Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives. - book reviews

Ever since Freud, many educated people have believed that the mind sometimes represses memories of unpleasant or unacceptable events, and that a skilled psychotherapist can dramatically facilitate the "recovery" of these hidden memories, thus producing therapeutic results. Unfortunately, there are problems with this concept. First, there is little scientific evidence that memories can be repressed. Second, if memories are truly forgotten, they probably can't be recovered. They are, like Clementine, lost and gone forever. Third, it is highly questionable whether these procedures do produce therapeutic effects. Finally, if the "memories" are of childhood sexual abuse, as they frequently have been over the last few years, then somebody is likely to get accused, falsely, as the perpetrator of one of the most horrible crimes that exists. All in all, "repressed memory therapy" is not a pretty thing.

Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives, by Mark Pendergrast, is the most comprehensive book currently available on this timely and important subject. Pendergrast, an investigative journalist, knows firsthand what it feels like to lose children to this form of therapy. He has lost all contact with his two daughters. This book is all the more remarkable, then, since it provides such a well-researched, evenhanded look at this phenomenon.

In this, the second, updated edition of this critically acclaimed book, Pendergrast begins with a chapter that chronicles how the "survivor movement" began in the early 1980s and provides horrifying quotations from books, such as The Courage to Heal that helped promote the concept of repressed memories of sexual abuse. Then, in a chapter on human memory, he looks at the controversy from all angles and concludes that there is no evidence for the repression of long-term, continuous abuse - what he terms "massive repression." Next, he explains how people can come to "believe the unbelievable," through hypnosis, misinterpretation of panic attacks and sleep paralysis, dream analysis, group pressure, and other means. Another chapter debunks multiple-personality-disorder and satanic-cult claims. These sections are, like all of the book, thoroughly documented and footnoted.

At the heart of the book are unique, valuable interviews with persons on all sides of the issue - therapists, "survivors," the accused (generally parents), and "retractors," those who once believed themselves to be victims but have concluded that their "recovered memories" were in fact false. Through these voices, we get a very real, human picture of the issue from all sides. We learn of the social value that "victimhood" has for some persons. We also get to see the trauma resulting from real sexual abuse, as well as inappropriate therapy.

This issue tends to polarize people. True sexual abuse is horrible, and assistance, support, and aid must be provided for victims, as Pendergrast repeatedly stresses. Yet one reason the abuse is horrible is simply because people do not forget it. Memories of the abuse intrude at inappropriate times, interfering with day-to-day living, causing further problems and continuous emotional suffering to the victims. To some extent, "therapies" that falsely induce such memories inflict similar emotional suffering on people who have never been sexually abused. Such therapy is inhuman and cruel. All concerned with the state of mental health care should examine this issue intellectually, instead of accusing critics as somehow "uncompassionate" or "anti-victim."

Through these interviews, Pendergrast provides insights into how such memories are induced by well-meaning therapists in unsuspecting patients. Several pseudoscientific forms of therapy are represented in the interviews or discussed elsewhere in the book, including "past life therapy," recovery of "body memories" through massage, and recall of "repressed UFO abduction memories."

The rest of this massive book covers related matters. Chapter nine reveals how false accusations of child sexual abuse occur and develop, including bizarre, multivictim daycare-center cases of alleged satanic ritual abuse, as well as smaller, more confusing reports involving individual parents and children. Chapter ten provides historical context, briefly describing witchcraft trials, strange therapy crazes, and Freud's theories and legacy. Chapter eleven, "Why Now?," places the whole debate in its current social context. Chapter twelve, "Survivorship as Religion," compares the repressed memory movement to a religious sect or cult, with interesting anthropological, psychological, and theological insights. Chapter thirteen offers a summary, an estimate of the scope of the problem (millions of cases, according to Pendergrast), and concludes with legal and professional recommendations and advice to affected families.

Victims of Memory is an "impressive display of scholarship," as the Scientific American review of the first edition termed it. The book's only drawback is its length, which at 635 pages is somewhat overwhelming, but there are compensations such as extensive indexing and largely self-contained chapters that can stand on their own.