Alethea wrote on February 16, 2008 08:54 PM: "Loftus is not a licensed clinical psychologist and
has never diagnosed or treated a single person through psychotherapy. In addition, respected
professionals have documented misrepresentations, scientific errors, erroneous conclusions and
ethical breaches in regard to her research. Like all myths, however, Loftus' assertions fall to
stand up when compared to the facts. Indeed, there are hundreds of scientific publications
documenting advances in the field of dissociation....Unfortunately, myths about dissociation
that ignore scientific evidence to the contrary are still being perpetuated, delaying accurate
diagnosis and treatment for survivors of abuse or trauma."

http://www.strangerinthemirror.com/psytodayresponse.html

John wrote on February 13, 2008 06:30 PM: Criticisms of Loftus:
http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/
http://kspope.com/memory/memory.php
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/#el
http://www.rememberingdangerously.com/
The only witchhunt is against survivors of child abuse by false memory proponents. Loftus has been accused of ethical breaches and misapplying research.

On memory:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p991137.html
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/prev.html
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html
Research has shown that the content of recovered memories are just as likely to be accurate as those of continuously held memories of trauma....Research shows that children rarely fabricate stories about being abused.

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Taubman_Center/Recovmem/archive.html

Recovered memory is a fact. Anyone that denies this is ignoring huge amounts of data.

Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law” by Brown, Scheflin and Hammond, W.W. Norton and Co.
The base rates for memory commission errors are quite low, at least in professional trauma treatment. The base rates in adult misinformation studies run between zero and 5 percent for adults and between 3 - 5 percent for children.

Alethea wrote on February 13, 2008 11:30 AM: Regarding, the “witch hunt” analogy, it actually works against Loftus. In 1692 The ‘witches’ of Salem were very young women (some were adolescent girls) who began experiencing convulsions, screamed excessivley, and went into trance-like states. The ones making the accusations were mostly older men who were Protestant Puritans and they were also authority figures in the town. People began to accuse many other people, mostly women, of witchcraft. Among the theories of what had really afflicted the young women was that they were suffering from “Adolescent hysteria”, which sounds identical to the labels that the FMS advocates place on those who have remembered child abuse.

In Salem, the accusers were religious men in authority positions, similar to many of the current day accused fathers who cry “witch hunt.” In 1692 the falsely accused were young women who were labeled with ‘Adolescent Hysteria’, similar to how the women who have remembered childhood abuse are often told they have ‘Personality Disorders’ and are suffering from some kind of “Hysteria.” One might argue that the people who are on a witch-hunt are the FMS proponents and accused parents who are trying to rid the world of the “evil therapists” and their “hysterical” patients.

Alethea wrote on February 13, 2008 11:27 AM: As I stated in my first post, there are people who have been led to believe they were abused, but were not. Bad therapists exist, just as there are terrible attorneys, bad judges, and awful medical doctors.

Repression is more than a theory, it is a documented reality, and has occured in Holocaust survivors, and in some cases, the war survivor had a therapist who noted remarkable improvement by the use of hypnosis to help the patient recall trauma and take power over it. The Holocaust survivors were healed from mental disturbances, and many physical problems.

Alethea wrote on February 13, 2008 11:22 AM: This was the first time that I have read such details about the case of Jennifer H. The details offer more substantiation for her recall of incest, not less.

Physical manifestations and panic attacks don't go away by inventing things. If they did, the mental health and medical industry could cure all kind of ailments by having their patients make up things which didn't happen. And so what if her father denied the abuse, and her mother denied knowing about the incest, what else is new?

Jennifer's recall sounds logical and falls in line with all other accounts of delayed memory returning. What is so unbelievable about countless rapes, a father choking his child, being raped in a basement, threats of death by the perpetrator, a mother who was willingly oblivious, and abuse taking place while other family members were around? These things happen every day to children. And death threats are highly associated with the reason for repression and dissociation.

What's wrong with joining groups for abuse survivors and reading books about abuse? If someone gets cancer then they will likely join a group for cancer patients, and if they recover, they would join one for survivors of cancer, and assuredly they would read medical books on cancer!

The fact that Jennifer wrote articles and contacted legislators shows that she is a strong woman who made big steps in healing, and she felt strong enough to take action to try and stop abuse.

"A Massachusetts jury awarded Jennifer $500,000." No amount of money can ever wipe out a parent's betrayal, violation, lack of love, and the years of suffering that a survivor of abuse goes through.

Alethea wrote on February 13, 2008 11:16 AM: "Men and women are being accused, tried, and convicted with no proof or evidence of guilt other than the word of the accuser." This is a bit of an exaggeration don't you think? I am certain that there was evidence other than the accuser's word in the cases in which a criminal conviction has been obtained. If there is a problem with insufficient evidence, then FMS proponents ought to appeal to the court system and look into having judges removed for all of these unjust trials going on.

And there is nothing new about rape, sodomy, forced oral sex, torture by electric shock, and the ritualistic murder of babies. Child sacrifice has existed since the beginning of time, and took place in recent European history. In addition, grandmothers are very capable of sexually abusing their granddaughters.

Also, Satanists exist, child sexual abuse, and the rape and torture of children exists. So does abortion carried out by a perpetrator who wants to cover up his incestuous crimes. Sometimes mothers are evil, demented, and do horrific things like killing animals in front of a child to frighten them into silence. Read the papers, do research, look at case studies. Evil exists, and sometimes it sits at the dinner table.

Steven Kalas wrote on February 13, 2008 05:52 AM: I think your read of Loftus is overstated, Alethea. She has a lot of company in skepticism regarding the reliablity/veracity of recovered memory. http://csicop.org/si/9503/memory.html

Alethea wrote on February 12, 2008 05:59 PM: All Loftus has shown is that parents lying to their child about a relatively common and non-traumatic experience, and a child appeasing their confused parent, is more in line with retractors having recanted true abuse because of family pressure, than it is with false memories.

Steven Kalas wrote on February 12, 2008 04:00 PM: Readers will find a wealth of interest, I think, in the work of Elizabeth Loftus, re: memory and the many ways that memory can be distorted depending an many factors. http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/

Alethea wrote on February 12, 2008 12:25 PM: "Body Memories" are a documented reaction to trauma, abuse, and grief. But it is unhelpful to make it seem as though the cells in the body have a 'photographic image' of memories not yet recalled. This creates a comical view of this very real and debilitating phenomenon. The memory is not stored in the body, it is stored in the subconscious mind. The unconscious sends a signal from the brain to the body when it is triggered to the past abuse or trauma, and the body immediately reacts accordingly.

In addition, even people who have recalled all of their memories will experience body memories, and so do people who have never forgotten being abused.

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