Osa tämän alueen lukijoista on seurannut viime vuosina ja kuukausina tälläkin keskustelualueella esitettyjä mielipiteitä ja väitteitä, jotka ovat liikkuneet insestin, lapsuustrauman, muistamisen, harhamuistojen ja FMSF:n ympärillä. Koska monilla ei ilmeisesti ole saatavilla Brownin, Scheflinin ja Hammondin massiivista (789 sivua) teosta Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law , lainaan kirjasta pienen katkelman, joka liittyy useisiin käytyihin keskusteluihin: 1. The extreme memory fallibility hypothesis (Loftus, 1979b, 1993) seriously overstates and is not supported by the available data (Christianson, 1992a,b). Autobiographical memory in general favors a partial constructive view (Brewer, 1986; Conway, 1992), as does memory for adverse childhood experience and its relationship to adult psychopathology (Brewin et al., 1993). Most narrative autobiographical memory contains a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information. For emotionally meaningful personal experiences, the gist memory is generally accurate and well retained, while the details are not. 2. The evidence strongly favors a multidimensional view of memory systems in both children and adults, with an explicit, narrative system and an implicit, behavioral memory system especially relevant to the memory debate. Neurobiological and phenomenological studies support the view that under certain conditions traumatic memory is processed differently from normal personal memory. The dissociated aspects of traumatic memory exert an implicit influence, although little is known about the relative accuracy or inaccuracy of the implicit, behavioral memory for trauma. The available data do not support the position that traumatic memory can be explained solely in terms of research on normal autobiographical memory. 3. Evidence on amnesia for trauma in a subsample of traumatized individuals is a robust finding across all types of trauma. Thirty studies currently favor the hypothesis that a subgroup of childhood sexual abuse victims forget the abuse and later recover the memory of it. No available studies failed to find periods of forgetting CSA in some subjects. The false memory position that repressed memories are a myth (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994) is given no support by the available data. While the mechanisms of forgetting remain controversial, the existence of amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is well established by the available data. The evidence further suggests that the sample of individuals who forget childhood sexual abuse is probably heterogeneous, with one subgroup having the CSA memory potentially accessible at least under certain conditions and another subgroup having no available CSA memory. 4. The few data-_base_d studies on accuracy of recovered memories of abuse demonstrate that recovered memories of abuse are no more or less accurate than continuous memories of abuse. The false memory hypothesis that recovered memories are necessarily inaccurate is given no support by the available studies. 5. The hypothesis that false memories can easily be implanted in psychotherapy (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus, 1993; Loftus &Ketcham, 1994; Ofshe & Watters, 1993, 1994; Yapko, 1994a) seriously overstates the available data. Since no st udies have been conducted on suggestion effects in psychotherapy per se, the idea of iatrogenic suggestion of false memories remains an untested hypothesis. Three so-called Shopping Mall studies, none of which controlled for social/contextual variables affecting the memory report and none of which provided for an adequate _base_line for distinguishing real from fictitious childhood events, do not constitute an adequate test of the hypothesis that entire fictitious events can be implanted through suggestion. When false reports are given, the evidence suggests that these are primarily a function of compliance and only rarely a function of changing the memory representation per se, A large body of available indirect evidence drawn largely from laboratory _base_d studies on various types of suggestive influences implies that suggestion effects operate in psychotherapy. However, these data imply that substantial suggestive distortion of memory in psychotherapy probably occurs only under very specific conditions, namely, with individuals who are high on the continuum of the trait of memory suggestibility and/or who are sub' jected to the extremes of interviewing, in which the interviewer systematically supplies a high proportion of misinformation and fails to warn the interviewee about memory distortion. 6. There is no evidence that retractors; are ca pable of giving reliable reports about their former psychotherapy experience. False memory proponents who cite research on memory suggestibility to encourage retractors to sue therapists for allege- edly implanting false memories through therapeutically suggestive influences remain blind to how this same research applies to post-therapeutic suggestive influences, not the least of which include significant familial coaching and/or systematic post-therapeutic misinformation supplied by false memory advocacy groups and the media. 