Completely and totally disgusting and obnoxious is that article, as well as patronizing and self-serving. The 'hints' to 'keep quiet' and 'let the elders handle it' are scattered throughout the article ad nauseum.
They DON'T HAVE A CLUE about abuse and its effects, do they?!!!! Grrrrr.
Eat this, Watchtower...
Better yet, print it in one of your magazines. How about some REAL Research for a change?
/ag
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<http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/Research/Trauma___Memory/trauma___memory.html>
Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory
Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenonof the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
Hot off the Press: The Latest News and Research
* The Evidence for Dissociative Amnesia - A Review of 100 years of Research by Stephanie Dallam: read here: <http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/Research/Trauma___Memory/FMS-Online/Diss_Amnesia/diss_amnesia.html>
* Commentary: Response to Media Reports on Loftus' Bugs Bunny Study by Jennifer J. Freyd, University of Oregon (Febuary 2003)
* Memory for Abuse: What can we learn from a Prosecution Sample?
In press, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse
Jennifer J. Freyd, University of Oregon - Comment on Goodman, G.S., Ghetti, S., Quas, J.A., Edelstein, R.S., Alexander, K. W., Redlich, A.D., Cordon,I.M., & Jones, D.P.H. (2003). A Prospective study of memory for child sexual abuse: New findings relevant to the repressed-memory debate. Psychological Science, 14, 113-118.
Answers to frequently asked questions
What is the Prevalence of Dissociative Amnesia for Traumatic Events?
* Summary of Research Examining the Prevalence of Full or Partial Dissociative Amnesia for Traumatic Events <http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/Research/Trauma___Memory/RM-prev/rm-prev.html>
Studies show that a period of either partial or full amnesia is reported by between 30 and 90% of adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. Moreover, no study that has looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse failed to find it:
Can Recovered Memories be Valid?
* Summary of Research Examining the Validity of Recovered Memories - Research has shown that the content of recovered memories are just as likely to be accurate as those of continuously held memories of trauma.
* The Recovered Memory Archive - an Internet-based research project, directed by Professor Ross E. Cheit of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University. This Page lists more than 80 cases where recovered memories have been corroborated.
* Traumatic Amnesia in Holocaust Survivors
* Sivers, H., Schooler, J. , Freyd, J. J. (2002) Recovered memories. In V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.) Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, Volume 4.(pp 169-184). San Diego, California and London: Academic Press. Full text at http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/recoveredmemories.pdf
* What about Recovered Memories? (webpage by Jennifer Freyd, PhD)
* Videotaped Discovered of a Reportedly Unrecalled Memory of Child Sexual Abuse: Comparison with a Child Interview Videotaped 11 Years Before. This article presents the history, verbatim transcripts, and behavior observations of a child?s disclosure of sexual abuse to Dr, David Corwin in 1984 and the spontaneous return of that reportedly unrecallable memory during a taped interview 11 years later. (WOW! Neat!/bg) Because both interviews were videotaped, the case of Jane Doe is considered one of the most rigorously documented case studies of memory recovery.
(Corwin, D. L., & Olafson, E. (1997). Videotaped Discovered of a Reportedly Unrecalled Memory of Child Sexual Abuse: Comparison with a Child Interview Videotaped 11 Years Before. Child Maltreatment, 2, 91-112.)
Is There Consensus Among Professionals on the Issue?
* Position Statements by Professional Organizations - Most major professional associations that have examined this issue has recognized that full or partial forgetting of genuine memories of abuse can occur.
* Recovered Memories: True or False? Statement by the Leadership Council on recovered memories.
* Childhood Trauma Remembered: A Report on the Scientific Knowledge Base and Its Applications. A 24-page document published by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Download Childhood Trauma Remembered (PDF Format 1.2 MB)
* Decision of United States District Court, District of Massachusetts -- "After considering [numerous] factors, this Court finds that the reliability of the phenomenon of repressed memory has been established, and therefore, will permit the plaintiff to introduce evidence which relates to the plaintiff's recovered memories" (p.3).
Is There a False Memory Syndrome?
* Memory, Abuse, & Science: Questioning Claims about the False Memory Syndrome Epidemic by Ken Pope, PhD. This article examines the scientific validity of False Memory Syndrome as a diagnostic category. The paper was the award address for the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Service and published in the American Psychologist.
* Crisis or Creation? A Systematic Examination of ?False Memory Syndrome? by Stephanie J. Dallam. This article critically examines the assumptions underlying ?False Memory Syndrome? to determine whether there is sufficient empirical evidence to support it as a valid diagnostic construct. Epidemiological evidence is also examined to determine whether there is data to support its advocates? claim of a public health crisis or epidemic.
