from The Textbook Letter, January-February 1995
How a Glencoe "Health" Textbook
Promotes Psycho-Quackery
William J. Bennetta
"Recovered memory" quackery is a highly destructive form of mumbo
jumbo that has become popular in the past decade or so. Its
practitioners typically claim that they can examine adolescents or
adults, discover signs that these people suffered sexual abuse during
childhood, and help the people to summon up "memories" of the abuse
itself. The "memories" have supposedly been hidden for many years
(as a result of a mysterious happening that's called "repression"),
so the alleged victims have been unaware of them; yet the "memories"
have somehow remained complete and accurate, ready to be retrieved
when the victims are subjected to occult treatments. Retrieving the
"memories" is said to be beneficial and to function in some sort of
"therapy."
It is all nonsense -- a circus of superstition, psycho-babble,
unsupported notions, and bogus "cases" in which quacks have planted
ideas and images in the minds of alleged victims of abuse, then have
declared that the images were "recovered memories." The alleged
victims usually have been women, and they usually have been induced
to "remember" that they were abused by their fathers or other male
relatives. ln some instances, mountebanks have used hypnosis or
drugs to increase the chance that a woman would absorb planted
images, would regard them as memories or "flashbacks" of real
events, and would even fabricate further "memories" and "flashbacks"
to confirm the planted ones.
This arrant psycho-quackery can wreck lives and destroy families, of
course, and it has done so. Some of its worst effects have been
realized when "recovered memory" tales were exploited in civil
lawsuits or even in criminal prosecutions for child abuse. Such
prosecutions have been remarkably similar to witchcraft trials,
complete with imaginary "evidence" and with testimony about "events"
that could not be distinguished, by any means, from fantasies or
hallucinations or wishes.
Over the past couple of years, some substantial opposition to
"recovered memory" charlatanry has emerged (along with a movement
against the use of "recovered memory" claptrap in actions at law),
and some individual purveyors of "recovered memory" services have
been conspicuously discredited. [See the postscript at the end of
this article.] These developments have come too late, however, to
help most of the persons whose lives have been ravaged by invented
recollections and bogus accusations. Both inside and outside of our
courtrooms, "recovered memory" charlatanry has produced vicious
consequences.
It is alarming, therefore, to find that this nonsense is being
promoted in the high-school book Glencoe Health (1993). Glencoe's
writers have given a full page to a feature article that parrots and
validates most of the notions that the "recovered memory" mountebanks
put forth.
The article is cast as a narrative by a young woman who calls
herself Leah and who declares that she was abused by her uncle when
she was a girl. How does she know this? Well, it seems that the
uncle had also abused Leah's nameless sister; and although both girls
apparently forgot about his depredations, Leah's sister later
"started to get some flashbacks" when she was about 23 years old.
Then, says Leah, "my sister and I started to really talk, and more
and more about my uncle started to come back -- for both of us."
Enlightened by those chats with her backflashing sister, Leah has
joined an "incest survivor's group" and is feeling better, although
there are still "whole pockets" of her childhood that she cannot
remember.
The tale is incomplete in a way, because Leah doesn't say who or what
helped her sister to start getting those "flashbacks." Otherwise,
the story that Glencoe's writers have put into Leah's mouth is a
fairly coherent, direct endorsement of the "recovered memory" racket.
I can't imagine that students could read it without being led to
believe that undefined things called "flashbacks" are real memories
which have been buried for years; that these memories constitute
accurate, reliable impressions of past events; that other genuine
memories "come back" (in a mysterious way) during sympathetic
conversations; and that pondering such so-called memories has
therapeutic effects. Glencoe's writers don't tell that those are
merely quackish notions, unsupported by evidence, and that the
peddlers of such notions can do massive harm. The writers don't
explain that we have no way of evaluating the claims that allegedly
were made by Leah's sister -- no way of knowing whether they were
anything other than fantasies or malicious inventions. The writers
don't point out that Leah herself may be dispensing fiction, that her
entire tale may be false, and that she may have fabricated it (for
whatever purpose) after she saw "recovered memory" stories in
newspapers. Worst of all, the writers don't provide any response
from Leah's uncle; they apparently want students to believe that he
must be guilty merely because he has been accused.
I infer that Glencoe's writers fashioned their article by rewriting
a handout that they got from some psycho-quack.
Health educators who would like to inform themselves and their
students about "recovered memory" quackery should be sure to read
Frederick Crews's excellent two-part article "The Revenge of the
Repressed," in The New York Review of Books for 17 November and 1
December 1994. Crews does an admirable job of explaining how
"recovered memory" quackery originated and how the quacks operate.
He also reviews the relevant scientific information, showing how it
fails to support the quacks' claims and how it renders some of those
claims ridiculous.
Postscript: In May 1994, after a trial held in California's Superior
Court for Napa County, a businessman named Gary Ramona won a judgment
against a psychiatrist, a marriage counselor and a hospital for their
respective roles in causing his adolescent daughter, Holly, to
"remember" that he had raped her when she was a child. During the
trial, Gary Ramona had denied raping Holly and had argued that her
"memories" of abuse were attributable to reckless acts performed by
Richard Rose (the psychiatrist) and Marche Isabella (the counselor).
Those two, Gary Ramona said, had manipulated Holly, had intoxicated
her with sodium amytal (a "truth serum" that can induce
hallucinations), had led her to believe that chemically induced
fantasies were recollections of reality, and had led her to think
that the emotional problems which she was suffering as a young woman
meant that she had been sexually abused by her father when she was a
child. Under the influence of Rose and Isabella, Holly formally
accused her father of rape. The results of that accusation, Gary
Ramona charged, included the destruction of his marriage, the
destruction of his reputation, and the destruction of his career as
an executive of the Robert Mondavi Winery (Oakville, California).
William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the
California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook
League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes frequently
about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false
"history" in schoolbooks.
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