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Part
I. A FEW BASIC OBSERVATIONS
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation
1) Much of the energy and money supporting the False Memory Syndrome
Foundation comes from people who maintain they have been falsely accused of molesting children
[1]. The FMSF founders are Peter Freyd
and his wife Pamela, whose daughter has accused Peter of molesting her
as a child [2]. A member of the FMSF Advisory Board who appears to have been an active partner in forming the FMSF is the psychologist
Ralph Underwager [3]. Dr. Underwager is on record as a defender of pedophilia
[4]: he was interviewed in PAIDIKA, "The Journal of
Paedophilia" (Winter 1993) as follows. Question: Is choosing paedophilia for you a responsible choice for the individual? Answer by
Underwager: "Certainly it is responsible." (p3). When asked how pedophiles might seek decriminalization, Underwager replies: "...
Pedophiles need to ... make the claim that pedophilia is an acceptable expression of God's will for love and unity among human
beings" (p12). Underwager's wife, Hollida Wakefield, another FMSF board member who took part in this interview, favors "... a
longitudinal study of, let's say, a hundred twelve-year-old boys in relationships with loving
pedophiles." (p12).
Much of the rest of FMSF support comes from old-line psychiatrists who
still agree with Freud's discredited "drive theory," which says that
children instinctively want sex with their parents. Freud believed his
patients made up fantasies about it actually happening. (We now realize it was Freud's drive theory that was a fantasy, not the
memories of his patients.) Because of that false theory, for over half
a century therapists believed their patients were making up fantasies
of abuse and were therefore unable to help them. The FMSF is basically
attempting to revive the belief that memories of sexual abuse are "fantasies."
Science and the FMSF
2) The FMSF wants us to believe that their claims about false memories
of incest are based on scientific research into the mechanisms of memory. The evidence they use to build their case actually represents
just a few common sense facts about memory: for example, that our memories are often mistaken about details (we get sequences of events
wrong, dates, colors, what age we were, etc.). Persons remembering an
accident often do get the color of the car, or the number of people involved, wrong but they are **never** wrong about the **important**
facts: that there was an accident or that someone was hurt.
The FMSF also wants us to believe that memories can be implanted, and
experiments have shown that suggestible people can be tricked into falsely believing, let us say, that they got lost in a shopping mall
when they were children. But these implanted memories deal with non-traumatic events that might normally have happened.
From these simple experiments the FMSF falsely concludes: (a) that a
person's memories are likely to be wrong about crucial events that had
a serious impact on their lives and (b) that someone can falsely suggest that a major traumatic event happened to a person, who will
then dociley produce detailed memories about it.
There is no solid evidence that incest survivors [5] are mistaken about
the major events they remember or that they have generated their memories of abuse at the mere suggestion of a therapist. While there
may be a few cases to support the FMSF's view, cases that involve unscrupulous therapists or unprincipled or simple-minded clients, the
preponderance of evidence (some of which is given below) supports the
fact that childhood sexual abuse is common, that people often suppress
the memory of it and then recover its essential elements as adults.
3) The very name "False Memory Syndrome Foundation" is a pseudo-scientific sham, for "syndrome," defined by Webster's New World
Dictionary as "a number of symptoms occurring together and characterizing a specific disease" suggests that "false memories" are
symptoms of a newly discovered "disease." But how can such a disease
have a scientific basis when the truth or falsity of memories can rarely be proved?
The literature of the FMSF pretends to be unbiased [6] and based on science, but the low-level scientific work they cite cannot support the
theory that many memories about sexual abuse are false. For how can the situation faced by incest victims be reproduced in the laboratory?
How does one scientifically determine whether accuser or accused is telling the truth? A real scientist is someone who searches for the
truth, not someone who decides in advance what is true and then tries
to convince others by whatever means he can find. If Science had been
in the hands of groups like the FMSF, it would have got nowhere.
Catching the "false memory syndrome"
4) The FMSF implies that you can catch the "false memory syndrome" by the merest suggestion of a therapist or by reading a book, and that
once you've caught this "disease" you're likely to make up false memories about childhood sexual abuse. The FMSF offers no explanation
of why people would make up memories so painful that they themselves do
not want to believe them. The FMSF also does not ask why, if the memories are false, people get better by remembering them. People are
cured only by remembering the truth.
