Truth and reconciliation

By the third edition (1994), however, Bass and Davis began to back away from their reassuring certainties. They still tell their readers that "you don't need the kind of proof that would stand up in a court of law," but the blanket validation of all recovered memories is gone. In the revision the authors write (changes in italics): "It is rare that someone thinks she was sexually abused and then later discovers she wasn't. The progression usually goes the other way, from suspicion to confirmation. If you genuinely think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, there is a strong likelihood that you were."

Why the changes? "There were ways information in the first edition was misconstrued," Davis says, "that we couldn't have possibly anticipated when we wrote the book." Misconstrued or not, by the mid-'90s it was impossible even for the most militant believer in repressed memories to ignore the spectacular embarrassments in the field. At their worst, those included now discredited reports of a vast, meticulously organized, multigenerational satanic conspiracy, operating worldwide, that committed thousands of undetected atrocities every year -- from child rape to human sacrifice and cannibalism.

The fundamental problem was that there is absolutely no way, theoretically or practically, to separate iatrogenic (treatment induced) fantasies from memories that might have genuinely been uncovered in therapy. So the intractable logical problem for supporters of recovered-memory therapy was -- and remains -- how to recognize and disavow manifestly untrue or impossible "memories" without calling the entire concept of recovered memory into question.

There's been a lot of tap-dancing and ground shifting in survivor support communities over the last few years as they've grappled with this conundrum. The third edition of "The Courage to Heal" included a 60-page section addressing the "backlash" that arose against recovered-memory therapy during the '90s. The way Bass and Davis addressed the controversy in that section is representative of the survivor community's response: First, claim that science has proved the existence of repressed memories and that it therefore completely validates the theoretical basis for recovered-memory therapy. Second, drastically minimize the problem of false memories and throw the blame for them onto a marginal portion of the therapeutic community. Third, accuse those who question recovered-memory therapy of wanting to minimize the seriousness of child sexual abuse or, worse, of actively protecting perpetrators.

Science actually says very little in support of the concept of massive repression/pristine recovery. Some forms of repression do seem to exist, depending on how the word is defined, but they don't fulfill the criteria needed to support recovered-memory therapy. The theoretical mechanisms of repression -- like the systematic forgetting of, or a complete dissociation from, a traumatic experience -- also ensure that a memory will be distorted or never encoded at all.

When I asked Davis in e-mail whether her modifications to "The Courage to Heal" acknowledged the concept of false memories, she wrote, "Although I support survivors with all my heart, and believe that most people claiming to have been 'falsely accused' are perpetrators in hiding, there have been instances in which people have been mistakenly accused (though this is a far smaller number than the proponents of 'false memory' claim)." So although to Davis it's not a large or important problem, "nevertheless, if even one person is falsely accused of anything, it is a terrible tragedy, and I have great sympathy for anyone in that situation. I pray every day for those families to find healing and peace."

Some defenders of recovered-memory therapy have defended themselves by arguing that questioning the reality of the memories is also psychologically and socially damaging to "cognizant victims," people who have always remembered the abuse they suffered as children. They believe, for example, that acknowledging that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was falsely accused by a young man who recovered -- and later recanted -- "memories" of his supposed molestation will have a negative impact on the claims of legitimate victims of priestly pedophiles today. In a sense that's true, because the controversy has intensified the doubt regarding delayed disclosures of childhood sexual abuse. But many of those who didn't have to "recover" memories of their childhood abuse, like those who are speaking up about Catholic priests today, blame the current climate of doubt on the excesses of the recovered-memory movement itself, and not those who question it.

Charlotte Vale Allen, a cognizant survivor of childhood sexual abuse whose 1977 book "Daddy's Girl" brought the subject of incest out into the open, wrote to an "accusation survivor" group 20 years later about how "infuriating" she found the recovered-memory movement: "The very notion of assisted 'recovered memories' drives me wild ... After my father's death, I took it upon myself to reveal our well-kept secret in the hope that it would help others. For a long time it has done just that. However, I despair of the idea that 'Daddy's Girl' might now become the equivalent of that underground 'cookbook' on how to make home-made bombs; that it might be used as a manual on how to appear to be a victim ... I fear that this profitable trend of 'recovering memories' will serve only to silence genuine victims."

After their discussion, in the third edition of "The Courage to Heal," of the many reasons why the "backlash" should not be countenanced, Bass and Davis nevertheless knuckle under to it and admit that "mistakes were made." They proceed to offer advice to women who might be doubting whether their treatment has really uncovered genuine memories, acknowledging that a "few" bad therapists might have caused a "few" patients to develop mistaken memories.

But irresponsible therapy techniques were only part of the reason for the vast eruption of "recovered memories" in that era. The explosion of accusations and family destruction was nurtured during a decade of an immense, almost hysterical popularization of the idea that many common social and emotional problems were caused by repressed histories of childhood sexual abuse. Books like "The Courage to Heal" fed directly into that zeitgeist and actively encouraged people to assume that if they were in psychological distress, repressed childhood sexual abuse was very likely the cause. Therapists convinced that the problem was widespread used hypnosis and considerable powers of suggestion to persuade doubtful patients that abuse was the source of their troubles.

Next Page: From nervous breakdowns to stigmata

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