Review of M. Conway's Recovered Memory, False Memory

  The recovered memory question seems like a race that never ends, its finish line constantly receding the closer we get to the checkered flag, full of false starts, wrong turns, and jostling for position. Can anyone hope to find anything new to say on a subject scrutinized by everyone from Nicholas Spanos to Sally Jessy Raphael? The debate appears to have been fomented by an unfortunate conflation which, if recognized more clearly early on, might have put the brakes on a kind of artificially prolonged contentiousness. Somewhere along the line "Satanic Ritual Abuse" (now discredited), false memories, multiple personality disorder, and repression came to be regarded as intrinsically connected. But because alleged "multiples" think they "repress" memories of "satanic ritual abuse" which they later think they "recover" even though the abuse never occurred tells us nothing about the validity of repression or about the credibility of recovered memories per se. What it does tell us is that some people, under some circumstances, can be led to believe things that didn't happen. This can't come as much of a shock to anybody. Besides, like all good poets know--and all psychologists should--the past is irretrievable anyway. As Albright so felicitously put it--with him I agree whole-heartedly, more and more--"if the self is genuinely fictitious, then it is irrelevant whether such abuse actually occurred--there no longer exists a distinction between verifiable and unverifiable memories." Perhaps it's time to start thinking of psychology as just another branch of "fantastic literature," Allbright merrily murmurs.

  Still, all niggling demurrals aside, this volume has several strengths that similar volumes on the subject lack, and ought to be read immediately by anybody interested in a subtle, nuanced, and blessedly fair-minded appraisal of this rather complicated topic. Conway has brought together many of the field's leaders--himself included--and so, at the very least, the reader is treated to an array of incisive reflections. Moreover, while other similar endeavors seem ocassionally unnuanced, injudicious, and illogical, this book is none of those things. Conway and his co-contributors alike avoid hyperbolic pronouncements (unlike those found in Loftus' recent The Myth of Repressed Memory, to take but one example. Loftus is notably absent from the present volume), and constantly succeed in engaging the various subtleties of the debate. In that sense, the book is gloriously, refreshingly antidotal. One feels immensely grateful for that fact alone.

  Also, while previous authors seem inclined to use the fact of false memory, its special significance in the realm of psychotherapy, as yet another occasion for Freud bashing, Conway wisely rejects that impulse. As it is, a sort of "tabloid Freud" prevails in most accounts of the memory debate. Conway gets his Freud right, and even--correctly--notes Freud's prescience in these matters. After all, let's be perfectly clear--Freud is not to blame for "False Memory Syndrome" any more than, say, Roger Sperry is to blame for pop-psychological oversimplifications of split-brain research. Freud understood suggestibility, he appreciated memory's constructive qualities, and in the "Wolfman" case history in particular--his most concentrated analysis of the subject--he explictly declares that in many instances we can't possibly know whether a recovered memory is true or false. Making Freud responsible for the sometimes venal, hurtful practices of today's therapists who suggest abuse histories on the basis of zero evidence is virtually moronic. That Conway avoids this error puts him in a distinct minority and represents yet another good reason to single his volume out for special praise.

  One other distinction bears mentioning. Conway and other contributors repeatedly cite the importance of case study research. At one point he goes so far as to assert that the analysis of case studies "is the one way in which the study of recovered memories can progress" (19). I couldn't agree more. In a field like this one, where each case is so uniquely constituted, close scrutiny of the individual instance can be immensely clarifying, and suggestive of future research directions, an inspiration for theoretical improvements and later nomothetic endeavors. Like Freud himself said, the case study..... (see diss proposal).

  Several chapters stand out. Conway introduces the endeavor sure-footedly, and instantly we know we are in very good hands. He announces the volume's unique aim--non-adversarial theoretical collaboration between clinicians and researchers--then describes the chapters to come, in the process touching on assorted basic issues. One point, a kind of aside, caught my attention--how memory grounds and limits the self of the rememberer. This seems like a signally relevant fact. It accounts for some of the zeal with which this topic has been pursued. For if who we are is largely what we recall having said or done, and if what we recall having said or done is often not close to what we really said or did, then self must be something of a fraud. We are gap-filling interrupted selves, plagiarized selves, invented selves, crazily mutable, hardly durable, far more fictive than factual.

