Confabulations: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families

The pioneering critique of recovered memory therapy, Confabulations remains one of the best documentations and explanations of how "repressed memory therapy" has destroyed families. "Imagine what it is like to have the person you have loved, nurtured, idolized-your child-suddenly turn against you and accuse you of the most horrendous crimes imaginable," write Goldstein and Farmer. "That is what is happening in the U.S. today." In their own words, distraught parents tell a horrifying tale that becomes all too familiar by the end of the book. A successful, intelligent adult daughter or son goes to a therapist with a problem-perhaps about marriage, children, an inexplicable illness, an eating disorder. She or he emerges from therapy with the belief that all of her or his problems are related to childhood sexual abuse. And after perhaps first accusing a baby- sitter, a cousin, a family friend or a teacher, the parent is almost inevitably accused, not allowed to present a defense, and abandoned. In many cases, the parents are sued and even imprisoned-based on "memories" recovered through hypnosis, dream analysis or other pseudoscientific methods. Experts on memory know that memory is not infallible. The more distant in time a memory becomes, the more fragmented it becomes. Memory can be contaminated by later events and by what a person sees, hears or reads. Childhood memories, especially repressed memories, are often confabulations-a mixture of fact and fantasy.

Confabulations is the first book to describe the emergence of this controversial issue, and has helped thousands of parents and professionals come to grips with this monumental tragedy.

Goldstein, the founder of the Social Issues Resources Series (SIRS) in 1973, suspects that countless adults who undergo therapy come to the mistaken belief that they have been sexually molested by their parents. Unduly influenced by therapists and others, these adults confabulate vivid memories of events that never occurred. Ultimately, families are destroyed. Tragedies such as these indeed occur, and this phenomenon is a side of the child abuse story that needs to be explored. However, a subject as sensitive as this demands objectivity and strong documentation. Unfortunately, this book is a highly subjective denouncement of John Bradshaw (author of Bradshaw on the Family and Healing the Shame That Binds You , both Health Communications, Inc., 1988), Ellen Bass ( The Courage To Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse , LJ 5/15/88), and the feminist and New Age movements. Most of the evidence purporting to demonstrate that "an epidemic of false accusations is occurring" is anecdotal and one-sided, culled from more than 500 responses to an 800 telephone number. Although this book uncovers a potentially important problem, it offers too little documentation to be recommended. Goldstein received the ALA's Intellectual Freedom To Read Foundation Roll of Honor Award in 1992.--Ed.
- January Adams, Somerville P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.