* The "False Memory" Defense: Using Disinformation and Junk Science in and out of Court by Charles L. Whitfield, M.D., Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 9 (3 & 4). Child sexual abuse is widespread and dissociative/traumatic amnesia for it is common. Accused, convicted and self-confessed child molesters and their advocates have crafted a strategy that tries to negate their abusive, criminal behavior, which we can call a "false memory" defense. Each of 22 of the more commonly used components of this defense is described and discussed with respect to what the science says about them.
Why Does Trauma Leave Such Lasting Effects?
* The Effect of Childhood Trauma on Brain Development -- Summary of research examining the impact of childhood trauma on growth and development.
How Could a Child Forget Something as Horrible as Abuse?
* The Effect of Trauma on Memory Systems in the Brain - Summarizes and links to research examining the effect of trauma on memory.
* Betrayal-Trauma Theory: -- Professor of cognitive psychology Jennifer Freyd created a useful web page explaining her theory of why children forget suppress awareness of some traumas and not others.
How Often do Children?s Reports of Abuse Turn Out to be False?
* Review of Research Examining the Veracity of Children?s Reports - research has repeatedly demonstrated that children rarely fabricate stories about being abused.
Social Controversies Involving Traumatic Memory
* The Views of False Memory Proponents Writings by proponents of false memory syndrome
* U-Turn on Memory Lane - by Mike Stanton -- Stanton heads the investigative team at The Providence Journal-Bulletin, where he shared a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Stanton studied recovered memory on a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University.
* Legal and Ethical Issues Related to Allegations of Iatrogenic Creation of False Memories
Articles examining how scientific research can inform the courts about the reliability of recovered memory evidence
* Holocaust Denial -- Holocaust deniers portray themselves as engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and ?truth.?
* Resources on the Web -- Websites which offer relevant information on recovered memory and/or the so-called false memory syndrome.
Trauma and Memory
The Leadership Council <http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/>
Absolutely terrible WT article Re: Repressed Memories.... WARNING: Triggers
by Nosferatu 12 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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abbagail
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abbagail
Dear WT: And here's some valid research for your next AWAKE! article about dealing with abuse effects... (yeah, right!)
/ag
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The Evidence for Dissociative Amnesia (Excerpts from webpage(s)/ag)
by Stephanie Dallam RN, MS, FNP
<http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/Research/Trauma___Memory/FMS-Online/Diss_Amnesia/diss_amnesia.html>
A traumatic memory is a memory of personally traumatic event. For the purpose of diagnosing PTSD, a personally traumatic event is defined as:
?The person experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others....The person?s experience involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.? (DSM-IV, APA 1994, p. 427-31).
One of the most effective ways people cope with overwhelming trauma is called "dissociation." Dissociation is a complex mental process during which there is a change in a person's consciousness which disturbs the normally connected functions of identity, memory, thoughts, feelings and experiences.
Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
Overview of Historical Research (snipped... if you want to read the history of the research, go to the link at the top of this page./ag)
A review of 50 studies revealed that amnesia rates tend to increase with severity of trauma and is particularly high in victims of sex crimes.
What factors increase likelihood that the trauma will be forgotten?
There are several factors which influence whether a traumatic experience is remembered or dissociated.
* The nature and frequency of the traumatic events and the age of the victim seem to be the most important.
* Single-event traumas (assault, rape, witnessing a murder, etc.) are more likely to be remembered, but repetitive traumas (repeated domestic violence or incest, political torture, prolonged front-line combat, etc.) often result in memory disturbance.
* Stressful experiences caused by natural or accidental disasters (earthquakes, plane crashes, violent weather, etc.) are more likely to be remembered than traumatic events deliberately caused by humans (i.e. incest, torture, war crimes).
* People who are adults when they experience traumatic events are less likely to dissociate conscious memories of the events than children who experience trauma.
* Clinical evidence indicates that the population most likely to develop amnesia for traumatic experiences consists of child victims coerced into silence about repetitive, deliberately caused trauma such as incest or extra-familial physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
* Another factor that contributes to memory disturbances is the double-bind felt by children trying to make sense of living in abusive relationships on which they depend for nurturance.
The double-bind that children are placed in when a child suffers abuse at the hands of a caretaker, is discussed by Jennifer Freyd in her book on Betrayal Trauma. Freyd's theory explains how a blockage of information is functional, allowing a child who is abused by a parent to be able to ignore information that would otherwise interfere with their ability to function within an essential relationship.
