The Memory Illusion

by Dr Julia Shaw

  Loftus concludes by essentially saying that these techniques are quackery, and that what ends up being counted as evidence in trials can be the result of a cascading effect of assumptions leading to the generation or misinterpretation of evidence. In order to understand this more clearly we need a basic introduction to Freud.

  Sex with Freud

  We have Sigmund Freud to thank for the whole idea of ‘repressed’ memories such as those outlined in Michelle Remembers. Freud, the Austrian psychiatrist extraordinaire. Freud, the man who revolutionised our understanding of psychology. Freud, the man who gave us the conscious and subconscious. The id, the ego and the superego. Freud, repeated nominee for, but never winner of, the Nobel Prize. Freud, the psychoanalyst. Freud, who lived around the corner from me.

  Sigmund Freud spent his last year of life in Hampstead, London. The house where he lived, which has since been turned into the Freud Museum, is a beautiful red-brick build with white trim on a leafy green street. A friend of mine calls this style of architecture ‘gingerbread house’, and the neighbourhood really does have a slight Grimm’s fairy tale feel to it. It’s also my neighbourhood; I live a ten-minute walk from the house. Unfortunately the last year of Freud’s life saw the degeneration of both his mental and physical health, so he likely spent most of his time in a wheelchair at home. Despite knowing this, when I walk around my local area I sometimes picture Freud walking with me. An impossible but delightful image.

  Except, if I were to actually meet Freud today, we would almost certainly hate each other. We would have major epistemological disputes. To understand why I feel this way, you need to understand Freud’s contribution to the current discourse on memory, and where Freud went wrong on this issue. Conveniently, in 1995 critical author Richard Webster wrote a book entitled Why Freud Was Wrong,10 in which he describes Freud’s concept of psychoanalysis as perhaps the most complex and successful pseudoscientific theory in history.

  In essence, Freud made a number of problematic assumptions. First, he assumed that there is an unconscious mind which can store memories, emotions, desires and motivations which are unacceptable or unpleasant and which are therefore actively suppressed by the conscious mind. According to Freud, even though we are generally unable to directly access the unconscious mind and the traumatic memories that it hides from us, it still manifests in our lives through our behaviour.

  This is akin to the assumptions discussed earlier about symptoms such as bed-wetting, which were also presumed to be the behavioural consequences of deep psychological trauma. Freud based most of his published theories exclusively on interviews with his patients, not on science. Indeed, it is tempting to say that Freud was not a scientist at all. If you don’t believe me, ask the Nobel Prize committee. After 12 years of Freud being nominated for the Nobel Prize, the committee actually hired an expert to inquire into his work. The expert came to the conclusion that ‘Freud’s work was of no proven scientific value’.11

  Freud’s second assumption was that many physical and psychological disorders, if not all, are the result of trauma in childhood. Much the foundation for this view came about when Freud formulated theoretical speculations in his practice as a physician regarding a disease he called hysteria, which he defined as a mental unrest. This mental unrest, he claimed, was the result of internal psychological conflict leading to physical symptoms, symptoms which could include amnesia. This supposed condition was thought to almost exclusively affect women – years later feminists understandably tore the idea to shreds.

  The most common cause of this disease, Freud claimed, was repressed sexual abuse. This meant that many of the women who sought Freud’s treatment were automatically assumed to have experienced sexually traumatic childhood experiences. If they refuted this idea, Freud took this as proof that such abuse had occurred. As he says in his own records: ‘Before they come for analysis, the patients know nothing about these scenes.’

  The third assumption that Freud made was that all of this could be treated in therapy, mainly through the use of imaginary reproduction. Freud would have his patients picture the sexual abuse that he assumed they had experienced, ignoring protests that such events had not occurred. He encouraged them to picture events in as much detail, and for as many therapy sessions, as possible. He thought this technique, also called regression, would allow them to access their repressed memories.

  Freud thought these processes were forcibly accessing the subconscious, rather than simply forcing the creative parts of the brain to generate horrible fictions. According to his own accounts patients ‘are indignant as a rule if we warn them that such scenes are going to emerge. Only the strongest compulsion of the treatment can induce them to embark on a reproduction of them.’ He believed that only through his regression technique could he make trauma buried in the unconscious move to the conscious, where it could be worked through and dealt with in therapy.

  False memory researchers like Chris French, however, argue that the very foundations of these assumptions are inaccurate. The idea of conscious memories being separate from, and in conflict with, unconscious memories was never based on science. In 2015, after decades of research on memory in police investigations, French stated unequivocally that ‘there is no credible evidence for the operation of this psychoanalytic notion of repression and very strong evidence that the conditions under which therapy takes place are indeed ideal conditions for the generation of false memories’.12

  And false memory experts Stephen Lindsay and Don Read state that ‘extreme forms of memory work in psychotherapy combine virtually all of the factors that have been shown to increase the likelihood of illusory memories or beliefs’. They suggest that this is because of four problematic situations that are commonly present when someone wants to access what they think is a repressed memory of trauma.

