Wrong memories

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False memories ( English false memory ) are personal memories that cannot be traced back to a real event. Synonyms in this sense are: pseudo-memories, falsification of memories. They are to be distinguished from the falsification of memories , in which existing memories of personal experiences are subsequently changed. Although false memories in this sense can also be memories of isolated individual facts (e.g. words that have not been mentioned), the real theme of this presentation is the autobiographical memory of complex events that were not experienced.

Wrong memories

Disambiguation

A suggestion for using the synonyms narrows the concept of pseudo-memories in contrast to fantasy memories to "successfully talked into but not experienced events". This definition is not very helpful because several mechanisms usually contribute to the formation of false memories. It is true that complete memories of unexperienced events can only be traced back to fantasy, imagination and autosuggestion. Persuasion and external suggestion in the broadest sense almost always only give the impetus to intensive occupation of the fantasy, the imagination and to auto-suggestive processes of all kinds. Therefore, the terms false memories, pseudo-memories and false memory are not differentiated here. The term falsification of memories is less common and is not used here because it can be confused with falsification of memories .

The reason for building up false memories can, however, also lie in a real event. In principle, it is then a question of falsification of the memory, but the change and falsification can reach a level at which the original event is barely recognizable or no longer recognizable at all. Even then, one has to speak of false memories.

False memories that are particularly frequent and, as a result, serious, arise in psychotherapy .

memory

Every memory presupposes a memory . For the purpose of this article, we will not explain the basics of brain physiology. Here are just the most important functional mechanisms of memory psychology. Experiences are registered by our senses and stored extremely briefly in sensory memories. A selection of these goes into the short-term / working memory, which carries out intermediate storage with very limited storage capacity for a few seconds to a few minutes. At the same time, content in the working memory is related and linked to one another. These contents are then stored in long-term memory. Long-term memory is not represented in a uniform structure in the brain, but is distributed over large parts of the cerebral cortex. Here z. B. optical memories stored in other places, such as acoustic. Long-term storage divides the content into many different and differently localized centers. In all of these processes, a selection takes place so that only a very small fraction of the original sensory information reaches the long-term memory.

Remembering something means reassembling the information stored in long-term memory about an experience in working memory. To do this, it must be collected again from all the different memory areas of the brain, i.e. reconstructed. Memories are not fetched compactly and true to the original from an “archive”, but are put together again and again. At the same time, however, new contents in the working memory can be linked to it. Then everything is saved again, with the content being more or less changed compared to the original. Each time a memory is called up, the result is potentially a memory corruption. Details on z. B. Kühnel and Markowitsch or Schacter.

Memory researchers agree that memories cannot necessarily be traced back to experiences. All contents of the working memory are material for memories and can be stored for long-term. This also applies to content that is only imagined and presented. Most of the time, the information about how the memory came about is part of the memory, but this information can be lost over time. Then z. B. a pure fantasy product or something that has only been heard to become an experienced event. This is called source mix-up, a common process that is well known in memory research. A classic report for such a "self-generated" false memory can be found in Oliver Sacks' memoirs.

Researchers also agree that memories of possible events cannot be used to determine whether or not they go back to an experience. Whether a memory is false or real can only be shown if there is real evidence as to whether it was experienced. However, essential indications of whether a memory is experience-based arise from the development of the memory. That is the subject of statement psychology .

Historical

Memory psychology is one of the oldest fields of work in empirical- scientific psychology, which broke away from the regime of philosophy in the last third of the 19th century. Even before 1880, Hermann Ebbinghaus conceived his work On Memory . Psychological pioneers like Emil Kraepelin and Freud were already aware that memories can be wrong .

It was not until 1959 that false memories came into the focus of scientific work when James Deese developed a test in which subjects who were read a number of words from a common context remembered words from the same context that were not read aloud were. This test was later developed by HL Roediger and KB McDermott and became a standard test in memory psychology ( DRM test ). However, this test is more of an association test and only shows false memories of individual facts.

In the eighties and nineties of the last century, initially exclusively in the USA, the phenomenon developed in which people expressed memories of early trauma, especially sexual abuse, which had remained unknown into adulthood. The perpetrators responsible for this vigorously denied that these events had occurred. Most of the memories arose in psychotherapy and were interpreted as the recovery of repressed memories. At the same time, allegations of massive sexual abuse arose in kindergartens and preschools based on the questioning of children. Here, too, the allegedly guilty party vigorously denied the allegations.

