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Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives

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I found this book as I was beginning to question my own experiences trying to recover memories of sexual abuse with "Courage to Heal" and the even more irresponsible book "Repressed Memories." Using the exercises in CTH, I had sent myself into a downward spiral of self-absorption, self-pity, and depression that I didn't climb out of until I packed away my copy of CTH and walked away from my therapist.

It was only recently that I started to question whether my experiences had any basis whatsoever in some real trauma. I read "Victims of Memory," and what I found particularly striking was how much my experiences mirrored those of the "Retractors" -- men and women who had recovered memories, termed themselves "survivors," and then had finally realized that it was all a lie, the nightmares and terrifying images induced not by past trauma, but by irresponsible therapy and books like CTH.

While the other portions of the book were interesting -- Pendergrast's examination of the often-quoted study where various survivors found confirmation of their memories was particularly revealing -- I found the chapter of stories by retractors to be most compelling. This section helped me to realize that my experiences made sense: if you take an otherwise reasonably healthy adult or adolescent and have them focus twenty-four hours a day on their worst thoughts, their most negative feelings, their fears, their insecurities, etc., etc., etc. -- well, ANYONE will start having nightmares, panic attacks, etc. I didn't get better by "working through" the feelings described in CTH; I got better by getting out of therapy and getting on with my life.

I don't entirely exclude the possibility that people may repress (or simply forget) traumatic memories, and remember them later; however, I think advocates for Recovered Memory Therapy wildly overstate the number of people who do this. I wish that everyone who is pursuing the "memory recovery" techniques promoted by books like CTH would take the time just to read the chapter in this book about Retractors.

I found the book fascinating, enraging, depressing, only sometimes uplifting. What is encouraging is the fact that, where courage and good sense and humility for a moment combine, people caught up in this monstrous charade that is destroying families can get themselves out of the chasm and re-discover a modicum of serenity. What is so depressing is the thought that this appears to happen rarely; because most - but by no means all - of the people responsible for this nonsense are acting in good faith, one is up against a quasi-religious fervour that is impervious to calm, reasoned argument. Patients themselves are obviously feeling rudderless on the seas of life, and vulnerable, and this makes them suggestible in the incapable hands of zealous psycho-missionaries. What a tragic social phenomenon. The tragedy also remains, apart from the shattered lives left behind by this "in-yer-face" movement, that it risks obscuring the plight of those genuinely abused. Read the book.

Written by a father who saw his family ruined by recovered memories of abuse, this wonderful book tells the sad story of the recovered memory movement. The book is both exciting and horrifying as he tells his own true story and then carefully presents the evidence of the tragic development of the idea of recovered memories. This heartbreaking story has been repeated in too many families across the US.

Exhaustively researched and persuasively argued, Victims of Memory is another good book in the growing, and needed, field of the debunking of the "recovered memory" movement. Early chapters about the history of the movement and the highlights of its watershed cases are excellent surveys, as are the histories of similar psychological fads such as multiple personality disorder diagnoses, child abuse ring accusations, and even Freudianism.

The book's heart, however, is in the chapters in which the author interviews recovered memory therapists, patients, people accused of abuse based on "recovered" memories, and those who have realized their accusations were false ("retractors"). These chapters are insightful, moving, and surprisingly even-handed.

As a summary of the recovered memory movement and its shortcomings, this book is excellent. It falls down when the author attempts to explain why this strange phenomenon is happening now. He gives us possible reasons from urban malaise through ecological concerns and selfishness to pre-millenial tension. This laundry list of societal factors, which he says proves we are a "society in upheaval," sounds like the same list Democrats use to explain why there are Republicans, Republicans use to explain why there are Democrats, cops use to explain why there are criminals, and old folks use to explain why things were better in their day.

Of course, the most important thing about the recent plague of "recovered" memories is that we understand they are likely false and scrutinize them carefully. Victims of Memory should be useful in raising awareness on the subject, as it is powerful in both its logic and its emotional tone. If it cannot also answer its question, "why now?", well, neither can anyone else.

For the interviews with parents and former believers in recovered memory alone, this book is worth reading. It is long (about 600 pages) but there is little padding. I could not stop reading it, and found the authors' way of presenting their arguments very fair, despite the sensitive nature of the subject. They do not at all seek to minimise the importance of real abuse of children, but give ample evidence that psychotherapists and others are - sometimes with good intentions - abusing their positions to create a theory according to which even the most appaling abuse in childhood can be completely forgotten until the therapist recovers it, sometimes in horrendous ways. The authors don't believe it. Those who've been abused remember something, and don't need suggestions made to them. The best chapter is 'Why now?' which seeks to explain what seems like a contemporary form of witch hunting. I have always been very suspicious of arguments about memories being invented, but I can see, having read this book, how it can happen.

This book is an unexpectedly scholarly work, containing an exhaustive bibliography. The author has done an impressive review of the topic of false recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Obviously, this is a delicate issues with passions running high in all people involved: the accused parents, the adult child who recovers memories, and the therapists eliciting the memories. Considering the author's personal history (accused of abuse by his own child) I think he did an amazing job of portraying all sides of this issue.

I have a dear friend who "recovered" a memory of parental sexual abuse. She now believes she was unintentionally mislead by her therapist, and that this memory didn't in fact occur. Her family has been destoyed. Her parents divorced over the issue, and her two siblings are angry and estranged. Yet no one - not her, not the therapist, not her family - ever meant to cause harm. And yet, so much harm was done....

The author makes it clear he's in no way defending actual abuse of children. The book is about memories of abuse later found to be false. If you don't believe it can happen, read "Witness for the Defense" by Elizabeth Loftus.

