forgetting
–	Several such studies
–	Mostly badly done
The Goodman study -- methods
•	217 children who had been involved in trials for their abuse as children
•	Followup 13 years later
–	Asked questions about abuse in phone interview
–	Then questionnaire
–	And in-person interview
•	Several predictor variables
Goodman study data
•	Initial phone interview 81% reported abuse
•	26 non-disclosers
–	17 deniers
–	7 reported other cases of abuse
–	2 report no memory but said parents told them
•	But half of the non-disclosers reported it on questionnaire or personal interview (8% never disclosed)
–	Authors speculate memory jogs or family 
–	But admitting abuse on the phone?
Predictors of disclosure
•	Younger victims less likely to disclose
•	More severe more likely to disclose
•	Maternal support at time of abuse led to more disclosure
•	No support for 
–	Length of abuse
–	Gender
–	Perpetrator relationship
–	Amount of child legal involvement 
What does this study tell us
•	That memory for CSA is a lot like other memories
–	Affected by salience and age 
–	Aided by social support and presumably discussion
•	Maybe 10% of people do not recall
–	Trivial abuse?
–	Early childhood?
–	Maybe abuse did not occur
Support for repression?
•	No evidence either way
–	No evidence these memories were inaccessible to consciousness
–	Or recovered only through extensive therapy
•	Alternatively
–	Could just be forgetting
–	Could just be people were unwilling to talk to a stranger about past events they would prefer to forget
The Arrigo & Pezdek study
•	Point out that too many political agendas over sexual abuse
•	Look at other areas of psychogenic amnesia
•	Show that major trauma sometimes interferes with memory
•	Problems
–	Not clear how easy it is to recover memories
–	Or whether such memories are accurate
Can trauma lead to amnesia?
•	Plenty of evidence that it can
•	Typically impairment for single episodes (but not always)
•	Not clear that this transfers to sexual abuse
–	Prolonged
–	Other psychological issues
•	And most importantly does not say who will repress
–	In all these studies most do not
•	Again accuracy of recovered memories
Could memories such as this be implanted?
•	Generally yes
•	We know that our memories for the past are often quite inaccurate
•	And that people use existing memories as guides for incorporating others
The Loftus work
•	Several studies show that people can be conned into remembering false things
•	Typically only a minority of subjects
•	And typically events that are relatively inconsequential and long ago
•	Still, there are parallels with what therapists do.
Roediger-McDermott (Deese)
•	Work done initially at Rice
•	Present words that cluster around a common theme but theme is never mentioned
•	Then recall
•	Results
–	Related but not presented > than unrelated not presented
–	Related but not presented = presented
Implications of Roediger-McDermott
•	Theoretical
–	Related words prime semantic associative network
–	Presentation of list words aids implicit memory for the non-presented word
•	Sl e _ _ (sleep, sleek, sleet)
•	Practical
–	Memories are fallible
–	And recall is often consistent with context
–	Could be a mechanism for recovered memories
How could this help explain recovered memories
•	Therapists often tell patients they have been sexually abused – context
•	Usually provide lots of associations as symptoms of sexual abuse
•	And they may then recruit or manufacture memories in support
Remembering Satan –Wright
–	Paul Ingram

Bottom line
•	Possibility of some cases of genuine recovered memories
•	Surely some cases of implanted memories
–	Therapists like all of us have agendas
–	Need to be extra careful of creating memories