Furthermore, the FMSF does not consider that a fair number of people
always remembered their incest. (What they may not have dealt with are
the feelings---the rage, the grief---associated with it.) The memories
of those who always remembered and those who recovered their memories
are in every way comparable.
Moreover, if you ask: "Who has the stronger motive for making things
up, the person who remembers being abused or the person who is accused
of abuse?" the answer is clear.
Incest memories are not a fad, not implanted, not a witch hunt.
5) History shows that memories of incest are not just a current fad, as
some claim. The fact is that sexual and other kinds of abuse have been
going on throughout history. "The history of childhood," said Lloyd De
Mause in THE HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD (1974), "is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken." De Mause's carefully
researched book shows that sexual abuse, while tragically widespread
today, was even more common in the past.
6) Most incest survivors get at least some memories before they see a therapist or even read about incest, therefore their memories could
not have been "implanted." Furthermore, brains may be capable of lies
and fantasies, but can bodies lie? Almost everyone who has endured serious abuse has "body memories" in which a recurring physical pain or
sensation insists on reminding them of some early abuse, a pain that
continues until they re-experience the abuse, whereupon it disappears
[7]. A false memory could not have this effect.
around the world. Anyone who attended their meetings would be struck
by the intense pain, grief and anger that people suffer when they remember what happened to them as children. These feelings and
memories become even more authentic when one sees the beneficial changes that come about from remembering. When the pain and grief are
first felt people become dejected and often dysfunctional, but gradually the pain subsides and one sees the same people having more
energy, self-confidence and self-responsibility than they ever had and
become capable of better relationships. People also finally understand
the origin of their addictions (like drinking) and begin to cope with
their other psychological difficulties, difficulties they did not understand before or thought were innate. It becomes utterly clear
that their intense emotions, their new self-knowledge and the remarkable changes in their lives could not possibly be the result of
made-up fictions or implanted memories.
7) Incest survivors' accusations of their abusers are compared by the
FMSF to the Salem Witch Trials [8] . There are two crucial differences
which they ignore. First, a girl who accused someone of being a witch
got instant power and praise, whereas a person who accuses a relative
of past sexual abuse gets disbelief, anger, anguish and often separation from the family. Second, sexual abuse is a proven fact, but
it is clearly impossible to prove that someone is a witch.
Evidence for the validity of incest memories
8) There are probably a few thousand incest survivor self-help groups.
[1] An FMSF flyer says 2,345 families have called complaining about
their children remembering sexual abuse (more recent data indicates the
number of families is now 4,650).
[2] Pamela is the Executive Director of FMSF. Together Peter and
Pamela effectively **are** the FMSF. See page 6 for their daughter's
sensational story about their family.
[3] In the FMSF newsletter of February 29, 1992, Pamela Freyd says that
the original list of 202 prospective FMSF member families came from Dr.
Underwager's "Institute for Psychological Therapies." Some 1992 callers
to the FMSF 800 number spoke with Underwager in his Minnesota office.
The undated flyer we received from FMSF in February 1993 lists him as
an Advisory Board member; he has recently resigned.
[4] "Pedophilia" or "paedophilia" is defined by Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary as "sexual perversion in which children are the
preferred sexual object."
[5] In this article we use the popular term "incest survivor" as
shorthand for the longer phrase "adult sexually abused as a child."
6] But recent revelations by the daughter of the founders of the FMSF
show that her parents founded the FMSF because they wanted to discredit
their daughter remembering that her father sexually abused her.
[7] One man had a serious cough for three months until he remembered
that his mother tried to drown him. No medical treatment helped, but
the cough disappeared quickly after recovering the memory.
[8] See "Psychiatric Misadventures," by Paul R. McHugh, THE AMERICAN
SCHOLAR, Volume 61, Number 4, 1992, an article distributed by the FMSF;
see also "The False Memory Syndrome Phenomenon," an FMSF booklet, pg
6.
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