A scientific controversy quickly arose over the question of whether these memories were based on real experiences or not. The scientific discussion was supported on the one hand by mainly clinical psychologists, for whom the recovery of repressed memories of traumatic experiences or memories split off in alternative personalities (memory recovery) was the way to cure a multitude of psychological problems in their patients. On the other hand, there were empirical scientists who questioned the thesis of repression or separation and their recovery due to a lack of empirical-methodological foundation and set out to demonstrate the artificial generation of false memories of complex experiences.

How dramatic the situation was can best be seen in a study that looked back at the development over time of the phenomenon described in the USA. Accordingly, the phenomenon described was observed with minimal frequency as early as the 1970s. However, the number of cases rose steeply at the end of the 1980s, peaking in 1991 and 1992, and then falling again just as steeply by the year 2000. The half-life of the incidence of these cases was approximately 5 years. The total number of cases affected is not known. A retrospective study by Patihis and Pendergrast came to the conclusion that in the USA 18% of psychotherapies started between 1990 and 1994 led to the discovery of previously unknown experiences of abuse. That suggests many millions of cases in the 1990s.

Much of the scientific evidence on displacement and false memories comes from or emerged from the years of this controversy. The fierceness of this dispute over memories led to the term "memory wars", that is, memory wars. The term goes back to the title of the book "The Memory Wars" by F. Crews, which was critical of Freud, but describes the entire scientific controversy in the following. A non-scientific, but nevertheless very illuminating situational representation of this time can be found in M. Maran.

This controversy does not persist with this vehemence, but remains structurally unchanged and is not limited to the USA. It is true that in the considerably different legal system of the USA, trials against psychotherapists who were accused and convicted of false therapy by their former patients have at times contributed very strongly to the decline in the number of investigative psychotherapies. However, the aforementioned study by Patihis and Pendergrast reports that 9% of psychotherapies started in the US between 2015 and 2017 resulted in previously unknown sexual abuse being detected. It can be assumed that the majority of these are therapeutically generated false memories. Converted to the total population (over 20 years) that is 9.1 million people. This number should be understood cumulatively over the population group and all years. This corresponds to 4% of the total population over 20 years. Therefore, the following presentation is not only historical, but also relevant.

Although the numbers cannot be directly transferred to Germany, one probably does not make a big mistake if one puts the number of therapeutically generated false memories proportional to the number of therapists. In 2015 and 2016, the corresponding numbers were 106,000 licensed therapists in the USA and 22,500 in Germany. This suggests 1.9 million cases in Germany or 2.8% of the population over 20. However, this does not yet take into account the fact that revealing therapies began about 10 years earlier in the USA than in Germany. About 1/4 of the cases reported in the study were due to therapies in the first 10 years. Accordingly, in Germany we only have to use 3/4 of the calculated number, ie approx. 1.4 million cases. Of course, such a rough estimate cannot replace a study analogous to that by Patihis and Pendergrast in Germany, and it does not yet exist.

The total number of cases of abuse in Germany cannot be found in the crime statistics because the number of unreported cases is very high. It can best be taken from a study by the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, in which around 12,000 representatively selected people were interviewed. [14] The results of this study lead to a cumulative approx. 6 million cases of abuse in Germany, but due to the study methodology, the cases of false memories are also included. That means that almost a quarter of all reported abuse cases have to do with false memories.

False memories of complex autobiographical events, especially trauma

The controversy between empirical research and clinical practice covers a number of very different topics that play a role in false memories and need to be discussed:

Research on Traumatic Memories

The clinical literature on traumatic memories postulates on the basis of therapeutic experiences that traumatic experiences are subject to different storage mechanisms than non-traumatic ones, whereby a distinction is sometimes made between one-off and repeated experiences. The theory of Bessel van der Kolk has an enormous influence. After that, extremely stressful experiences are not encoded in declarative memory, as is usually the case, but are fixed in implicit memory and physical memories . These should be immune to the subsequent changes typical of all other memory contents and should remain unchanged. Van der Kolk bases his theory primarily on the undisputed effects of stressful situations on the release of hormones and messenger substances . In particular, he refers to the damage shown in animal experiments to brain structures, which are necessary for the formation of long-term memories, by high concentrations of stress hormones .

This storage of traumatic experiences should express itself in body feelings and sensory effects (The Body Keeps the Score), but also in nightmares and flashbacks , which are interpreted as a precise reliving of the traumatic event. When trying to give a literal description of the memories, the traumatized would often find it difficult to put their experiences into words. The memories arise only gradually over a long period of time in fragments and incomplete.

This theory underlies a large part of trauma therapy practice.

Another influential theory on trauma memory comes from Lenore Terr. She postulates that individual traumatic experiences are well encoded in the memory, but repeated stressful situations should lead to these events and entire periods of life being completely hidden in the memory. These are then difficult to recall later on.