My only beef is that he was very hard on recovery groups, which can be of enormous assistance to survivors of abuse. Not all groups encourage survivors to stay stuck in the abuse mindset. Good groups help empower survivors but the author lumps them together.

Pendergrast turns the spotlight on a dirty little secret of modern-day mental health therapy: that many therapists are using unproven, experimental and suggestive techniques to recover images of childhood abuse events that never happened. Untold numbers of patients have become emotionally disabled and their families have been destroyed becuase of this dangerous therapy.

This book was real help to get out of the Hell my family has been in since falsely accused of abuse. The irresponisible therapists have NO idea the pain they have caused.

Pendergrast put his research skills to work to show all of the flaws with the repressed memory movement. He not only presents the scientific information, and the emotional feelings of a man who was falsely accused, but also lets the therapists and "victims" speak for themselves. In doing so, the reader sees how ridiculous some of their views really are. For example, one therapist believes memories are stored in the muscles. If he doesn't even understand the basics of memory, how can he be trusted to uncover "repressed memories"? The answer: He can't. The author says it's a "corrective" to "The Courage to Heal," and that is a very good description.

When I was eleven years old my father started to sexually abuse me. When I was fourteen my half-brother sexually abused me. I have remember the abuses every single day for 37 years - never forgetting for a moment what happened to me. Up until seven years ago I played the dutiful daughter in our "happy little home" until I finally got the guts to confront my father. Did he deny it - No, he admitted it. When I asked my older sister if our father (actually her step-father) had abused her she, too, said that she had remembered it everyday since the age of seven. Our father admitted to that, too. When I confronted my brother about the abuse, he admitted it too. But did I announce to the world every sick detail that happened to me. Did I cut myself off completely from my family. No - but at least I didn't have to pretend anymore that my father was this upstanding person. Now I didn't have to come up with lame excuses when I didn't go to family functions. Did it affect me - yes it did.

I spent many years engaging in self destructive behavior. When I finally started seeing a therapist did he become my Svengali - did he try to dig further and further into my past using such disreputable techniques such as hypnotism, guided imagery, body memories, etc? No - he did not. Did he encourage me to join "Survivor" groups ("survivor" and "victims" are two lables used to somehow separate or isolate those with "repressed memories" from the rest of society; sort of an us vs. them mentality) so that the other "survivors" and I could spend our session trying to one-up each other - each person trying to come up with more horrible memories than the others? No - he didn't. Did he tell me that in order to get better I had to get worse. No - he didn't. Did he insist on focusing on painful aspects of my past? No - we focused on the present and ways of working towards a healthy future. Did he tell me to focus on rage, to act out rage and anger, to become consumed by anger. Absolutely not. Anger and rage are not healthy if they become a major part of one's life. Did he tell me that I had alters roaming around in my psyche - 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 5,000 of them. Nope just me.

Victims of Memory has numerous accounts of the so-called sexual abuse victims. Coming from my background and in speaking with other women who have always remembered their abuse, the stories of these "susvivors" do no ring true. No matter how detailed their "memories" may seem (and I haven't even touched on the allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse or MPD/DID) to others, they have no ring of truth to those of us who have been abused and always remembered. We don't want to listen to the minute details of what we went through - why would we. In fact, why would anyone except those who are titillated by the details. The goal is to deal with what (if anything) happened in our past and then get on with life. All of life's failures cannot be blamed on what did or did not happen in our childhoods. Eventually, as adults, we have to take responsibility for our problems and deal with them like adults.

Pendergrast's book delves deeply into the "repressed memory" phenonmenon. Personally, I think he treats the unscrupulous therapists too kindly - giving them the benefit of the doubt that they "mean well" and truly believe that what they are doing is somehow helpful to the client. I don't view them so kindly. After reading Victims of Memory (not just in this book but others on the false memory syndrome) I am glad that the falsely accused parents and "survivor"/retractors are finally receiving compensation through the courts - not for sexual abuse but for therapist abuse. These therapists (and as the book points out, pretty much anyone can call themself a therapist) need to be accountable for their actions. Authors of books such as Courage to Heal need to be held accoutable for all the irresponsible and blantantly false "advice" and information in their books.

As Pendergrast points out in his book, it is so ironic that feminists in the post-modern women's movement overwhelmingly support the repressed memory phenomenon. The whole repressed memory concept was one of Freud's pet theories - not someone whose theories I would except to see embraced by modern feminists. In addition, repressed memory therapy by nature forces the client (usually a woman) into a weak, dependent - almost childlike - state quite unlike the strong independent woman one would expect feminists to support.

I suppose this doesn't seem like much of a review of Pendergrast's book but more of a personal rant. But that's how Victims of Memory made me feel. Not anger at the author but anger - and sadness - over all the ruined lives that are a consequence of the repressed memory phenomenon. I only have a couple of criticisms of Victims of Memories. First, this second edition of the book came out in 1996. The book could really use an updating. There has been so much research done recently on memory showing how easy it is to implant false memories. An updated edition could help with this added info. In addition, many of the statistics certainly could use updating. Updates on the falsely accused in prisons, updates on changes in the policies of professional organizations, and information on the trends in the number of repressed memory cases.

Whenever someone professes that repressed memories have to be true I always ask the same questions. Where are all those who suffered horrible tortures and abuses at the hands of the Nazis in the WWII concentration camp claiming annesia? Where are all those amnesiacs who made it out alive from Pol Pot's regime and the Killing Fields? Where are all the children who have completely forgotten seeing their mother, sister or friend killed right before them by a drive-by shooter? These aren't people who forget - they have vivid memories - memories they can't forget even if they wanted to.