Psychological warfare - Can the horror of childhood abuse resurface later?

By GREG DIXON

Dr John Read is a worried man. A local website is wondering — rather loudly it would seem — "how often does Read hear voices?" It's calling him "a liar," too, and a few other things besides.

From his office at the University of Auckland's department of psychology, the senior lecturer sounds incredulous. He seems staggered by the savagery of a salvo fired by those who discredit what he wholeheartedly believes: that a person can recover repressed memories, sometimes long-distant memories, from the depths of consciousness.

"This is how the false memory syndrome's supporters operate, by trying to bully people into silence with hate websites and so forth," says Read, a clinical psychologist with 20 years' experience, most recently at Auckland Hospital's Conolly Unit.

"I'm quite shocked. It is an unpleasant feeling to see your photo and personal hate mail on websites. Now I have a sense of what it might feel like when they do this to abuse survivors.

"I finding it very draining, really. They are nasty people. But they think I'm nasty, too, I suppose."

Welcome to what have been called the "memory wars." A near internecine conflict has arisen between those who believe recovered memory is a form of collective, often media-hyped, hysteria and those who say that it is possible to recover memory of events such as abuse during childhood, events that can be responsible for mental illness in later life.

This is a battle without borders. From the United States to Britain to New Zealand, the issue has been debated and disputed since the mid-1980s by academics and clinicians, victims and alleged perpetrators and, of course, as is inevitable with such a divisive argument, the media.

Some would say the idea that memory can be repressed and retrieved has been "popularised" through books — The Courage to Heal, by Ellen Bass, published in the late 1980s, being possibly the most significant — through talkshows and through revelations from celebrities such as American comedian and talkshow host Roseanne Barr.

Others would say the backlash against it, which began in the early to mid-1990s, has used similar public marketing techniques, helped along by multi-million dollar lawsuits taken by those who say health professionals have implanted false abuse memories in their minds.

Both sides say they have the research to prove their case, both sides dispute the veracity of the other's findings. Both sides believe they are right.

And so, of course, does Read. Which has, not unexpectedly, made him a target in the memory wars' latest local skirmish, the sort of stoush only academia can turn on.

It started with a leak, with a newspaper story reporting that Read had resigned from his position as director of scientific affairs for the New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPS), a professional association of 750 of the country's psychologists, academics and students. Read had held the position since 1998 and was due, in any case, to step down next month.

He had — along with a number of other society members — decided to take a stand against the inclusion of noted American psychologist Elizabeth Loftus as one of six keynote speakers at the society's annual conference which begins in Hamilton this weekend.

Loftus, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, is an authority on research into memory and a researcher of false memory syndrome.

The conference's organising committee extended an invitation for her to speak after it learned she was already visiting the country this month.

It wasn't the invitation of Loftus that rankled with Read, however, it was her conference ranking. She was to be the first keynote speaker, after Health Minister Annette King's opening address, on the conference's opening afternoon.

"I resigned as director of scientific affairs," Read says, "to distance myself from a decision giving undue prominence and credibility to the controversial arguments of Professor Loftus."

Read says he was not, as director of scientific affairs, consulted by the committee before the invitation was made, but certainly "consulted about the invitation" after it was extended.

Murray Hahn, the Hamilton-based chairman of the conference's organising committee, says Read "requested that we withdraw the invitation." The committee said no.

Read and others then asked that another key-note speaker, one supporting recovered memory, should be included to balance the debate. This the committee also rejected — because its keynote slots were already full, Hahn says — and offered instead an hour-long discussion after Loftus spoke. Read dismissed the offer, saying a discussion group after Loftus' address would deal only with what she had said not about "more important issues." Then he resigned.

"Of course, false allegations of any serious crime, like the rape of children, do occur and when they do they can have devastating consequences." Read says.

"All I ask is that we all stay focused, at this time of national crisis, on what each of us can do to contribute to, rather than inhibit, the identification and prevention of the abuse of New Zealand's children."

Hahn says the committee was "blown away" by the strength of feeling about Loftus' address.

"There was an offer put for [Loftus] to provide a keynote address," he says. "We discussed it with the president [of the society, Professor Ian Evans of Waikato University] and with other senior colleagues in Hamilton. She seemed like an appropriate person to have to talk about her research."

Only she wasn't, according to some quarters.

Read says that many NZPS members believed the timing of Loftus' keynote address was wrong. Loftus' speech might "be unhelpful at a time when New Zealanders are seeking positive solutions to the recent horrendous stories of child abuse and create the impression that the society in any way endorsed the notion that child abuse is frequently imagined or falsely remembered.