In contrast to these theories from the interpretation of clinical observations are the results of empirical research. In general, it has been known since the earliest times of memory research and has been verified many times that traumatic events stick particularly well in the memory, often so well that they unintentionally and undesirably impose themselves on the person concerned. For this reason, intrusive memories, which were observed in particular in war veterans, are a main criterion for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the diagnosis catalogs DSM and ICD .

A detailed criticism of the theories of van der Kolk and Terr can be found in McNally. According to this, implicit memories are not immutable, as van der Kolk assumes, but are modified in the same way as explicit memories. If impairments of long-term storage by stress hormones play a role, which can by no means be taken as secured by the available empirical material, it remains inexplicable how they are to be transformed into declarative memories in psychotherapy. What has not been encoded cannot be remembered either. In addition to the nervous system, there are in the body such. B. in muscle or connective tissue no reminiscent structures. Body feelings such as pain (e.g. Freud: vagina pain) cannot lead to expressible memories unless they are stored in the brain. Research on flashbacks shows that these are by no means regularly faithful memories of traumatic experiences, but rather express fears and fears with at least the same frequency.

The criticism of Terr's theory shows that this theory is based only on a very small number of abused children, that of the children who had no memory, some had their traumatic experiences during the period of childhood amnesia and that the children in the comparison group only had a unique trauma experience, were considerably older. In addition, the results have not been reproduced.

Another criticism of van der Kolk's theory comes from expressive psychology. R. Volbert found that van der Kolk's descriptions of trauma memories (development gradually over time and fractional) and the criteria for the development of false memories in therapies largely coincide. According to this, van der Kolk could also have based his theories on individuals who have not suffered any trauma at all, especially since most clinical studies on sexual abuse are based on reported but not verified experiences. Even with war veterans, the question of verification is not superfluous, given that after the Vietnam War, 479,000 veterans were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when only 300,000 were involved in combat operations.

Ultimately, the result of empirical research is that the experimental material on memories of trauma does not justify any special mechanisms for memories.

Artificially creating false memories

Since there was a presumption that the numerous cases in the USA of the 1990s in which memories of sexual abuse suffered until then were "uncovered" long after the alleged abuse incidents in psychotherapy were at least partly false memories, this existed Ask whether and how one could artificially create false memories in the experiment. The first such attempt was the famous "lost in the mall" attempt by Loftus and Pickrell. In this experiment, 6 out of 24 participants were able to be persuaded to remember, with sometimes astonishing details, that they had lost their parents in a shopping center as children. These events did not occur and the subjects were only asked to remember them with minimal information.

This attempt has been reproduced many times, and memories of highly emotionally charged situations as well as one's own criminal acts could be generated. Depending on the exact circumstances of the experiment, between 25% and 70% of the participants developed false memories. In principle, however, for ethical reasons, no experiments with false memories of severely traumatic situations are carried out, because permanent damage can be inflicted on the participants due to persistent memories.

It is important to consider the circumstances under which false memories could be generated experimentally.

What all attempts have in common is that an atmosphere of trust has been built up. This happens z. B. by establishing contact with relatives of the test subjects and communicating this fact to the participants. In this way, participants can be presented with a number of events to remember, most of which were actually experienced and only one did not occur.

The test subjects are given time to reflect on what they are supposed to have experienced. Understandably, hardly any participant remembers the proposed, but not experienced event at the first suggestion. But they think about it when they are released, only to be questioned again after a few days. In doing so, approaches to memories are reinforced. Usually the participants are given one more time to think. After this time, the memories, insofar as they were created at all, have mostly become much more detailed. A gradual build-up of false memories is characteristic, whereby more and more details are added over time.

As you can see, the suggestion of a possible event is usually not enough to generate a false memory. The actual false memory only arises in the internal processes of the participant who thinks about it. Questions like: What could this event have looked like? When could it have happened? occupy him in the pause for reflection, and this concern also continues in less conscious moments or even in dreams.

Psychotherapeutic aspects

If one compares the situation in the attempts to generate false memories with that in psychotherapy (or a similar life coaching), there are many parallels. What happens in such therapies is known from many reports from patients who have experienced trauma therapy in which an attempt was made to "regain" inaccessible memories (memory recovery).

The trust situation is there almost automatically. After all, the patient has visited the therapist to find help for some life problem and expects this from him.

Usually the therapist concludes from symptoms reported by the patient that a traumatic experience has occurred.

