Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

258 CHAPTER 6 Memorystudy, some of the participants continued to struggle with the vividness of the falsememory. “I totally remember walking around in those dressing rooms and mymom not being in the section she said she’d be in,” one participant said (Loftus &Pickrell, 1995).The research strategy of using information from family members to help createor induce false memories of childhood experiences has been dubbed the lost-in-themalltechnique (Loftus, 2003). By having participants remember real events alongwith imagining pseudoevents, researchers have created false memories for a widevariety of events. For example, participants have been led to believe that as a childthey had been saved by a lifeguard from nearly drowning (Heaps & Nash, 2001).Or that they had knocked over a punch bowl on the bride’s parents at a weddingreception (Hyman & Pentland, 1996).Clearly, then, research has demonstrated that people can develop beliefs andmemories for events that definitely did not happen to them. One key factor in thecreation of false memories is the power of imagination. Put simply, imagining thepast as different from what it was can change the way you remember it. Several studieshave shown that vividly imagining an event markedly increases confidence thatthe event actually occurred in childhood, an effect called imagination inflation(Garry & Polaschek, 2000; Thomas & others, 2003).CRITICAL THINKINGThe Memory Wars: Recovered or False Memories?Repressed memory therapy, recovery therapy, recovered memorytherapy, trauma therapy—these are some of the names of atherapy introduced in the 1990s and embraced by many psychotherapists,counselors, social workers, and other mentalhealth workers. Proponents of the therapy claimed they hadidentified the root cause of a wide assortment of psychologicalproblems: repressed memories of sexual abuse that had occurredduring childhood.This therapeutic approach assumed that incidents of sexual andphysical abuse experienced in childhood, especially when perpetratedby a trusted caregiver, were so psychologically threateningthat the victims repressed all memories of the experience (Gleaves& others, 2004). Despite being repressed, these unconsciousmemories of unspeakable traumas continued to cause psychologicaland physical problems, ranging from low self-esteem to eatingdisorders, substance abuse, and depression.The goal of repressed memory therapy was to help adult incestsurvivors “recover” their repressed memories of childhood sexualabuse. Reliving these painful experiences would help them begin“the healing process” of working through their anger and otherintense emotions (Bass & Davis, 1994). Survivors were encouragedto confront their abusers and, if necessary, break all tieswith their abusive families.The Controversy: The “Recovery” MethodsThe validity of the memories recovered in therapy became thecenter of a highly charged public controversy that has beendubbed “the memory wars” (Loftus, 2004; Mazzoni & Scoboria,2007). A key issue was the methods used to help peopleunblock, or recover, repressed memories. Some recoveredmemory therapists used hypnosis, dream analysis, guidedimagery, intensive group therapy, and other highly suggestivetechniques to recover the long-repressed memories (Thayer &Lynn, 2006).Many patients supposedly recovered memories of repeatedincidents of physical and sexual abuse, sometimes beginning inearly infancy, ongoing for years, and involving multiple victimizers(Pendergrast, 1996). Even more disturbing, some patientsrecovered vivid memories of years of alleged ritual satanic abuseinvolving secret cults practicing cannibalism, torture, and ritualmurder (Loftus & Davis, 2006; Sakheim & Devine, 1992).The Critical Issue: Recovered or False Memories?Are traumatic memories likely to be repressed? It is well establishedthat in documented cases of trauma, most survivors aretroubled by the opposite problem—they cannot forget their traumaticmemories (Kihlstrom, 2004; McNally, 2004). Rather thanbeing unable to remember the experience, trauma survivors sufferfrom recurring flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and memories of thetrauma, and nightmares. This pattern is a key symptom of posttraumaticstress disorder (PTSD), which we'll discuss in Chapter 13.In more than twenty-five years of doing several hundredstudies involving perhaps 20,000 people, we haddistorted a significant portion of the subjects’ memories.And the mechanism by which we can convincepeople they were lost, frightened, and crying in amall is not so different than the mechanism by whichtherapists might unwittingly encourage memories ofsexual abuse.ELIZABETH LOFTUS (2003)