  The first problem is that an expert, often a therapist, proposes the idea of repressed memories to their client. They may say something like: ‘Many people push bad memories into their subconscious, and this can have lasting repercussions for our mental health.’ This idea may be substantiated by the expert claiming that the patient shows symptoms of repression like those discussed earlier, such as anxiety or depression. ‘You know, anxiety is a common symptom of a history of trauma.’

  Second, the expert tells the patient that they need to uncover the repressed memory in order to heal their symptoms.

  Third, the patient is then given suggestive and leading information from books, anecdotes, or the therapist themselves.

  Fourth, the details of a basic trauma are often given to the patient, and the patient is told to visualise them in line with a memory script. ‘Just picture a trauma happening, and the memory should start to come back to you.’

  We can see the similarities between this approach and the potential problems which can occur in modern abuse investigations. As we have seen, current research (including my own) has shown that these are exactly the kinds of conditions which can foster the creation of false memories. And, unfortunately, although they have all been discredited, Freud’s assumptions about memory repression, the subconscious and retrieval therapy are all still represented in a subset of the therapeutic population.

  According to a comprehensive survey published in 2014 by memory scientist Lawrence Patihis from the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues,13 misconceptions about repressed memories have declined since the satanic panic, but certainly still exist. In their large international sample, 6.9 per cent of clinical practitioners believed that ‘many traumatic memories are often repressed’, as did 9.9 per cent of psychoanalysts and 28 per cent of hypnotherapists.

  Where there is smoke there is fire

  Another problematic attitude that we see influencing cases involving alleged abuse is the logical fallacy that ‘Where there is smoke there is fire.’ I shudder at the blithe certainty contained in that statement every time I hear it. I cannot help but wonder at the mental gymnastics the person in front of me must be doing
to reconcile such a view with modern notions of justice. They are twisting innocent until proven guilty into guilty until proven innocent; the assumption of that statement clearly being that when individuals are accused of a crime they are probably guilty. Even when a person is exonerated, popular notions that the alleged crimes must have occurred often persist. Even if no evidence is found, no scars are revealed, and alibis are solid, accusations can override our better sense of justice.

  The whole process of pursuing allegations of ritualistic child sexual abuse, especially following questionable interviewing or therapeutic interventions, has been likened to the Salem witch trials, mostly because of the non-sceptical acceptance of the allegations involved, and the absurd burdens of proof which are placed upon the accused.

  During the infamous Salem witch trials, which occurred when in Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693, over 200 people were accused of practising witchcraft, some of whom were executed. Accused individuals were given trials such as the swimming test, where they were thrown into a nearby body of water to see whether they would sink or float. It was believed that witches would float, since the water would reject them, while an innocent person would sink. Needless to say, many individuals drowned in the process, and those who did not were labelled witches.

  Similarly, accused witches were at times stripped and their bodies inspected for ‘the Devil’s mark’ meaning a skin tag, birthmark or other blemish which the Devil had placed upon their body. Because such marks were conveniently thought to be amenable to change in shape and type, virtually any imperfection could be taken as proof that an individual was a witch. And of course there was no escaping such charges – how do you prove that a particular mark was not created by the Devil?

  This is not dissimilar to the treatment of many individuals accused of satanic child abuse, imprisoned despite the lack of corroborating evidence, and with an impossible burden of proof upon them to demonstrate their innocence – it can be extremely difficult to prove that something did not happen if the only evidence is a verbal account and the event is said to have taken place in private.

  Having said all this, some experts have disagreed with the witch-hunt narrative of abuse cases. One such person is Ross Cheit, Professor of Political Science at Brown University, who previously obtained a law degree and a PhD in public policy from UC-Berkeley. In 2014 he published his book The Witch-Hunt: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children14 in which he shares the conclusion of 15 years of his own research, during which he dissected old trial transcripts and interview tapes, examining cases of alleged child abuse.

  Cheit claims that the witch-hunt narrative represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual prevalence of child sexual abuse. He reports that child sexual abuse is actually a lot more common than many people would like to think. He claims that those who have sought to diminish that idea have tended to pull out individual problematic cases – and these undoubtedly exist – and use them to discredit the idea of widespread sexual abuse. As the back of his book states, ‘purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion.’ He is claiming that false memories of sexual abuse can occur, and that there are indeed problematic cases, but that this is uncommon and can paint a distorted picture of the many cases involving claims of events that actually do take place. Cheit continues to be vocal about what he considers to be an overstatement of the prevalence of false memories of sexual assault. He believes that the entire rhetoric of scepticism is problematic, for real victims and the justice system.

