There is no doubt that sexual abuse happens in families of all nationalities and cultures regardless of financial status. Sexual abuse doesn’t discriminate between the rich and poor, or between black and white. There is also no doubt that dealing with the memories and confronting those individuals who have violated a child or person’s trust is extremely difficult and can tear families apart. It’s tough enough when the allegations are true, but can be even tougher if the allegations aren’t.
With a topic as serious as this, it is hard to believe that people would make false allegations and that therapists would take advantage of people’s vulnerability and plant such disturbing memories and experiences and convince their patients that they have been violated. Why would anyone want to do that?
Unfortunately, therapists appear to be doing this, victims are not always victims, the memories “recovered” are not always reliable, and families continue to be ripped apart.
The Controversy
The psychiatric/psychological community at large recognizes the extreme psychological trauma that accompanies sexual abuse; what they remain largely divided on is how the brain processes such experiences, and that victims can experience a form of “amnesia” or memory repression related to those abusive events. But it is really difficult to pinpoint precisely what a person’s mind does with this repressed information and how it affects a person’s life. There’s no question that these experiences shape how victims form and maintain relationships with others, and view themselves.
The claim by proponents of repression therapy technique therapists is that victims exhibit behaviors that are indicative and likely resultant from child sexual abuse experiences that the victim can’t remember. The only way for the victim to become whole is to “recover” those memories and deal with them and confront the individual or individuals who abused them.
The difference in therapeutic techniques, particularly regarding hypnosis, is in the proper case, the decision to undergo hypnosis will come about as a result of therapy that brings out a flashback or body memory without suggestion or implication from the therapist. For example, a therapist can say, “Tell me about your relationship with so-and-so”. The therapist should be guiding the conversation through her questions, her observations of body language to her questions and the answers given, but letting the patient draw their own conclusions and pictures as to what happened. Often there are snippets of memory that a patient just can’t pin down, and simple questioning and perhaps hypnosis can help to relax the mind, block out everything else that could be distracting the mind from focusing and tease out some details to solve the mystery. But there is a danger in those situations where there is absolutely no memory at all, just the therapist's assumption that something bad happened and the therapy sessions in general (not just the hypnotherapy session) are guided by that assumption—think of it as “leading the witness” that we often hear in TV programs.
When the memories come out on their own is one thing, but there have been a disturbingly large amount of cases where there actually was no sexual or physical abuse. Patrick Wetherille cited the example of a church counselor who provided therapy to a young woman and “helped her remember how her father had raped her between the ages of seven and fourteen. The suggestive techniques used by her counselor lead her to develop vivid memories of rape as well as memories of being twice impregnated by her father, only to be forced to abort the fetuses. Her father, a minister, was forced to resign…subsequent medical examination concluded that the 22-year-old had not only never been pregnant, but was also still a virgin.”
This brings a couple of issues to light: 1) It sheds doubt into the minds of everyone when someone reports sexual abuse, and it is the fear of not being believed that prevents many abused children from coming forward; 2) It means that those entering therapy need to be aware of these techniques and that there is a proper way of helping to tease memories out of the mire of the brain.
It’s Important to Note that…
1) Repressed memories can be real.
2) Hypnosis as a method of retrieving accurate information (the key word being “accurate”) is not a proven technique.
3) Gaps in memory are often filled in (sometimes erroneously) by the brain sometimes through the simplest suggestions.
4) The term Recovered Memory Therapy is not “listed in the DSM-IV or used by any mainstream formal psychotherapy modality (Wikipedia).
5) Repressed memory is recognized by DSM-IV under the term dissociative amnesia where the “continuity of the patient’s memory is disrupted…have recurrent episodes in which they forget important personal information or events, usually connected with trauma or severe stress. The information that is lost…is usually too extensive to be attributed to ordinary absentmindedness or forgetfulness related to aging” (Wikipedia and www.minddisorders.com)
**Note: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV) “is a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that includes all currently recognized mental health disorders.
Obviously, the science of the mind is not exact even for those who don’t experience anything out of the ordinary through their life. So, it can be even more uncertain when something as traumatic as sexual abuse happens. All we can do is be aware and be educated about seeking therapy and counsel from others.
This article isn’t meant in any way to diminish the experiences of sexual abuse victims and those who have experienced amnesia related to those experiences, or those for whom hypnosis has been properly used to delve into a snippet of elusive memory. I only hope that this article will empower sexual abuse victims and those who might pursue the digging up of “memories”. Hypnosis is not the be all and end all of recovering accurate memories. It should not be seen as the ultimate method for treating repressed memories, or suspected child sexual abuse, and should not be taken as the ultimate proof of an abusive event.
Sources: “Remembering Repressed Memories” by: Patrick Wetherille (accessed through: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro05/web2/pwetherille.html); Canadian Psychiatric Association (https://ww1.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Position_Papers/Adult.asp); www.jimhopper.com; www.minddisorders.com; Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org – Recovered Memory Therapy and DSM-IV Codes) (caveat: I don’t normally use Wikipedia as a resource, but these pages are well resourced and backed, and provide a good summary of information and definitions, and have provided links to other reliable sources, such as the DSM-IV and various psychiatric associations for verification or further investigation)