I am interested in how the FMSwordF invalidates these findings. If anyone from FMSwordF would like to send me information on how this evidence is disputed please feel free to. FMSwordF's claims that repressed memory isn't real and doesn't exist yet, there is a lot of empirical evidence that proves otherwise. How they have been allowed to steam roll their agenda in the face of solid evidence that proves that FMSword isn't real and repressed memories are, just astonishes me. Who are these people? Why do they want to discredit survivors of child sexual abuse? Who are they helping? Where do they get their money? What exactly does Pamela Freyd have to gain by causing harm to survivors?
I realize that this information isn't knew to some people but it has been to me. I have talked in previous posts about my lack of knowledge of FMSwordF and their agenda. When I was dealing with my memories of ritual abuse I had a lot on my plate. I was a single parent, attending college, learning how to parent correctly due to years in domestic violence, attending therapy, and just plain getting my act together.
Twenty years ago when FMSwordF was a new non profit organization I had limited knowledge of them. I most certainly didn't have knowledge of their agenda. When I learned of their agenda in the past couple of months I didn't just take others words for it. I did my own research and am doing on going research into FMSwordF. I didn't even know about the "satanic panic." Which FMSwordF played a prominent role in "debunking." As I continue my research I am just blown away by the level of connections FMSwordF must have. How else have they been able to push their agenda in the face of monumental evidence that disproves what they claim? Why is mainstream media so hellbent on believing FMSwordF? And disbelieving survivors? Why is it so hard to believe that there are people who will harm children for their own gain? We see this is true every day via the T.V., computer and print news. Yet, believing that someone has survived ritual abuse is so far fetched that it is automatically disbelieved. This has to stop! People need to take their rose colored glasses off and come to terms with the fact that there are some things that sound so unreal that are very true. One of the things that those who perpetrate child ritual abuse count on is that the story's survivors tell will be so bizarre it will seem unbelievable. It's not and it's not fair that survivors have to fight so hard to be heard. If we don't know our past we are doomed to repeat it. Words of wisdom to live by. Rosie
The Journal of Psychiatry and Law
Special Issue on Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse
The Summer 1996 volume of The Journal of Psychiatry and Law, published in February of 1997, is an indispensable resource. Its six articles include Scheflin and Brown's comprehensive review of scientific studies of recovered memories of sexual abuse, and Dalenberg's study of the accuracy of sexual abuse memories recovered in psychotherapy (she actually conducted interviews with both victims and perpetrators, some of whom confessed). Directions for ordering this special issue, as well as the Fall 1995 special issue that focused on claims of false memories, are at the end of this section.
Brown, D., & Scheflin, A. W. Editors' Page.
Excerpt: "The Fall 1995 issue of The Journal of Psychiatry and Law was a special issue on the false-memory controversy. It contained a number of papers originally given at a 1994 conference at Johns Hopkins University sponsored by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. These papers represented only one side of the complex issues involved in the false-memory controversy. We appreciate the gracious invitation of Howard Nashel, editor-in-chief of this journal, to serve as guest editors to prepare a second issue that is representative of the work in the trauma field in response to false-memory claims. Our hope is that the readers of this journal will consider the Fall 1995 issue along with this Summer 1996 issue as a unit in order to get a more balanced overview of the controversy (p.139).Scheflin, A. W., & Brown, D. Repressed memory or dissociative amnesia: What the science says.
". . . . Taken as a whole, these six articles demonstrate that false-memory claims need to be made much more cautiously, especially in courts and in the media, as recent databased studies have either failed to support important false-memory claims or have shown that these claims have been overstated. Most importantly, the science of memory must be permitted to continue untainted by ideological considerations. The false-memory controversy must be converted from a political debate to a scientific inquiry. It is our hope that this issue of The Journal of Psychiatry and Law will help accomplish that goal."