Freyd, Jennifer. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Sexual Abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Seven factors predicting amnesia:
1. Abuse by caregiver
2. Explicit threats demanding silence
3. Alternative realities in environment (abuse context different from nonabuse context)
4. Isolation during abuse
5. Young at age of abuse
6. Alternative reality-defining statements by caregiver
7. Lack of discussion of abuse
How Accurate are Recovered Memories? (snipped)
Williams, L. M. (1995). Recovered memories of abuse in women with documented child sexual victimization histories. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8(4), 649-673. (snipped)...the women themselves were very often unsure about their memories and said things such as 'What I remember is mostly a dream.' Or, 'I'm really not too sure about this.'
What is causes the memory to resurface?
Albach, F., Moormann, P. & Bermond, B. (1996). Memory Recovery of Childhood Sexual Abuse. Dissociation,9(4), 261-273.
Events that triggered recall of abuse:
* Discovering their own daughter had been abused (you hear that alot/ag)
* After another trauma occurred
* When confronted with specific sensory triggers, especially during a time when they were ?physically and emotionally exhausted.?
Triggers mentioned included:
* Being touched on the back
* Smell of alcohol or tobacco on a man's breath; male sweat; specific soap or after-shave; semen
* Hearing panting noises or footsteps on the stairs
* Seeing things such as an erect penis, dirty hands, specific masculine pajamas, a handkerchief, and white liquids.
* Reading articles or seeing television programs about incest. Verbal cues were not as significant as olfactory, sensorimotor, auditory, and visual cues.
Conclusion
* Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture.
* The more severe the trauma, the more likely it is to be forgotten. (or buried/ag)
* Overall, a recovered memory is just as likely to be accurate as a continuously remembered one. However, recovered memories have a prominence of emotional and sensory-perceptual elements vs. declarative (verbal) elements. They are often fragmentary and incomplete and thus hard to make into coherent story.
---
Summary of Research Examining the Prevalence of Full or Partial Dissociative Amnesia for Traumatic Events: <http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/Research/Trauma___Memory/RM-prev/rm-prev.html>
(snipped out this portion.../ag):
Studies summarized in Table 2 show that a period of either partial or full amnesia is reported by between 30 and 90% of adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. ...
By 1999, over 68 studies had been published that document dissociative amnesia after childhood sexual abuse. In fact, no study that has looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse has failed to find it. see: Brown, Scheflin, & Whitfield. (1999). Recovered Memories: The Current Weight of the Evidence in Science and in the Courts, Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 27, 5-156.
The reality of traumatic amnesia is further supported by investigations of memory and attention in carefully controlled laboratory settings. For example, a study recently published in the prestigious journal Nature demonstrated that people have executive control processes that can prevent unwanted declarative memories from entering awareness. Anderson & Green, Suppressing Unwanted Memories by Executive Control, 410 Nature 366-369 (2001, March 15). See also Davis, Repression and the Inaccessibility of Affective Memories, 52 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 585-93 (1987). (Reviews laboratory research demonstrating that some individuals display limited accessibility to personal, real-life affective memories. The effect is particularly pronounced for experiences involving fear or embarrassment.)
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<http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/Research/Trauma___Memory/FMS-Online/Diss_Amnesia/diss_amnesia.html>
For More information:
BOOKS
Trauma and Recovery, by Judith L. Herman, Basic Books, 1992.
Brown, D., Scheflin, A., & Hammond, C. (1998). Memory, trauma treatment and the law. W. W. Norton & Company.
Brown, D., Scheflin, A., & Whitfield, C. L.: Recovered memories: The current weight of the evidence in science and in the courts. The Journal of Psychiatry and Law 26:5-156, Spring 1999.
Journal of Traumatic Stress
Special Issue: Research on Traumatic Memory (October 1995) Guest Co-Editor: Jessica Wolfe
Childhood Trauma Remembered: A Report on the Scientific Knowledge Base and Its Applications. A 24-page document published by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Download Childhood Trauma Remembered (PDF Format 1.2 MB)
Recovered Memory Archive: Annotated list of corroborated cases of recovered memory. Provides a detailed list of corroborated cases of recovered memory. Also includes a list of peer-reviewed studies on the subject of amnesia and child abuse, and traumatic amnesia in Holocaust survivors.
Jim Hopper, Ph.D.?s Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse: Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources. A comprehensive resource, with a Hypertext Table of Research Findings.
PsychTrauma Glossary. This glossary is useful for sorting through the sometimes confusing terminology used in discussions of trauma and memory.
The Leadership Council, Inc. <http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/ -
abbagail
And don't forget Jim Hopper's website, while you're at it, WT...
/ag
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Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse
Scientic Research & Scholarly Resources
<http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/>
By Jim Hopper, Ph.D.
(last revised 2/16/2004)
Amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is a condition.
The existence of this condition is beyond dispute.
Repression is merely one explanation
? often a confusing and misleading one ?
for what causes the condition of amnesia.
At least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood
will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse,
followed by experiences of delayed recall.
(Conservative estimate based on published research. See link at top.)
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