The “False Memory” Inquisition

Sexual violation and its relation to psychological thought and cultural evolution deserve a special place in the realm of psychohistory. Nowadays, sexual misconduct or outright abuse in the workplace is gaining its due recognition as reflected in the #MeToo movement as rising feminism challenges the male power structure. But the fundamental issue—that of sexual abuse generally by the strong over the vulnerable—is only partially represented in the current workplace arena of adult against adult. Where is the basis of power for a small child, abused within a family system or in a large, impersonal agency, especially when the social container for the abuse is silence?

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the courageous male scientist who first realized that the symptom-code of adult female hysterics could be deciphered to disclose histories of child sexual abuse. His published findings (Studies on Hysteria, 1893) were met by a predominantly unreceptive 19^th century culture, which made it impossible for him to continue to pursue his insights or his career in that direction.

What goes around comes around, and 100 years later, there was a renewed psychotherapeutic movement to decode hidden adult memories of childhood sexual abuse. In the 1980’s and 90’s, the “forgotten” familial situations uncovered by Freud were again uncovered in psychotherapeutic work, and further suggested similar activities within larger childcare organizations. “Recovered memo-

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ries” unfolding in the process of dynamic psychotherapy, and especially through the recollections of severely abused multiple personality patients, were bringing a bleak picture to light. Social silence shielded abuse that extended beyond families to organizations that either self-servingly protected abusive members or even criminally promoted the use of children for sexual exploitation. Since that time, the problem within the Roman Catholic Church has become publicly addressed; however, similar situations in foster homes and other childcare agencies—that our patients consistently tell us about—still wait for public scrutiny, documentation, and repair. However, once more, the psychotherapeutic work was met with a crushing response.

My own experience as a social worker/psychoanalyst actively involved at that time is part of this account. I hope to contribute a voice to a subject that the mental health field has kept strangely undiscussed, or at best has mentioned in a circumspect way. I welcome the opportunity offered by a journal open to personal reflection in a scientific field that explores the intertwining of history and the enigmatic human psyche.

To recapitulate, in the late 1980s through the 1990s, therapists began to (re)discover hidden memories of child abuse in treating their patients. To a degree, this may have been due to increasing sophistication in the mental health field regarding the understanding of personality disorder, with growing awareness of the importance of pre-Oedipal child development (a period of inquiry preceding Freud’s psychic focus). In my experience, as I applied the technique I had learned from my association with James F. Masterson, MD (a pioneer in the treatment of personality disorder), I found a number of my patients struggling with a previously closed-away layer of childhood sexual abuse issues underlying their characterological problems. This came as an unnerving surprise to patient and therapist alike, especially since it sometimes uncovered Multiple Personality Disorder (Dissociative Identity Disorder) as well.

I scrambled to find a therapeutic frame for the work, and found myself guided by Studies on Hysteria—Freud’s early exposition of hidden childhood sexual abuse. My patients, who otherwise might have been dismissed as histrionic or delusional, progressed through a challenging treatment process to confront the abuse that had significantly contributed to the formation of their psychological problems. They eventually emerged as productive members of

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society. I must add, as it should be noted for any work on the shifting nature of memory, that my patients’ recall was supported by witness verification and medical scans of early injuries.

At the same time, I discovered that I was not alone in the therapeutic community. Therapists had found expression in technical publications and in eloquent personal accounts by patients themselves as well as by therapists. In addition, the multiples (no longer experiencing themselves as an isolated rarity) formed an extensive network of peer groups. It appeared that the silence had been broken. In 1995, I was fortunate enough to have Masterson’s support in documenting my work (Disorders of the Self: New Therapeutic Horizons, Masterson & Klein, eds., 181-254).

It was becoming increasingly clear that child sexual abuse was not only painfully common in families, but beyond that, agencies responsible for child care might also be involved, and (if not directly responsible) seemed unwilling to acknowledge or correct individual perpetrations. Not only did these findings disturb social idealization of the family, but the reputation of organizations entrusted with child care was being called into question as well. It should have seemed inevitable that there would be a backlash.

I was too involved in this demanding work to notice what was happening initially. Then word of “The False Memory Syndrome Foundation” filtered through. But the often-questionable reputation of some of this organization’s primary representatives (themselves accused abusers) made this activity easy to dismiss at first.

Then things reversed. Increasingly, we therapists engaged in the work with this form of childhood trauma were accused of instigating a “witch hunt.” There was no doubt we could be overzealous: we had a cause, and the suffering of children needed advocates. Unquestionably, some therapists were too willing to search out signs of abuse on too little basis, or overstepped their role by advocating emotional healing through court action. But the reaction of the False Memory Movement was not intended to bring a corrective balance to a meaningful investigation. It was intended to destroy it. Thus the professionally well-established leadership of the recovered memory movement was effectively wiped out: Bennett Braun was successfully sued for three million dollars, his license was revoked and his inpatient unit closed; Richard Kluft was sued for 10 million and his inpatient unit closed; Bessel van der

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Kolk lost his laboratory and Harvard Medical School affiliation; the list goes on, with Roberta Sachs, Corydon Hammond, and others—highly respected professionals, extensively published, and now compromised or out of a job.

What followed was a real “witch hunt,” or more accurately, inquisition, as the exposure of human pain was redefined as a therapeutic hoax. It came from predictable social denial, retaliation from organizations whose reputations were involved, and child pornography rings whose income was threatened. Probably these reactions built on each other. Relentlessly, through publications, the courts, withdrawal of financial support, and other, less direct means of intimidation, theoreticians and clinicians throughout the mental health field were discouraged from their work. Leading figures faced multimillion-dollar fines and licensure suspension, loss of research programs, and discontinuance of specialized inpatient units. The average clinician faced popular skepticism intensifying to condemnation, and lawsuits from aggrieved families supported by “recanting” patients who claimed memories of abuse had been implanted.