7. The hypothesis that bizarre recollections like Satanic ritual abuse memories must be the result of therapeutic suggestion is given little support in the so-called Shopping Mall studies, which demonstrate that suggestions for implausible events that never occurred are not readily accepted by most subjects. 8. The DID iatrogenesis hypothesis is seriously overstated and is given little support by the available data (Gleaves, 1996). While there is no evidence that the psychiatric disorder itself can be suggested, there is evidence that specific alter behavior (one dimension of a larger set of core clinical features) is influenced by social/contextual demands. 9. The idea of a false memory syndrome has little construct or discriminant validity (Hovdestad & Kristiansen, 1996) and there is no adequate evidence that the majority of families associated with false memory advocacy groups were accused by individuals fitting the profile of a false memory syndrome (British Psychological Society, 1995). 10. The long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse are highly variable; no single set of defining features currently exists. However, the false memory view that there is no causal relationship between adult psychopathology and childhood maltreatment (e.g., Dawes, 1994) is refuted by the available prospective studies (e.g., Silverman et al., 1996; Widom & Morris, in press). A reasonable conclusion is that a portion of the variance of adult psychopathology (e.g., posttraumatic and dissociative symptoms, trauma-_base_d pathological schema change, certain forms of relational pathology like traumatic bonding, and sometimes addictive behaviors and depression) is causally related to childhood abuse, while another, perhaps greater, portion of the variance is unrelated to childhood abuse. Adult narrative reconstruction of childhood experiences, including traumatic experiences, is neither completely accurate nor completely inaccurate and is generally representative of what is known about autobiographical memory, namely, that the gist of memorable experiences is generally accurate while the details are not(Brewin et al., 1993). Yet, psychologically motivated defenses and certain psychiatric diagnoses can contribute to substantial memory distortion, at least in certain individuals with a history of childhood trauma (e.g., Dalenberg, 1996). 11. The false memory view that professional trauma treatment is a form of memory recovery therapy (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus, 1993; Ofshe & Watters, 1994) seriously mischaracterizes the growing corpus of clinical literature, on phase oriented trauma treatment. Phase-oriented trauma treatment does include an emphasis on memory integration among its broad-_base_d treatment goals; memory recovery plays a limited role with select patients who suffer from dissociated amnesia. 12. Reconstruction of a narrative memory for trauma is a legitimate goal within the context of phase-oriented trauma treatment. Reconstructed recollections typically contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information, and the gist of what is reconstructed in treatment is generally accurate (Brewin et al., 1993), except for a select minority of patients who would give distorted memory reports under most circumstances, and except under the extremes of systematically suggestive interviewing. The skilled clinician remains neutral with respect to the relative accuracy or inaccuracy of these recollections and helps the patient to develop his or her capacity to test the reality of these recollections critically. 13. The false memory hypothesis that certain memory recovery techniques, such as guided imagery, hypnosis, and journaling, are dangerous and contribute to significant pseudomemory production when used in therapy represents a problem of misplaced emphasis. The available data consistently demonstrate that imagery and hypnotic procedures combined with free recall and appropriate warnings result in a significant increase in the total amount of information recollected about a meaningful target event without a corresponding significant increase in the memory error rate. However, guided imagery or hypnotic procedures combined with suggestive interviewing, in which a high proportion of misinformation is supplied by the interviewer within and across sessions, along with other interrogatory techniques not accompanied by warning about memory distortion, result in a highly significant memory distortion rate, at least in certain individuals. The false memory view that imagery and/or hypnotic techniques per se significantly increase the memory error rate is not supported by a large number (IT, studies with sophisticated research designs adequate to apportion the variance of what variables do and do not contribute to pseudomemory production. 14. The assessment and treatment
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