  It’s certainly an extremely complex issue, and the concerns that Cheit raises are completely understandable. No social scientist would ever argue against the notion that child sexual abuse is an incredibly important issue, or against the idea that most people who approach the police with historical abuse cases are accurate. Most cases of sexual abuse are valid, there is gross underreporting of it, and we desperately need victims’ voices to be heard. While Cheit may suggest that those who study false memories are peddling notions such as ‘the belief that the charge of child sex abuse was typically a hoax’, no psychologist or scientist I know would ever argue such a horrible thing.

  What we do argue is that suggestive and leading interview techniques can lead to the false recall of terrible things. We also argue that pursuing child sexual abuse allegations, especially when absurd event details are involved and no corroborating evidence can be found, needs to be approached with extreme caution. Caution because false memories of traumatic events clearly exist, because they seem incredibly real, and because our reaction to such allegations is often led by visceral responses rather than rational ones. In seeking justice we must remember that as well as protecting the victims of abuse we must do our best to protect the falsely accused, and that means that statements must not be gathered using methods which could potentially seed false memories.

  False memory ‘syndrome’

  The final factor which can cause problems in criminal cases is scientific ignorance. Many of the professionals involved in such cases are not aware of (or trained in) what the latest research says about memory.

  For one thing, I often encounter the use of the term false memory syndrome by lawyers, therapists and the police. This term is simply inaccurate, false memory syndrome does not exist. The use of the word ‘syndrome’ has an inherently medical connotation, almost as though one could catch a false memory like one can catch a cold. It also has the connotation of being an abnormal process. But, as we know from the research covered by this book, such a conceptualisation is simply not true. We are all capable of forming elaborate false memories, and small false memories happen all the time without our knowledge. False memories are just memory illusions due to normal kinds of memory processes. Thus, the correct thing to do is simply to say that someone has – or may have – a false memory, omitting the unnecessary term ‘syndrome’.

  Psychologist Michelle Hebl from Rice University and her colleagues summarised the current stance well in 2001:15 ‘Although the terminology implies scientific endorsement, false memory syndrome is not currently an accepted diagnostic label … this syndrome is a non-psychological term originated by a private foundation whose stated purpose is to support accused parents. Terminology [which] implies acceptance of this pseudodiagnostic label may leave readers with the mistaken impression that false memory syndrome is a bona fide clinical disorder supported by concomitant empirical evidence.’ Scientists today do not use the term false memory syndrome.

  By now, if you have read most of the chapters that make up this book, you probably have some appreciation of the incredibly varied things that can cause false memories – from our basic brain biochemistry, through our tendencies towards overconfidence, to faulty interview tactics that can generate complex fictitious accounts.

  However it is unfortunately the case that, even after decades of evidence piling high, some people still remain unconvinced that rich false memories of physical and sexual abuse can exist. Particularly in the mid-1990s, the field of false memory research came under heavy attack. Advocates of the existence of false memories were accused of saying that victim statements, if they had been made in questionable circumstances, were therefore likely to be false. This is certainly not the general stance taken by researchers – not only would that be offensive, but also counterproductive for actual victims of abuse.

  Nevertheless, battle lines were drawn and the so-called memory wars began, leading to an unbelievable crossfire of academic research, lawsuits, and sensationalised news articles. Opponents of false memory research often claim that we are silencing victims and defending the guilty. There is, of course, a legitimate concern here – it would be an awful thing for someone who has had any kind of traumatic experience to be disbelieved. But given that there is empirical evidence that false memories do
exist – and can be created – any conception of justice must surely also be concerned with trying to protect the innocent from false conviction. There is no doubt that this is a highly sensitive, difficult area, but sweeping the idea of false memory away completely and trying to pretend it does not exist is unhelpful. Ultimately there is no quick resolution.

  Hired guns

  If you tell people that you professionally question all memories, and are on balance more likely to serve on the side of the defence than that of the alleged victim in a trial, you are seen as an advocate for criminals. People ask me all the time, ‘How do you know that you aren’t helping rapists and murderers get away with their crimes?’ The answer is that I do not. I am certain that some guilty perpetrators have used accusations of false memories as a successful defence. The same must surely be true of other legal defences – someone might successfully make a plea of temporary insanity when they committed a crime in full knowledge. However much we may deplore that, it does not diminish the importance and existence of legitimate cases of temporary insanity.

  So while recognition of the existence of false memory and other memory distortions has this potential cost, I fully believe that my work, and the work of my colleagues, helps to uphold the course of justice overall. Everyone has the right to a fair trial, and that trial is only fair if there are empirically based standards of evidence. We need to ensure that trials become less biased against people who are accused of crimes, and take more to heart the truism that just because you have been accused of doing something bad it does not mean you did it. Given what I know about memory, I would not want to live in a world where a single memory by itself is enough to enact legal sanctions.