Graham King:
A relatively short book about what we now know as False Memory Syndrome. It covers the epidemic of 'recovered' memories of sexual abuse, in the 80s and 90s, and is written by a memory researcher who was at the center of it all.
The books alternates between stories of 'survivors', the people who suddenly 'remembered' sexual abuse years before, and accounts of how memory works, what we know, and the experiments that finally showed that there is no such thing as a 'repressed' memory.
The sections on how memory works, and how we know that, were the most interesting to me.
The 'survivor' accounts are distressing. The typical account goes something like this. You walk into a psycho-therapists's office, for help with an unremarkable condition: an eating disorder, anxiety, marital problems, etc. The therapist rapidly hints that she suspects a great trauma in your past. A few weeks or months later, she will announce that you have all the symptoms of sexual abuse. You immediately say, no, I was never abused. Therapist says, aha, you have denial, that _proves_ you were abused. Using a variety of techniques such as hypnosis and group therapy, she help you "recover" your memories. You claim you are making it up, she says no it's all real, I'm the therapist I know. She then pushes you to confront your (incredibly distressed) family, and possibly go to the police. The families reject all the accusations, of course, because they are also 'in denial', which also proves their guilt. Families were torn apart. Innocent people went to jail.
A whole industry sprang up around these therapists; books, courses, retreats, lawyers, etc. There's never a monster too ugly for some people to feed.
I take three lessons from this book, aside from what I learnt about memory:
1. Beware of psycho-therapists. They have a huge amount of power over fragile individuals. Many of the techniques they used mirror those used by sects. In fact with her own "survivors" group around her, many therapist were running their own small sects. "Age of Propaganda", by Pratkanis and Aronson is very good on this.
2. Beware of organised religion. Most of the "survivors" (many of whom later recanted their stories of abuse) came from a church-heavy background. As the most zealous therapists kept pushing their most fragile patients, they started inventing stories of baby-murdering satanic rituals, claiming their parents were satanic cult leaders. In other words, the most terrible thing they could think of. These individuals were used to accepting authority on faith, and it destroyed them and their families.
3. Always always ask: "How would I know if I were wrong?". Don't trust anyone who's ideas are not falsifiable. The docrine that denying sexual abuse proved your guilt is the docrine of the witch-hunt, and the author makes the point with repeated quotes from Arthur Miller's "The Crucible".
