Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives - Softcover

Pendergrast, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006387527 ISBN 13: 9780006387527

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998

Synopsis

‘I doubt whether any book of greater importance will be published in 1997.’ Anthony Storr, The Times.

In March, 1995, a Winchester father is imprisoned for eight years on the uncorroborated oral evidence of his daughter, who had recovered memories of sexual abuse while in psychiatric care; a Yorkshire father is freed, seventeen months after his arrest, when the Prosecution finally admit that his 22-year-old’s allegations against him were entirely false.

Victims of Memory examines the whole terrifying phenomenon of repressed memories: the sudden invention/recollection in adulthood of appalling sexual abuse committed by parents and relatives long, long, before, memories that have lain unnoticed at the back of the victim’s mind for decades, only to be ‘recovered’ by an enterprising analyst. The book uses real cases and real lives, here, in America and in Australia, to present all sides of the story: accusers, the accused, the retractors and the analysts in their own words.

About this title

From the Publisher

Upper Access Books originally published Victims of Memory in 1995, and the book was so highly received that the second edition was released just a year later. The first edition is now out of print, but all of the information that it included (and much more) can be found in the second edition. We are proud to offer Victims of Memory, considered to be the most comprehensive book on this subject, to individuals and families all over the world.

From Booklist

They're staples on talk shows--adult incest survivors who have only recently recovered memories of being abused. Until lately, it was politically correct to believe the abused, never the accused. Then parents and others who felt themselves unjustly accused banded together to form the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. What is going on here? Pendergrast has written a well-researched and important book, and his findings should rightfully scare all of us. Pendergrast, it must be said, is not an objective reporter: his own daughters have accused him of abuse. His shock at their allegations sparked a personal crisis, leading to the writing of this book. Despite his conflict of interest, Pendergrast tries for evenhandedness, going so far as to offer in-their-own-words chapters by those with repressed memories and the therapists who treat them. But there is also a chapter from the "retractors," women who have realized that their memories of abuse were only products of their own imaginations.

Pendergrast's account of this controversial subject is wide ranging. He covers everything from the nature of memory and hypnosis to such related forms of sexual hysteria as the Salem witch trials to this country's growing cult of victimization. He also chronicles how abuse memories often lead to memories of ritual satanic abuse. His strongest and most effective assaults are reserved for the book The Courage to Heal, the bible of the repressed-memory movement, which informs readers that if you feel you've been abused, even if you don't remember the abuse, you probably have. Pendergrast takes readers into an Alice-in-Wonderland world in which innocent incidents, such as the back rubs he gave his daughters, become starting points for "remembered" abuse. He details how therapists, using The Courage to Heal, lead their patients into "memories" and encourage them to abandon their families without giving parents any chance to refute the accusations. (Patients often find new "families" in survivor support groups.) Pendergrast makes a strong case that what began as a way to empower women has now victimized them, isolating them from friends, families, and their true memories. This book is sure to spark a long-overdue debate, and it deserves to be on library shelves, right beside The Courage to Heal. Ilene Cooper

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006387527
• ISBN 13: 9780006387527
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 784