"While Professor Loftus' work is primarily about adults, those adults were once children. Her research has been used, on quite a massive scale, in United States courts by defence lawyers seeking to discredit the testimony of abused children when, years later, they are brave enough to stand up as adults and say what happened to them."

The stance taken by Read and others has led to suggestions they are against academic freedom — an accusation Read vigorously denies.

"I think anyone who knows me personally or follows the New Zealand media knows that I am in no way adverse to public debate."

Says Hahn: "There's lots and lots of rhetoric that is being spoken. I think the bit that I don't think should occur is that we stifle debate about such issues. My feeling is that if we withdrew Professor Loftus, essentially what we would be saying was there was only one side to this particular debate."

In any case, Hahn says, previous conferences have included keynote addresses in support of recovered memory without offering a speaker with an opposing view.

Loftus is already on nodding terms with notoriety in the United States. At various times, her work has led her to being called a whore by a prosecutor, seen her assaulted by a fellow aeroplane passenger shouting "you're that woman" and has required her to have security guards at lectures.

But for her part, she seems somewhat bemused by this antipodean spat.

"I feel like I'm back in a time warp," she says late one night from her home in Seattle. "I went through some of these kinds of experiences five, six, seven years ago when I first started speaking out about this problem."

Loftus, who began her research into memory in the early 1970s, specifically with regard to eye witnesses, rejects the suggestion that she has ever said children make up stories about abuse on a large scale. Most courtroom testimony she has made as an expert witness has involved adults and her giving evidence about the power of suggestion to distort recollection.

"Can people remember things they haven't thought about in a long time? Yes, absolutely. Can memories be triggered by retrieval cues, things that you haven't brought up in your memory for years? Yes. You just have to go to a high school reunion and you can experience that for yourself but also there is research to document it.

"Can people be raped for a decade, [suffer] satanic ritual abuse and completely banish it all out of awareness? There is just no credible scientific support for that. That's as far as I've been able to go in these court cases."

Read says his concerns are based on research done at the University of Auckland about the long-term effects of childhood abuse and a need to ensure that abuse survivors receive the treatment they require from mental health professionals.

"We have found that in New Zealand, like elsewhere, child abuse is very common in both inpatient and outpatient adult psychiatric populations. We also demonstrated, yet again, that child abuse is related to a range of adverse effects in adulthood, especially suicide.

"Of equal concern is our finding that the more mental health staff believe abuse disclosures to be false the less likely they are to ask their clients about abuse. This suggests that people whose job it is to provide support to abuse victims may be becoming reluctant to even ask about abuse. This is not going to help New Zealand to solve its current crisis.

"I hope that Professor Loftus would agree that proper abuse inquiry should be a normal part of taking a life history from our clients."

Loftus says she cannot understand the argument that her speech, which will address the
malleability of memory ("the flimsy curtain that separates our imagination and our memory"), will distract attention from New Zealand's present debate over child abuse.

"I think they're very different [arguments] and I would think that responsible people would recognise the difference and help other people to appreciate that they are different. It's the argument that you shouldn't pay attention to one problem because there is a different one going on. Who would ever say let's forget about cystic fibrosis because there is so much more cancer going on and it will divert the funds away from the curing of cancer. We can pay attention to two problems at one time."

NZPS president Professor Ian Evans says although it will not totally surprise him if protesters gather for Loftus' speech this weekend, he believes the spat has not done the society any damage.

"I think we do all respect each other as colleagues and respect different points of view. In the end psychology is a scientific profession. We've got to try to examine the evidence and judge the evidence and our understanding must come from there."

Unlocked memories versus the power of suggestion

Pro: Recovered memory supporters believe that a patient can "remember" or "recover" memories, often of childhood abuse, usually sexual, that the patient has repressed.

The theory suggests that in order to cope with such trauma, a victim can employ a psychological defence known as dissociation, which involves splitting off awareness so that the conscious mind is elsewhere.

The result is repression of the memories, a self-protective amnesia.

However, this repression is thought to lead, often in later life, to severe psychological symptoms that have, otherwise, no clear cause.

The therapist's role is to help the patient to recover these memories so that the present problems may be treated.

Anti: False memory syndrome proponents believe that, because of the reconstructive nature of memory, it can be distorted by a variety of influences, including suggestion by authority figures such as therapists and environment.

They believe that some people may be particularly vulnerable in certain contexts — for example, psychotherapy — and thus may accept
"evidence" of trauma when it has no basis.

When therapists conclude that a patient has been sexually abused, they may lead that patient, intentionally or unintentionally, to reach the same conclusion, thus planting false memory.

FMS supporters are concerned that innocent people can be falsely accused, destroying their and their families' lives as a result.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica