Our Sacred Memory

For decades, incest survivors who attempted to discuss early abuse were met with skepticism, their accounts written off by professionals as imaginary manifestations of their own repressed desires. With the feminist and recovery movements in the ’70s and ’80s, however, survivors finally began to be taken seriously—so seriously, in fact, that a few even succeeded in taking perpetrators to court and winning.

Now, just when survivors are finally gaining recognition from both the mental health and legal professions, "retractors" have begun accusing their therapists of "implanting" false memories of abuse. Groups like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), established in 1992 by parents who believe themselves falsely accused, argue that the pendulum has swung: Incest, once dismissed as a problem, is currently being defined as the source of all problems, these groups argue.

Critical issues are at stake. For survivors, it means once again having one’s honesty or mental competency questioned, their stories now reflected not even as their own fantasies but as those of their therapists. And the debate will undoubtedly be used to further discredit and to silence victims, thus enabling abuse to continue.

It would be easy to discount groups like the FMSF as part of a conservative backlash. But dangers do exist in accepting wholeheartedly the arguments of either "side"; each has its stereotypes and oversimplifications. Politicization of the issue has distorted it as positions have polarized, all complexities have flattened out, and the individual has become lost in the conflict.

Important questions arise: How far back is it possible to remember? How reliable is hypnosis? Is verification possible—or even necessary? Can "feelings" of abuse serve as proof of it? Does the very act of remembering an event in some way alter it? And why would anyone remember a traumatic event that never took place?

FORTUNATELY, IN the midst of this painful controversy, a rational and compassionate voice has arisen. A researcher who deals with traumatized children, Lenore Terr has served as an expert witness in several trial cases involving abuse. While her book Unchained Memories centers on the broader topic of "memory," she provides important insights into major issues involved in the debate. By examining seven true stories—accounts that read more like fascinating detective stories than case histories—Terr explores the various mechanisms we use to block memory, the impact of trauma on the parts of the past that can be retrieved, and why the mind reacts in this way.

One of the trials in which Terr served was that of Eileen Franklin Lipsker, who for 20 years "repressed" memories of her father raping and murdering her friend. Gazing at her daughter’s face, Franklin suddenly experiences a flashback, but convinced she is going insane she does not go to the authorities for 10 months, during which time she is deluged with memories. At all times Franklin’s therapist remained neutral, and it was her husband who finally contacted the police.

In Franklin’s case, many recollections, such as the position of the victim’s wounds, matched the evidence. Yet Franklin did make errors, proving Terr’s point that while details may be wrong, a memory itself may be essentially "true."

Flaws exist because of the nature of trauma itself. Terr’s opposing expert in the trial was Elizabeth Loftus, a memory expert from the University of Washington whose works are often cited by groups like the FMSF. Loftus, who deals neither with children nor with trauma, judges false any account with a single error. To Terr, however, there is a big difference between mistakes in memory of a raped child and those of students in a psych lab. As Terr puts it, "Trauma sets up new rules for memory."

Thus the fact that memories may sound fragmented does not make them unreliable. Terr gives the example of the woman who "remembered" her grandfather violating her when she was 3 years old; investigation revealed that a urologist resembling her grandfather did indeed perform an operation on her at that time. Such cases convince Terr that any "true/false" categorization is meaningless: "...the extreme polarization of the false-memory controversy does not make sense to me....Parts are true—often the gist. Parts are false—sometimes details in the descriptions of the perpetrators."

Defense mechanisms other than repression may be used. Terr again serves as an expert witness on behalf of an amnesia victim unjustly accused of drunken disorderly conduct. Amnesia is an extreme form of "dissociation," the process by which a victim detaches herself from events as they are happening. Unlike events which have been repressed, those experienced while dissociated may never be entirely recalled. Other memories may be blocked due to a process called "splitting"; Terr points to former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur Atler who, in order to survive her father’s sexual abuse, split herself into a "night" child and a "day" child, neither remembering the other.

So how can anyone "prove" whether abuse occurred? Terr accepts behaviors as confirmations, but those behaviors are far more specific than the general ones often listed in the literature. And she accepts the need for external verification, but thinks it’s easier to find than one might think.

Terr has written a compassionate, informative, often entertaining book relevant to more than incest survivors. She offers reasonable criteria by which to judge the accuracy of memory while acknowledging room for error. By demonstrating the universality of such mechanisms, Terr carefully avoids isolating survivors from the larger community.

She ends with the invitation to explore our own memories, positive and negative, and offers techniques to help us do so: recording dreams, drawing pictures and maps, keeping journals, revisiting childhood haunts, talking with others. Remembering for Terr is a communal effort; sharing memories not only confirms them but provides us with new insights as well.

In contrast, Michael Yapko, a clinical psychologist who himself works with survivors, focuses specifically on the issue of false memories that occur during therapy, especially under hypnosis. In Suggestions of Abuse, he offers numerous accounts of women who, with nothing more to go on than a dream fragment or a fuzzy memory, disown families and wreak havoc with their lives.

Although sure to anger recovery therapists, many points are well-taken. Like Terr, Yapko dislikes the polarization of therapists into two "camps." He admits that perpetrators can appear normal, that abuse is widespread and growing, and that memories may be partially inaccurate and still be "true." However, he criticizes therapists for their general lack of knowledge about memory and their failure to take responsibility for the psychological power inherent in their position.

