Twelve Myths about False Memories

1. False memories of abuse are always implanted by poorly trained therapists, usually through hypnosis

Not true. Any therapist, no matter how highly trained, may unwittingly encourage false memory if s/he subscribes to the belief that hidden memories of abuse are responsible for adult problems and that the memory can be recovered.

2. Dissociated memories which are recovered are more likely to be accurate than repressed ones

Not true. There is no more evidence for dissociation as a mechanism of abuse memory amnesia than repression. Some theorists prefer dissociation because it suggests that 'part of' the client always remembered the abuse so they cannot be false memories. On inspection, this often turns out to mean the memory was stored in a personality fragment called 'an alter' which is supposed to represent a frozen stage of development. There is no scientific basis for this construction and the process of mapping alters and quizzing them for information is a process of false memory formation.

Les resten her.