“You will always remember where you were on the day of 9/11”. I have heard this statement multiple times over the years. On the radio, on TV, and in adult conversations. Usually, people say they were at work, or glued to the TV, and phoned their family. For my part, I remember being in my grade three classroom and a staff member coming in and telling the teacher.
But there is a problem. The terrorist attacks occurred in September 2001. At that time, I was not in Grade 3. Also, I was not in a classroom. Instead I was in a portable that year, on the opposite side of the school. My memory of 9/11, one that I was told I will always remember, is entirely false.
The Effects of Trauma
Fundamentally, false memories are errors in recall. A person will remember an event that either did not happen or in a way that is different from how it occurred. In many laboratory experiments, psychologists have been able to stimulate false memories in their test subjects. In the real world, false memories are often associated with trauma.
When I was little, there was an incident where my younger brother almost drowned in a lake. My brother, dad and I were all together by a dock when this happened. We all remember this incident and have the same story. However, my mom has an entirely different recollection. Her memory of this event is completely different from ours. She believes she was present and that it occurred at a nearby beach instead. My brother, dad and I did not even hear her retelling of the event until over a decade later. We believe that she has a false memory and that my mom heard our stories of the incident over the years. Naturally, she would find the story of her son almost drowning to be very unsettling. My guess is her version came to her in a dream. I know I’ve had a few mundane experiences where I’ve thought: did I do that? Or was that a dream?
Suggested or Repressed?
In psychology circles, the cousin of the false memory is the repressed memory. These are usually memories that are so traumatic that the mind buries them, making normal recall impossible. Some psychotherapists claim that this protects the conscious personality. However, they are not totally forgotten, instead causing problems like eating disorders and sleeplessness. These psychotherapists often use hypnosis or repeated questioning to reveal these repressed memories.
These techniques are controversial as the psychotherapist can end up suggesting, even inadvertently, ideas to the patient. I like to compare this to the legal concept of “leading the witness”. This is when lawyers ask baited questions to get desired answers from witness testimony. Similarly, the psychotherapist goes into the therapy with the theory that the patient has some repressed memory of trauma. They hypnotize the patient and ask repeated questions all in that same line of thinking. This eventually coaxes out a (false?) memory of a traumatic event that supports their initial theory. That does not exactly follow the scientific method.
One problem for the patient is that under hypnosis, in their mind they really do experience a memory of the trauma. Obviously, my mom did not recover a memory under hypnosis, but I do think that our retellings of the event maybe served as suggestion. However, to my mom, her version is very real, and she gets very uptight if you question her on the details of it. Similarly, this is often the case with people who have recovered repressed memories under hypnosis, something that one particular scientist encountered in her research.
Its Not a Lie if You Believe It.
Susan Clancy is a young memory researcher in the US. As a graduate student she set out to study false memories, specifically those that recovered under hypnotism. There are many cases of people remembering childhood trauma and abuse, especially of a sexual nature, under hypnosis. Susan Clancy’s early research suggested that at least some of these cases were not true memories at all. Instead, they were suggested, likely unknowingly, by the hypnotist.
Obviously, this proved extremely controversial. People believed she was claiming the subjects were imagining sexual abuse. This generated a lot of heat when the victims insisted they were telling the truth. As Clancy describes in her book Abducted, she was forced to modify her research project in the face of this public outcry. Instead she found a cohort of people with demonstrably false memories: alien abductees. This is a great book that I read last year, and I will touch upon it some more in a later post. She had a lot of interesting findings but her central thesis strongly challenges the idea of using hypnosis to recall memories. Yet, her initial experience with hypnotism and sexual abuse victims illustrates an excellent point – true or false, the memories are very real to the person who believes them.
False Memories in Court
This situation plays out in several past court cases. The book Spectral Evidence by Moira Johnston details the Gary Ramona case, one of the most well known. Gary’s daughter Holly suffered from bulimia and depression. Under hypnosis, she recovered memories of her father regularly raping her since she was 5 years old. She later confronted her father. After divorce and losing his job, Gary Ramona sued Holly’s therapists. The case involved several specialists in false memories serving as expert witnesses.
Ultimately, Gary Ramona did win a settlement. However, his ex-wife, daughter, and the therapists still insist on the truth of the memories. The thing is, they could be right. But, the means of recovering the memories is extremely dicey, and that means that they could be false memories. Additionally, there is no real way to prove that to the person who holds the memories. At that point, its arguing against their own reality. This is why I find the phenomena of false memories so fascinating.
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