 Posted: Tue 7:15, 26 Apr 2011 Post subject: True Stories Of False Memories |
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| tainly one of the maximum mighty stories that numerous people hope to live by is the martyr relation. Nobody has really been abducted by aliens (though experiencers ambition dispute fiercely with us), merely millions have survived cruelties as children: neglect, sexual abuse, parental alcoholism, violence, abandonment, the terrors of war. Many people have come ahead to acquaint their stories: how they coped, how they endured, what they learned, how they migrated aboard. Stories of trauma and transcendence are inspiring instances of people resilience.
It is precisely because these accounts are so emotionally powerful that thousands of people have been drawn to fabricate "me, too" editions of them. A few have claimed to be Holocaust survivors; thousands have alleged to be survivors of alien abduction; and tens of thousands have claimed to be survivors of incest and additional sexual traumas that allegedly were quelled from memory until they entered therapy in manhood. Why would people demand to remember that they had suffered harrowing experiences if they hadn't, particularly when that belief causes rifts with families or friends? By twisting their memories, these people tin "get what they absence by revising what they had," and what they want is to turn their present lives, no matter how bleak or fleshly, into a dazzling victory over adversity. Memories of abuse also aid them resolve the dissonance between "I am a intelligent, competent human" and "My life sure is a muddle right now" with one explanation that makes them feel nice and removes responsibility: "It's not my fault my life is a mess. Look at the horrible things they did to me." Ellen Bass and Laura Davis made this causing clear in The Courage to Heal. They tell readers who have no memories of childhood sexual abuse that "when you first remember your abuse or grant its effects, you may feel colossal relief. Finally there is a reason for your problems. There is something, and someone, to reproach." It namely not marvel, then, that the most of the people who have created disloyal memories of early undergoing, like those who trust they were abducted at aliens, go apt excellent widths apt defend and maintain their fashionable explanations. Consider the fable of a young woman labeled Holly Ramona, who, afterward a year in academy, went into therapy because treatment of depression and bulimia. The therapist told her that these common problems were routinely symptoms of child sexual abuse, which Holly denied had ever occurred apt her. Yet over period, by the urging of the therapist and then at the hands of a psychiatrist who managed sodium amytal (popularly and mistakenly phoned "truth serum"), Holly came to remember that between the ages of five and sixteen she had been again raped by her father, who even coerced her to have sex with the home dog. Holly's outraged father sued both therapists for malpractice, as "implanting or reinforcing false memories that [he] had molested her as a child." The jury agreed, exonerating the father and detecting the therapists guilty. This verdict put Holly in a state of dissonance that she could decide in 1 of two ways: She could approve the ruling, achieve that her memories were false, apologize her father's forgiveness, and try to reconcile the family that had been torn separately over her accusations. Or she could reject the ruling as a travesty of righteousness, convert extra convinced than ever that her father had abused her, and renovate her commitment to recovered-memory therapy. By distant, the latter was the easier alternative for of her absence to justify the impair she had caused father and the recess of her family. To alteration her idea immediately would have been like rotating a steamship nigh in a narrow creek -- no much room to plan and perils in every intention; much easier to stay the lesson. Indeed, Holly Ramona not only vehemently rejected the verdict; she bolstered that determination by going to graduate educate to become a psychotherapist. The final we heard, she was encouraging some of her own clients to retrieve memories of their infancy sexual abuse. <br |
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