Making Monsters: False Memory, Satanic Cult Abuse, and Sexual Hysteria

Looks at the history of recovered memory therapy, argues that this approach creates false memories, and assesses the damage done by those memories

This is the most thoroughgoing and powerful critique to date of the use of recovered memories in psychotherapy. Many retrieved memories of childhood sexual abuse, the authors argue, are fabrications generated in a coercive, highly charged atmosphere using questionable therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis, dream analysis, artwork and the constant revisiting and rewriting of vague early memories. Ofshe, a social psychology professor at UC Berkeley and a Pulitzer-winning reporter, and freelance writer Watters extend their analysis to include alleged sufferers of multiple-personality disorder and people who claim to have been abused or tortured by satanic cults that engage in sacrificial murder and rape. The authors name names, attacking therapists, experts and writers, and they cover such well-publicized cases involving recovered memories as the 1990 San Francisco murder trial that convicted George Franklin on the basis of his daughter Eileen Lipsker's accusation that he had killed her childhood friend Susan Nasson 20 years earlier. This report is certain to escalate a heated public debate.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A forceful, persuasive indictment of the fad of repressed memory therapy and its attendant theories of multiple personality disorder and satanic cult abuse. Ofshe (Social Psychology/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley), a Pulitzer Prize winner for public service reporting, and Mother Jones contributor Watters document the harm done by psychotherapists who practice memory therapy. Using the writings of its practitioners, the authors examine cases to show how powerful therapeutic techniques, such as hypnosis and guided imagery, implant in patients the erroneous belief that they are uncovering repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. As memory therapy has grown, so has the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, which the authors charge is a product of such therapy. Multiple personalities are believed to be formed in response to childhood abuse, and memory therapists claim that each alter personality can produce a set of memories of that abuse. Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of repressed memory therapy is the assertion by some of its leading proponents that among the abusers they have uncovered a secret international satanic cult linked to (among others) the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, and the CIA. Here the authors manfully resist the impulse to poke fun, but their disbelief is clear. Unsubstantiated theories are nothing new in the mental health field, but they assert that the current popularity of memory therapy is an especially serious problem. Aside from the primary victims--the patients subjected to such therapy--the authors point to the harm done to their families, who often must defend themselves in court against false accusations of abuse. Their hope is that mental health empiricists, who argue that practice should be based on scientific observation, will carry the day. Looks at some of the same cases as Elizabeth Loftus's The Myth of Repressed Memory (p. 908) but covers more ground and digs deeper. Sure to provoke angry outcries. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If you haven't heard of false memory syndrome and the controversy it engenders, you haven't seen a talk show recently. In the last decade, there has been a veritable explosion of cases in which (mostly) women in therapy remember being sexually abused by their parents. In many instances, the memories escalate, and the patients eventually exhibit symptoms of multiple personality disorder or recall being victims of satanic cults. Ofshe, a social psychologist, and Watters, a Mother Jones writer, examine this psychological phenomenon and offer two explanations for its current prevalence: either recovered-memory therapists have achieved a breakthrough in the understanding of the human mind, in which case much that is fundamental about our understanding of psychology will need to be reinterpreted, or the practice of uncovering repressed memories has been built into a pseudoscience by therapists who have created "an Alice-in-Wonderland world in which opinion, metaphor, and ideological preference substitute for objective evidence." Firmly supporting the latter view, the authors offer a thoughtfully written, restrained (even a bit dry), and generally persuasive examination of what false memory syndrome reveals about society as well as ourselves. Ilene Cooper