The following piece was published as an editorial in the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, and was co-authored with Ruth Blizard.
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) was officially dissolved on December 31, 2019. The FMSF launched in 1992 in the United States, with the stated aim of promoting awareness of a supposed epidemic of “false memories” of sexual abuse. At this time, social awareness of child abuse had led to considerable cultural and legal change. Children and adults were disclosing child abuse in unprecedented numbers, and therapy for complex trauma and dissociation was emerging as a specialist mental health field. Scientific recognition of delayed disclosure and traumatic amnesia prompted a range of law reform efforts to expand opportunities for adult survivors to pursue civil damages or criminal charges, acknowledging that most abused children don’t disclose at the time, and that some survivors may have limited or no recall of the abuse (Mindlin, 1990).
In reaction, there was a backlash against child protection investigations and criminal prosecutions of child sexual abuse cases (A. Salter, 1998). This backlash had been gathering momentum throughout the 1980s, as US-based advocacy groups such as Victims Of Child Abuse Laws claimed that suggestive interviewing techniques were leading children to make false allegations of sexual abuse (Hechler, 1988). The FMSF appears to have been a continuation of this campaign, albeit targeting new legal remedies for adult survivors (Blizard & Shaw, 2019). The FMSF argued that many or most adults disclosing abuse in childhood were suffering from “false memory syndrome”, in which therapists implanted false memories of abuse that never took place. Despite the passionate claims of FMSF advocates to rationality and science, false memory syndrome was never accepted in psychiatric diagnostic systems. Nonetheless, as a concept, it leant pseudo-scientific heft to the denials of parents (often fathers,) accused of sexual abuse by adult children (typically daughters) (Gaarder, 2000).
The therapeutic field of complex trauma and dissociation was the main target of the FMSF and “Multiple Personality Disorder” (MPD, now dissociative identity disorder or DID) served as their stalking horse. At the time that the FMSF was founded, MPD had only recently been recognised in the third addition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980. The FMSF exploited public ignorance about this relatively new diagnosis to mischaracterise the mental health field as saturated with professional misconduct. The subsequent legal and media attacks on therapists and authors in the trauma field have been well documented (Calof, 1998; Pope, 1996; A. Salter, 1998). Like any field of practice, but particularly in an emerging specialisation, the quality of treatment for MPD/DID existed on a spectrum from outstanding to less so, but lawsuits targeted some of the best in the field as well as others. The implications for professional practice in complex trauma and dissociation were far-reaching. Those therapists who continued to research, diagnose and treat dissociative disorders did so in the face of professional scepticism and isolation. Some left the field while others were dissuaded from entering.
The original scenario of false memory implantation involved a client with no history of abuse who was subjected by a therapist to highly suggestive techniques designed to elicit misleading thoughts and feelings about abuse (Chris R Brewin & Bernice Andrews, 2017). However, over time, the false memory movement would identify a range of potential indirect influences that might give rise to false memories. Just being exposed to information about child sexual abuse through television or books might be enough, advocates suggested, to trigger the onset of false memories (Pope, 1996). The image of the false accuser shifted from a victim of therapeutic malpractice to a malingerer or opportunist who was motivated to concoct false memories for attention, financial compensation or to explain away their own shortcomings.
The elasticity of the logic of false memories attracted many admirers. Kitzinger (2004) has remarked upon that extraordinary appeal of false memory syndrome amongst journalists in the 1990s, some of whom took up the cause of accused men as a personal crusade. She attributes the activist role of journalists in debates over false memories to a male-dominated newsroom culture that was sceptical of claims of sexual violence, and who found the novel and emotional dimensions of false memory stories to be commercially appealing. Journalist championing of false memory syndrome played a central role in the establishment of international false memory societies well beyond the bounds of the United States (M. Salter, 2017).
False memory societies forged close working relationships between academics and lawyers, and theories of false memories became influential in civil, criminal and family court matters. Warnings that false memory researchers who received substantial sums of money as defence experts were in a conflicted position vis a vis their interpretation of their results went largely unheeded (Freyd & Quina, 2000). This research bias may have had a chilling effect on publication of studies challenging research claims that false memories are easy to develop (Chris R. Brewin & Bernice Andrews, 2017). The narrow focus of false memory research on preventing uncorroborated allegations of abuse may have deflected inquiry away from the possibility that abuse survivors’ testimony may be wrongly dismissed, along with the ways perpetrators may interfere with survivors’ memories for abuse (Becker‐Blease & Freyd, 2017).
Within an echo chamber of academic, legal and media sympathy, the notion that memories of child sexual abuse are particularly untrustworthy became taken-for-granted “common sense”. One of the recurring characteristics of the application of false memory research – whether in courts, in the media, or in the community at large – is that it is most often deployed against the powerless and in the interests of the powerful. Once it was successfully mobilised against women complaining of child sexual abuse, the concept of false memories was also available to dismiss other forms of testimony that challenge the status quo.
For instance, in the late 1990s, Australia began to openly acknowledge the history of the Stolen Generations, in which an estimated one third of Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families from 1910 – 1970 as part of an explicitly genocidal state program (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997). In response, a group of journalists rallied against the testimony of survivors, who they accused of false memories (Tatz, 2001). When two survivors of the Stolen Generation attempted to sue the Australian state (Cubillo and Gunner v the Commonwealth of Australia), the logic of false memories featured centrally in the judicial determination that their removal was lawful (Cunneen & Grix, 2003). In Cubillo, O’Laughlin J stated:
I am also concerned that they [the complainants] have unconsciously engaged in exercises of reconstruction, based, not on what they knew at the time, but on what they have convinced themselves must have happened or what others may have told them.