Advocates on both sides spoke out with passionate insistence, and popular reaction swung back and forth, based on the emotional impact of the latest argument. In a sensationalized climate, there was decreasing attempt to promote an unbiased, objectively-researched assessment that balanced opposing points of view within a containing context. Unusual attempts such as that of the recovered memory psychiatrist, Colin Ross, to engage the False Memory Foundation representative, Elizabeth Loftus, in an exchange were limited. A notable exception was The Journal of Psychohistory, which focused on the controversial subject of ritual abuse. Two issues were rigorously detailed. “Cult Abuse of Childhood: Witch Hunt or Reality?” (Vol. 21, No. 4, 1994) scrutinized the veracity of both victims and therapists. “Backlash Against Psychotherapy” (Vol. 22, No. 2, 1995) closely critiqued the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and its tactics, including the use of the legal system as a “modern form of Inquisition” (E. Sue Blome, “The Ownership of Truth,” 282). Both issues use the psychohistorical perspective to trace child sexual abuse over the course of “civilization.” The study of psychohistory would seem to offer an especially apt vehicle for examining the oscillating extremes of human awareness on this subject within the larger social view. The Journal of Psychohistory rose to the occasion. But sadly, in addi-

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tion to a reluctance to present a balanced argument, the mental health field generally failed to support the life’s work of eminent practitioners whose careers were in jeopardy.

To return to my own experience of the time, a colleague who had withdrawn from working with MPD because of persistent lawsuits, ruefully told me that it didn’t matter whether you won or not (he had won)—you were professionally worn down through loss of office time and accumulating legal fees.

Eventually, on my part, I had to withdraw from this work because of the loss of supportive treatment structure. Work with Recovered Memory—with MPD/DID especially—requires teamwork. The non-medical therapist needs the collaboration of a psychiatrist for medication, and the back-up of a specialized inpatient psychiatric unit for crises. Patient peer groups, invaluable for this work, had vanished or retreated underground as well.

Exhausted from the work itself, and frustrated by lack of support within the mental health field, I retired after a 40-year career in psychotherapy, including 20 years of experience in the specific area of “forgotten” (i.e., repressed, dissociated, traumatic) memory.

Since I have returned to the field to teach, supervise, and write, I have come up against what is one of the most painful parts of this experience. When I attempt to discuss this “happening” with colleagues, I am often met with blank or puzzled looks. Unless they have been directly involved in the work of recovering hidden recollections of childhood abuse, practitioners have heard of “false memories,” but seem to retain a mostly vague impression of what the term signifies. Many of my colleagues are under the impression that this pejorative comprehensively dismisses a period of misguided or even unscrupulous psychotherapy, involving the implanting of pseudo-memories in patients. At times like these, I feel some analogy to a returning veteran who hopes to find solace on the home front, only to be asked, “What war are you talking about?” The mental health field itself seems to have been drawn into the silence that is complicit with sexual victimization.

It is difficult to acknowledge how the painful side of reality can be so disregarded by a vocation devoted to its psychic integration. However, it is evident that psychotherapists resist painful knowledge, as does any human being, and that this is reflected collectively. As the psychoanalyst Peter Giovacchini comments

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(additionally citing Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” 1921): “[A]daptive defense mechanisms…can be applied to groups and institutions…as well as persons” (Impact of Narcissism, 2000, 7). But I find the lack of professional dialogue problematic in this subject so central to the history, even the identity, of the psychotherapy profession.

One ray of light in this dimming of consciousness came from The Boston Globe in its courageous uncovering of child abuse in the Boston Catholic Archdiocese (see Spotlight, the award-winning film named after the newspaper column that persevered in the exposé). This endeavor, persistent despite powerful opposition, succeeded and sent out waves of reform across the United States and through Europe. Even so, it should be noted that this example of journalistic heroism only addressed a single agency potentially open to instances of child sexual abuse.

Nowadays, I have gained the perspective that allows me to see that a historical view offers more optimism than might be visible at first. There seems to be a cyclical ebb and flow toward social acceptance of such disturbing issues as the acknowledgement and questioning of sexual abuse of the vulnerable and underrepresented. Thinking in terms of psychohistory, it might be hypothesized that society, like individuals, may have a traumatic reaction to painful disclosures it has not yet acquired the aggregate resources to tolerate—there is then a collective need to dissociate (or repress) what was revealed. However, the rejected knowledge continues to press for awareness, especially as society matures in its capacity to acknowledge human complexity.

It would seem that society, as well as individuals, is subject to repetitive patterns; but, as the ethnologist Gregory Bateson observed, there is something new added during each recycling. Thus, Freud’s seduction theory was found unacceptable, but because of it an awareness of child sexuality entered the social consciousness. One hundred years later, rediscovery of past memory of child sexual abuse was again rejected, but the actuality of child sexual abuse itself found popular acknowledgement. And increased social willingness to recognize and reject sexual predation of vulnerable individuals no doubt is contributing to the exposure of inappropriate or criminal sexual treatment of women in the workplace.

Will there be a counter-reaction again? Probably to some degree. The cycles of history seem to reflect the human need to

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pull back reactively as part of an overall move forward toward cultural self-recognition. It is difficult to see ourselves responsible for the ills that we would prefer to disown. We are reluctant to know that it is in human nature to exploit or to look the other way, as much as it is in our nature to seek out what is true and to do the right thing.

The problem is in all of us, and so we all hold the answer.

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