To prove his point, Yapko distributed questionnaires to more than 860 therapists. His research showed that only 12 percent felt they had above-average knowledge of memory. As for hypnosis, 43 percent had training in it, yet 53 percent used it. More than half did nothing to differentiate truth from fiction in their clients’ accounts. Yet 79 percent believed that false memories could be suggested, and a disturbing 19 percent knew of such cases.

In Yapko’s scenario, a client who remembers little of childhood displays symptoms associated with abuse. The therapist may ask, "I have reason to believe that you were sexually abused as a child. Can you think of experiences you’ve had that could be considered abuse?" Through visualization, the client is asked leading questions until a "memory" occurs. Other memories follow; the wilder they become, the more convinced the client becomes that they’re true. In the most tragic circumstances, confrontations occur and family ties are severed.

Yapko believes that the major flaw in recovery-oriented therapy lies in its naive understanding of memory itself. Because "memory is reconstructive, not reproductive," emotions can profoundly distort perception. Means of verification exist—medical records, possible witnesses—but conclusive evidence will usually be lacking. More pessimistic than Terr, Yapko rejects symptoms as reliable indicators: "How can you distinguish a real memory from a confabulation? The answer is, I’m afraid, discouraging. Without external corroboration, you can’t."

The weakest point in FMSF’s argument has always been that of motivation: Why would anyone want to remember atrocities that never occurred? For this Yapko provides plausible explanations—a need for identity and community, hostility toward one’s parents, the desire to please a therapist, the need for a scapegoat for current problems. And why would a therapist encourage such memories? Yapko theorizes guilt over the profession’s past negligence in this area, the comfort of having a logical explanation, or ignorance as to how memory really works.

To clients Yapko offers ways to evaluate therapists and groups. He encourages parents unjustly accused to keep lines of communication open. And to overzealous therapists he issues this warning: "...healing from a history of abuse does require courage. But leading people to believe they were abused when they were not is not courageous or noble. It’s malpractice."

YAPKO GETS into trouble when he attempts to place such occurrences within a context of generalized feelings of "victimization." For the last several decades, our culture (counselors included) has encouraged us to "do our own thing"; Yapko blames this self-centeredness for the poor parenting that has produced a generation that feels itself deprived. Now grown and unable to cope with the outside world, those "children" are taking revenge.

It’s an interesting theory but an inadequate one, and glaring omissions exist. Selfishness, not sexism, now becomes the source of abuse, with women appearing as mere pawns of either the press or their therapists. He questions clients’ motivations but never those of the FMSF or of the media. And he certainly overestimates the support that most survivors receive; even now, admissions of past abuse are likely to evoke, at best, uncomfortable silence. Nowhere does he address the bias against women being believed, the reasons why so many women might feel so violated, or the ways in which women’s real powerlessness may intersect with general societal feelings of victimization.

It’s clear from works like Yapko’s, as well as from recent media coverage, that a new stereotype is emerging (or rather an old one is being recycled): the puritanical female hysteria. Never does Yapko define abuse, though such a definition is central to his argument. In a particularly disturbing passage, he ridicules a woman for joining a support group because she "felt" her father’s attraction to her. Yet surely sexual dynamics between parent and child need not be played out to be destructive. Having no idea whether this was a momentary attraction or an ongoing element in the relationship, we simply do not know enough about this woman’s experience to dismiss it.

At his best, Yapko aims his critique not at the client but at the therapist. Yapko’s basic fear is a valid one: Belief in a single categoric "incest experience" can rob individuals of their voice as well as empower them. That list of symptoms is objectionable not because it is inaccurate but because it is dehumanizing. Suggestions of a generic "profile" insults the specificity both of one’s experience and one’s response to it.

Believing that remembering must remain a means and not an end, Yapko encourages survivors "to learn to live with the uncertainty and get better anyway." Ultimately the issue is not the remembering of abuse but its significance for the client. "Suppose it’s true?" he asks the client. "What would it mean to you? What would knowing it allow you to do that you can’t do now? What do you want?"

Many of Yapko’s arguments make sense; one would feel more comfortable accepting them were we not living in a society determined to minimize the extent and severity of sexual abuse in the first place. The incest survivor movement would do best to acknowledge that recovery theory is limited, and that, yes, mistakes occur. And to keep returning to the facts: Most false memories occur with children in custody battles; most adults remember their abuse before entering therapy; and what most survivors seek is not pity but justice and healing.

READING YAPKO and Terr, one is continually struck by the complexity of memory itself. There is so much yet to learn: Why does one child remember and another "forget"; why is one defense used and not another.

The difference is that, for Yapko, memories can appear so unreliable as to be meaningless. Terr, more hopeful, never underestimates either their importance in our lives or their transformative and healing powers. It is not necessary to remember trauma in order to recover from it. But reclaiming those pieces of our past has the power to enrich our lives and to break us out of old patterns.

By placing memory in a broader human context, Terr restores to it a sense of the sacred, its revelations akin to acts of grace. "We need our remembrances to understand ourselves—who we are and what we believe," writes Terr. "We are our memories."

CAROL LEMASTERS is a graduate student at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and a former writing teacher at Indiana University.