Consistently, and persistently, theories of false memories have been aptly available for the exculpation of the wealthy and the powerful. This point is illustrated by a brief overview of some of the cases where prominent false memory researcher Professor Elizabeth Loftus has appeared: in the defence of a Bosnian-Croation soldier for aiding and abetting the rape of a Muslim woman, to exculpate a senior aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney for misleading investigators regarding the leak of the name of a CIA operative, to question the credibility of Professor Christine Blasey-Ford when she complained about an alleged sexual assault as a teenager by current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh , for the defence team of the convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein and now for accused child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
Most recently, in Australia, allegations of false memories were revived when it emerged that a woman known only as “Kate” (who, sadly, died by suicide in 2019) claimed to have been sexual assaulted by the now-serving Australian politician Christian Porter when they were both teenagers (MItchell, McPhee, & Evans, 2021). Porter, like Kavanaugh, vigorously denied the allegation. There was no court case but instead a journalist speculated that Kate suffered from “recovered memories”, on the basis that she had apparently read Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score prior to her allegations becoming public knowledge (Hardaker, 2021). By this logic, merely reading a book that mentions child sexual abuse could be the trigger for a false allegation; never mind that Kate diarised the alleged assault while still a teenager, or that she had described the incident to friends decades prior to reading van der Kolk.
In a sign of how much has changed since the 1990s, the response to this argument was not agreement but outrage. This outrage was evident across social media but also from within journalism itself. The media outlet who ran the original piece quickly assigned another journalist to cover the story from a more sympathetic angle, while Australian media outlets ran multiple pieces rebutting the false memory proposition. One journalist wrote about his own diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and its impact on his capacity to recall traumatic events and correctly label them as harmful (Morton, 2021).
Undoubtedly, the emergence of the false memory movement three decades ago had a negative effect on professional and social understandings of trauma and dissociation. However, it also provoked researchers, practitioners, survivors and advocates to redouble their efforts to develop the evidence base for trauma therapy. Reinders and Veltman’s editorial this year in the British Journal of Psychiatry laid out the cumulative neurobiological evidence for the trauma model of DID. The diagnosis that the FMSF insisted, a quarter century ago, was a passing fad with no scientific foundation is now out of the shadows (Reinders & Veltman, 2021). Meanwhile, the forms of betrayal, abuse and violation that false memory syndrome sought to explain away as mere confabulations are now recurrent features of media and policy commentary. Multiple criminal cases and public inquiries have substantiated the seriousness of child sexual abuse and exploitation, institutional tendencies towards denial and cover-up, and the inadequacies of current policy response.
The FSMF closed with a whimper rather than a bang. The American branch had been inactive for many years, with almost half of their advisory board deceased, and many of those still alive in their 80s and 90s. The new generation of mental health professionals may never have heard their name, or merely see them as an historical curiosity. But their legacy persists in ongoing media, academic, legal, and community scepticism.
References
Becker‐Blease, K., & Freyd, J. J. (2017). Additional questions about the applicability of “false memory” research. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31(1), 34-36.
Blizard, R. A., & Shaw, M. J. J. o. C. C. (2019). Lost-in-the-mall: False memory or false defense? , 1-22.
Brewin, C. R., & Andrews, B. (2017). Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31(1), 2-23. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acp.3220
Brewin, C. R., & Andrews, B. (2017). False memories of childhood abuse. The Psychologist, 30, 48-52.
Calof, D. (1998). Notes from a practice under siege: Harassment, defamation and intimidation in the name of science. Ethics & Behavior, 8, 161–187.
Cheit, R. (2014). The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cunneen, C., & Grix, J. (2003). The limitations of litigation in stolen generations cases: Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney.
Freyd, J., & Quina, K. (2000). Feminist ethics in the practice of science: The contested memory controversy as an example. In M. Brabeck (Ed.), Practicing feminist ethics in psychology (pp. 101–124). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Gaarder, E. (2000). Gender politics: The focus on women in the memory debates. Journal of child sexual abuse, 9(1), 91–106.
Hardaker, D. (2021, March 5). Here’s one for an independent inquiry: did recovered memories target Christian Porter? Crikey, pp. https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/2003/2005/christian-porter-recovered-memories/.
Hechler, D. (1988). The battle and the backlash: The child sexual abuse war. Lexington, Massachusetts; Toronto: Lexington Books.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. (1997). Bringing them home: Report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Retrieved from
Kitzinger, J. (2004). Framing abuse: Media influence and public understanding of sexual violence against children. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.
Mindlin, J. E. (1990). Child Sexual Abuse and Criminal Statutes of Limitation: A Model for Reform. Wash. L. Rev., 65, 189.
MItchell, G., McPhee, S., & Evans, M. (2021, June 24). Christian Porter rape allegation documents revealed. Sydney Morning Herald, pp. https://www.smh.com.au/national/christian-porter-rape-allegation-documents-revealed-20210624-p20215844m.html.
Morton, R. (2021, March 6 - 12). Why our media and politics fail trauma survivors. The Saturday Paper, pp. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2021/2003/2010/why-our-media-and-politics-fail-trauma-survivors/161535780011237.
Pope, K. S. (1996). Memory, abuse and science: Questioning claims about the false memory syndrome epidemic. American Psychologist, 51, 957–974.
Reinders, A. A., & Veltman, D. J. (2021). Dissociative identity disorder: out of the shadows at last? The British Journal of Psychiatry, 219(2), 413-414.
Salter, A. (1998). Confessions of Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learnt. Ethics & Behavior, 8(2), 115–124.
Salter, M. (2017). Organized child sexual abuse in the media. In N. Rafter & M. Brown (Eds.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Crime, Media and Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tatz, C. (2001). Confronting Australian genocide. Aboriginal history, 25, 16-36.