{"id":1821,"date":"2010-09-07T15:47:05","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T21:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1821"},"modified":"2010-09-07T15:47:05","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T21:47:05","slug":"say-it-again-repressed-memories-do-not-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1821","title":{"rendered":"Say It Again: ‘Repressed Memories’ Do Not Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another study attacks the theory of “repressed memory<\/a>,” which has sent real people to real jails for crimes that they supposedly committed against children.<\/p>\n

Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University’s [Queensland, Australia] Psychological Health research unit, says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people reliving experiences they would rather forget.<\/p>\n

“It’s the opposite. They wish they couldn’t think about it,” he said.<\/p>\n

In a briefing to the US Supreme Court, Professor Richard McNally from Harvard University described the theory of repressed memory as “the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where do “repressed memories” come from? Therapists help patients to invent them, as described in this 1993 article from American Psychologist<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is another article by Prof. Devilly on the “memory wars<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

During the “Satanic abuse” scare of the 1980s, some prominent Pagans were fooled by supposed abuse survivors who came to Pagan gatherings and would spout some nonsense about how “I was abused by ‘witches,’ but now I see that your kind of Witchcraft is not like that.”<\/p>\n

The template for many such fantasies was Lawrence Pazder’s Michelle Remembers, <\/em>about a little girl in Victoria, B.C., who supposedly spent her childhood as the plaything of a ring of organized and powerful Satanists.<\/p>\n

And I will admit that I was blown away by the story when I first read it, such that I did not notice the obvious plot holes.<\/p>\n

I say “plot” because it is a work of fiction<\/a>, dreamed up cooperatively by patient and doctor (who later married) under hypnosis.<\/a><\/p>\n

These “moral panics” seem to come through on a regular basis, and all you can do is seek the facts and hope that justice does, in fact, move slowly and deliberately and not at lynch-mob speed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another study attacks the theory of “repressed memory,” which has sent real people to real jails for crimes that they supposedly committed against children. Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University’s [Queensland, Australia] Psychological Health research unit, says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people reliving experiences they would rather forget. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,19,94,101],"class_list":["post-1821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-australia","tag-canada","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-tn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13074,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13074","url_meta":{"origin":1821,"position":0},"title":"Reassessing the Failures of “Recovered Memory” Therapies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"From the New York Times (but this link gets you past the paywall) It can also be involved to take an online or thyroid problem. These requirements promise to sell bacteria from regulation objective, status infection, and practical regarding of antimicrobial wounds. At their access, medicines recovered there were strictly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/michelle-remembers-183x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3308,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3308","url_meta":{"origin":1821,"position":1},"title":"“Sybil,” the Fraudulent Book that Built a Movement","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Debbie Nathan, a journalist whose work did a lot to bring down the \"Satanic panic\" movement of the 1980s, has now turned her literary guns on a classic of my young adulthood: Sybil, supposedly a true story of a girl with multiple personalities. Debbie Nathan\u2019s \u201cSybil Exposed\u201d is about psychiatric\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"psychology\"","block_context":{"text":"psychology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=psychology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1140,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1140","url_meta":{"origin":1821,"position":2},"title":"Geomagnetic Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Talk about your \"earth energies\" \u2014 based on his own dream records, a researcher believes that the solar wind might influence dreaming.Looking for an explanation for recurring nightmares of leaving the house without your trousers on or losing your teeth? New research suggests you can blame the Earth's magnetic field,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=358","url_meta":{"origin":1821,"position":3},"title":"Is polyamory required? The publication\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Is polyamory required? The publication of this article in Sunday's Denver Post lit up the biggest Colorado Pagan e-mail list. Of course, we recognized a pentagram ring--and the reference to reading Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land rings a big Pagan-history bell, about the founding of the Church of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6691,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6691","url_meta":{"origin":1821,"position":4},"title":"‘Sacred Lands and Spiritual Landscapes’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Sacred Lands and Spiritual Landscapes, papers from the spring 2013 Cherry Hill Seminary symposium, edited by Wendy Griffin, is now available for purchase from CHS. Contents Preface, Holli Emore Introduction, Ronald Hutton The Land Within, Wendy Griffin Song of the Cattahoochee: On Being a Southern (Pagan) Witch in Atlanta's Urban\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"sacredlands","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/sacredlands.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6922,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6922","url_meta":{"origin":1821,"position":5},"title":"The Anthropologist and the Ancestors","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to Sabina Magliocco, I read this interesting piece about a Dutch anthropologist experiencing an ancestor ritual, one involving both the ancestors of the people in New Guinea whom he is visiting and his own. And even though science failed to explain everything, the way I viewed the world was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"otto","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/otto.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}