Abstract: "Legal actions of alleged abuse victims based on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) have been challenged arguing that the concept of repressed memories does not meet a generally accepted standard of science. A recent review of the scientific literature on amnesia for CSA concluded that the evidence was insufficient. The issues revolve around: (1) the existence of amnesia for CSA, and (2) the accuracy of recovered memories. A total of 25 studies on amnesia for CSA now exist, all of which demonstrate amnesia in a subpopulation; no study failed to find it, including recent studies with design improvements such as random sampling and prospective designs that address weaknesses in earlier studies. A reasonable conclusion is that amnesia for CSA is a robust finding across studies using very different samples and methods of assessment. Studies addressing the accuracy of memories show that recovered memories are no more or no less accurate than continuous memories for abuse. Excerpts: "Even more significantly, no study has surfaced that refutes the dissociative amnesia hypothesis by failing to get reports of inability to voluntarily recall repeated childhood abuse (pp.145-146).Dalenberg, C. J. Accuracy, timing and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse.
"Most scientific studies can be criticized for methodological weaknesses, but such design limitations should not obscure the fact that the data reported across every one of the 25 studies demonstrate that either partial or full abuse-specific amnesia, either for single incidents of childhood sexual abuse or across multiple incidents of childhood sexual abuse, is a robust finding. Partial or full amnesia was found across studies regardless of whether the sample was clinical, nonclinical, random or non-random, or whether the study was retrospective or prospective. Every known study has found amnesia for childhood sexual abuse in at least a portion of the sampled individuals (pp.178-179, italics in original).
"These studies, when placed together, meet the test of science – namely, that the finding holds up across quite a number of independent experiments, each with different samples, each assessing the target variables in a variety of different ways, and each arriving at a similar conclusion. When multiple samples and multiple sampling methods are used, the error rate across studies is reduced. Even where a small portion of these cases of reported amnesia may be associated with abuse that may not have occurred or at least could not be substantiated, the great preponderance of the evidence strongly suggests that at least some subpopulation of sexually abused survivors experiences a period of full or partial amnesia for the abuse. Moreover, a significant portion of these amnestic subjects, at least in some of the studies, later acquired some form of corroboration of the abuse (p.179).
"Furthermore these 25 studies. . . illustrate how scientific inquiry evolves, in the best sense. The earliest clinical surveys were appropriately criticized on the grounds of possible sample and experimenter bias. Perhaps those reporting amnesia represented a highly select group of patients, or perhaps their report of recovered memories was influenced, or even 'implanted,' by the therapist-experimenters. Nonclinical samples began to appear as a way to address the sample bias problem. A number of subsequent studies clearly demonstrated that psychotherapy was not frequently endorsed as the reason for recovery of memories, nor responsible for them. When the nonclinical-sample experiments were criticized on the grounds of possible selection bias, a number of random-sample studies appeared that addressed this objection. All of the self-report studies were then criticized because they allegedly lacked objective verification of the reported childhood sexual abuse. In response to these criticisms, well-designed prospective studies were conducted. These studies also document an inability to recall a critical childhood abuse incident up to one or two decades after the event in a subpopulation of sexually abused individuals. Not surprisingly, the prospective studies were criticized for failure to include a follow-up interview to distinguish between memory failure and memory denial. However, these criticisms failed to take into consideration that such an interview could not easily be conducted without introducing response bias and other possible expectation and suggestive effects. The prospective studies specifically attempted to reduce interviewing bias and to approximate the conditions of free recall in the research design because the memory error rate is minimized under the conditions of free recall" (pp. 179 & 182, italics in original).
"These studies should have a direct impact on two significant and currently volatile legal issues. First, courts holding a Frye or Daubert evidentiary hearing involving expert or lay testimony on the issue of whether 'repressed memory' is reliable must, consistent with the science, hold either that such memories are reliable or that all memory, repressed or otherwise, is unreliable. The first solution is the wiser and better choice. Second, judges and legislators deciding whether the delayed-discovery doctrine should be applied to toll the statute of limitations in 'repressed' memory must acknowledge that a class of sexual abuse victims with repressed memories truly exists. The extent to which they are entitled to legal protection is a legal question, not a scientific one. Some jurisdictions have favored victims with 'repressed' memories; others have not. . . As a result of these studies, no person should in the future be denied proper legal consideration on the grounds that 'repressed' memory, as one judge unscientifically stated, 'transcends human experience.'
"It appears that the repressed memory controversy will follow Arthur Schopenhauer's wise observation: 'All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident'" (p.183, some references omitted).
Abstract: "Seventeen patients who had recovered memories of abuse in therapy participated in a search for evidence confirming or refuting these memories. Memories of abuse were found to be equally accurate whether recovered or continuously remembered. Predictors of number of memory units for which evidence was uncovered included several measures of memory and perceptual accuracy. Recovered memories that were later supported arose in psychotherapy more typically during periods of positive rather than negative feelings toward the therapist, and they were more likely to be held with confidence by the abuse victim." Excerpts: "[I]n the present research the author was able to substantiate the existence of the evidence offered by the clients and to have this evidence rated for evidentiary value. Further, both alleged victims and perpetrators participated in the evidence collection, providing a better balance for the search for confirming and refuting evidence (p.234).
"Both father and daughter participating in locating 'evidence.' The evidence was of two types, primary and contextual (p.242)
"Subjects were not significantly younger at the time of the event relating to their first recovered memory (M = 5.53) than at the time of their first reported continuous memory (M = 5.29; t(16) = .48, ns). . . . Average confidence in the truth of the memory before evidence was gathered was significantly lower for recovered than for continuous memories (t(16) = 2.79, p < .02).
"Of those memories for which some evidence was submitted (70% of all memories), 74.6% of continuous and 74.7% of recovered memories were judged by the full set of raters as having at least one piece of Category 1 [primary] or Category 2 [contextual] support. Support for the identity of the perpetrator was found for at least one recovered memory for 10 subjects and for at least one of the continuous memories for 12 subjects. . . At least one memory was supported by confession in seven recovered memory cases and 10 continuous memory cases (underline added).
"Overall there was no consistent pattern of subjects showing superior recovered or continuous memory for abuse. However, four subjects had significantly more evidence for accuracy of their recovered memory (using the general abuse memory data), two showed significantly more evidence for accuracy (and two for marginally more evidence) for continuous memory, and nine were equal in amount of confirming evidence. These individual differences might be worth further exploration (pp.245-247).
"The likelihood of finding evidence of accuracy for a recovered memory did relate to both timing and affective tone of therapy. . . Seven subjects found significantly more evidence for accuracy of memories reported during the last six months of therapy than during the first three months, a pattern that crossed recovered and continuous memories. . . Supported recoveries were also more likely in the 'de-repression' sessions (identified either by the presence of an alliance repair or the presence of higher than average [top 12%] ratings of positive affect toward the therapist). These sessions comprised 15% of the total (p.250).
"An alternative method for expressing these data is in likelihood ratios. As implied earlier, the ratio of supported to nonsupported memories in this data set was approximately 3:1. The ratio drops to 2:1 in the negative-emotion or state-dependency sessions, but rises to 14:1 in the alliance repair sessions (pp.250-251).
"Recovered and continuous memories also differed in the degree to which they were associated with specific affective descriptions. . . When affective terms were counted in the accounting of each abuse episode, explicit statements regarding fear/terror and shame were more likely to appear in recovered accounts, and sadness/loss/depression was more likely to appear in continuous accounts. Considering the episodes as independent units, the probability of fear/terror mentioned (explicitly) in a recovered memory was .72 (compared with .52 for continuous memories). Shame was mentioned explicitly in 54% of the 57 recovered memory episodes and in 32% of the continuous memory descriptions. Anger appeared equally in all memory types, and sadness appeared more frequently for continuous memories (.67 compared with .28). The difference in patterns (testing the most frequently named emotion in each memory description) was significant (Chi Square = 37.00, p < .001) (pp.251-252).
"Finally, on an exploratory note, 13 of the 17 subjects showed an increase in the level of symptoms and 12 showed an increase in the variance of symptoms. . . on their contemporaneous self-report comparing the six weeks prior to the first recovery with the 12 weeks following their first recovery. Resolution of symptoms typically occurred by four to six months following recovery (p.252).
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