  Much of the recovered memory debate hinges on what children reasonably can store and recall in narrative form. After all, adults can't retrieve instances of very early abuse unless those instances get laid down initially in accessible forms. The chapter by Fivush, et al on language and memory development therefore serves an immensely clarifying function, especially for clinicians encouraging reconstruction. They show, among other things, that events occurring before 18 months, though perhaps reflected in behavior, are extremely difficult to verbalize, even after children develop sophisticated language skills. But by two-and-a-half months, a benchmark age in this context, kids do recall a good bit of accurate, albeit fragmentary, information, including memories of trauma, while at three-and-a-half, narrative skills emerge, and children seem capable of the kind of selfing process associated with telling a credible story. In contrast to other researchers who often portray the child's recollections as infinitely fallible and infinitely plastic, Fivush, et al point out that in the absence of suggestive or frankly misleading post-event information, kids are remarkably immune to influence. This point squares with other recent research (Ceci & Loftus), and deserves to be kept firmly in mind. Kids are not thoroughly and simply untrustworthy in their recall. Especially after the age of three, they seem able to store facts and stick to their story about them. At the same time, any adult recovery of material traceable to age two or earlier ought to be held in considerable doubt.

  Schacter, Norman, and Koutstaal provide a cognitive neuroscience perspective on recovered memory, beginning with the sensible adminition that "illusory memories of abuse exist yet at the same time . . . some traumatic memories can be forgotten and later recovered." That might seem obvious to some--as it should--but it bears quoting, mostly to counteract the tendency to overapply findings confirming the embarrassing ease with which false recall can be induced. It's true, researchers in laboratory settings and clinicians, too, can get people to remember things that didn't actually happen to them. On the other hand, therapists can also succeed in facilitating accurate recoveries. In a similar vein, Schacter, et al also emphasize how, "because some traumatic experiences can be forgotten, it does not logically follow that they can be recovered." As Loftus argues in her theory of "destructive updating," some vanished memories, however much nostalgists might like to think otherwise, might be permanently unavailable to conscious reflection. They might "die," in other words, or get replaced by thematically similar material--just like previous text documents on hard drive get obliterated by saved revisions to them. As far as the neuroscience goes, evidence on hippocampul volume reductions, glucocorticoids, and stress-related hormones, while tantalizing, remains equivocal and/or inconclusive. As Schacter et al conclude, these are at best "intriguing but speculative possibilities that merit exploration in future research."

  Conway's own contribution on autobiographical memory in particular is extraordinarily rich, a veritable hive of suggestiveness. I can't fairly summarize it here. Among other things, he cites Kris' concept of the personal myth, and the notion that a memory's meaning might be even more important than its veridicality--Freud might agree--especially since memories are not static mental objects that get lost, misplaced, or hidden, but transitory constructions produced as part of a selfing process. It follows, then, that a memory can "never only be a record of past occurrence." To speak of accuracy versus inaccuracy is to neglect the converging, largely non-conscious control operations at whose behest autobiographical material is "made."

  Finally, Schooler, Bendiksen, and Ambadar exemplify, in their approach, the use that might be made of case-study examinations in clarifying the contours of the recovered memory debate. The four cases they review suggest ample theoretical and empirical opportunities. In each instance, recall occurred abruptly, accompanied by deep emotion. In two of the four instances, the rememberer seemed to forget a period during which he/she was aware of the memory and had even discussed it with others. Schooler, et al declare that "to our knowledge, this profound underestimation of one's prior memory state has not been documented in the literature before." Actually, it has. In an essay on anosognosia (denial of illness) in right parietal lobe patients who weirdly disavow their left-sided paralysis, neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran shows that, under some conditions, hemiplegics can be made to overcome their denial, even to discuss it perfectly clearly. Just 8 hours later, however, they not only revert to their previous disavowals, but also repress the admission of paralysis that they had made earlier! On the basis of evidence just like this, Ramachandran goes so far as to boldly declare that "contrary to the frequently expressed view that memory repression is not a real phenomenon, my findings provide compelling experimental/clinical evidence that it is indeed a robust psychological process." Apparently people can admit knowledge that they later vehemently and categorically reject. And while many seem to resist uttering the very word repression--or unconscious, for that matter--preferring instead assorted psychoanalytically neutral euphemisms, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then we may as well call it a duck, no?