Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives [Paperback]

Mark Pendergrast (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995

Taking on the issue of "repressed memories" in incest cases, the author speaks from painful experience and questions whether therapists are revealing actual happenings through hypnosis, guided imagery, dream analysis, and suggestion--or shattering lives with false accusations. Original. IP.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pendergrast, an investigative journalist and author of the well-received For God, Country and Coca-Cola, here abandons any pretext of objectivity in an emotionally charged diatribe against the recovered memory movement. Accused of sexual abuse by one of his daughters on the basis of recovered memories, he describes his personal anguish and inability to find out any specifics of the allegations. Prime targets of his wrath are manipulative therapists who "facilitate" recovery of childhood memories of abuse, which they claim to be the cause for whatever mental illness their patients (usually, but not always, female) may suffer. Using hypnosis, psychotherapy, age regression, dream work, automatic writing, sodium Amytal, they guide troubled patients into remembering lurid scenes of sexual abuse (graphically described by Pendergrast), satanic rites and demonic possession. The unfortunate "incest survivors" usually cut off all contact with their families, becoming dependent on therapists for years. Pendergrast devotes four chapters to interviews he conducted, but without scientific control or scholarly basis, the narratives of therapists, survivors, the accused and retractors (those who have taken back their allegations) lack weight. Also detracting from his thesis are the repetitious accusations and titillating accounts of sexual abuse, which, after several hundred pages, seem obsessive and needlessly sensational. Pendergrast is a skilled journalist, but his book would have benefited greatly from substantive editing and a more scholarly approach to this controversial subject.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

On the heels of On the Myth of Repressed Memory (LJ 8/94), Making Monsters (Scribner, 1994), and Return of the Furies (LJ 9/15/94), this latest entry on "false memory syndrome" is the most readable to date. The author is a professional journalist who has been accused of incest by his two adult daughters, adding an air of sensationalism to the book's promotion and content. But this is not just a personal story, Pendergrast (For God, Country & Coca Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink, LJ 3/15/93) interviews many subjects?the abused, the recanting formerly abused, alleged abusers, and their therapists?and relies on professionals in the field of clinical psychology for the scientific data. The author discusses why the "repressed memory" phenomenon is so prevalent today and also offers a short history of other psychological fads. Recommended for popular collections.?A. Arro Smith, San Marcos P.L., Tex.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 603 pages
• Publisher: Upper Access Book Pub (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942679164
• ISBN-13: 978-0942679168
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,527,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am the author of six books of critically acclaimed non-fiction. The latest is JAPAN'S TIPPING POINT: CRUCIAL CHOICES IN THE POST-FUKUSHIMA WORLD, a short book on a huge topic. Can Japan radically shift its energy policy, become greener, more self-sufficient, and avoid catastrophic impacts on the climate? In the post-Fukushima era, Japan is the "canary in the coal mine" for the rest of the world. I arrived in Japan exactly two months after the Fukushima meltdown. This book is the account of my trip and my alarming conclusions. INSIDE THE OUTBREAKS, is a history of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service. The others are UNCOMMON GROUNDS, the history of coffee, FOR GOD, COUNTRY & COCA-COLA, the history of the soft drink, MIRROR MIRROR, a history of mirrors, and VICTIMS OF MEMORY, a book about so-called recovered memories. One critic called me "the ultimate freelance journalist with an eclectic mind." I suppose he meant that I write about whatever interests me. I prefer to call myself an independent scholar, since my books are heavily researched. I joke that I should have earned an honorary Ph.D for each of them in their respective subjects. What my books all have in common is that they cover subjects that matter. In my small way, I hope to make the world a somewhat saner, safer place. I'm not sure if my children's book, JACK AND THE BEAN SOUP, will make the world a better place, but I hope it makes it a bit more humorous. The book is a fractured fairytale -- basically, an elaborate fart joke, though it does explain how evil came to the earth and the origin of thunder! I live in Vermont with my wife and dog, and I like to hear from readers. For more information on my books, see www.markpendergrast.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compassionate and sympathetic book about false memory., June 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives (Paperback)

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.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars courageous exposé of the recovered memory movement, December 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives (Paperback)

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.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliantly researched and heartfelt book, October 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives (Paperback)

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.