If there are corresponding symptoms, the patient is given a more or less subtle suggestion that he or she probably suffered severe trauma as a child, e.g. B. has experienced sexual abuse and that it is necessary to remember it if he is to be cured. The reason for this lies in a well-known psychotherapeutic or psychoanalytic concept, according to which a controlled reliving of traumatic situations can bring about a healing of their consequences.

Of course, if there is no experience, the patient will not remember it. This is explained by the therapist with an automatic repression or splitting off of the memory, which makes the memory inaccessible to consciousness, an alleged protective mechanism that protects the individual from being exposed to the terrible memories.

The pause for reflection mentioned in the case of artificially generated memories results automatically from the times between regular therapy sessions. If the patient develops the first hints of a memory, these are interpreted by the therapist as experiences that need to be further detailed. Complex memories arise only gradually.

If the patient stubbornly denies having experienced the suspected trauma, this is often interpreted as a defense mechanism in the sense of psychoanalysis . This means that the patient unconsciously defends himself very vigorously against becoming aware of the trauma. This supposedly indicates a particularly severe trauma that warrants further efforts to remember.

A special feature of the therapeutic situation is that, depending on the therapist's attitude, more and more details about the alleged experience can be requested and developed. Therefore memories of extraterrestrials or ritual abuse by conspiratorial perpetrator organizations come about, which are sometimes impossible, sometimes extremely improbable. Such memories helped shatter the credibility of therapeutically recovered memories in the United States in the 1990s .

For the frequency of such psychotherapy see above. In the following, the controversy between clinical interpretation and empirical-scientific research on the individual aspects of therapy is considered.

Symptoms

There are long lists of symptoms that allegedly indicate sexual abuse suffered, e.g. B. Bass and Davis or Blume. When reading these symptoms it becomes apparent that there is hardly a person to whom some of these symptoms do not apply, especially since they often contain one characteristic and its exact opposite. Therefore, practically everyone who goes into psychotherapy, regardless of the reason that leads them to the therapist, exhibits corresponding symptoms and can therefore be a candidate for the "recovery" of traumatic memories. McNally mentions that no fewer than 900 different symptoms of abuse suffered have been found in the psychotherapeutic literature!

However, there is no scientifically proven connection between these symptoms and experienced abuse. However, this is hardly to be expected in view of the enormous number of symptoms cited in the therapeutic literature. While it is largely certain that sexual abuse, especially in severe forms, can (not necessarily) result in mental disorders, this does not lead to the reverse conclusion, namely that certain mental disorders can be traced back to abuse. This conclusion would only be possible if the disturbance in question occurs exclusively or predominantly after abuse. However, if it occurs without abuse and with a comparable frequency - and this is the case with all symptoms in the symptom lists - no conclusion can be drawn from the symptoms about abuse as the cause. In the special case of bulimia there are more detailed investigations. After a review study of the existing psychological literature, Pope and Hudson found that sexual abuse could be a risk factor for later bulimia (the literature results are inconclusive). However, this does not mean that, conversely, bulimic patients have a significantly higher frequency of suffered abuse. A detailed discussion of the symptom problem can be found in Ofshe.

suggestion

Even with artificially created false memories it has been shown that the suggestion of an experience sets internal processes in motion in the person concerned, the result of which can be a false memory. While only simple and open suggestions were used in the experiments, far more varied suggestions are used in psychotherapy. Even an inconspicuous hint ("Could it be that ...") can set this process in motion. In many cases, more robust methods are used, e.g. E.g. defense under hypnosis, recommendation of highly suggestive books (e.g. Bass and Davis, Despite Allem ) as therapy-accompanying literature, pictorial or guided presentation of abuse scenarios, group therapy together with victims or alleged victims of abuse. In particular, the breaks between therapy sessions give time to think. Therapies are also not ended after two appointments, but may drag on for years, with the prompts to work on the memory being repeated over and over again. This means that even initial resistance to the suggestions can be overcome over time.

That suggestion plays an essential role in the generation of false memories is proven both in the scientific literature and in many situational reports.

No responsible psychotherapy training will endorse such methods. The renowned American trauma therapist Christine Courtois recommends not to make any assumptions about issues that the patient has not commented on, and only to use trauma therapeutic methods if the patient presents himself as a trauma victim from the outset. Unfortunately, many therapists don't follow these rules.

Displacement and secession

An important role in clinical research on trauma and in the justification of revealing therapies lies in the assumption that the memory of traumatic experiences is suppressed or split off in alternative personalities in order to protect the individual from disturbing and painful memories and thus to maintain his or her viability . The memories are normally completely isolated, immutable and inaccessible to normal retrieval. But through the art of the therapist they could be regained and the integration of the personality restored.

The concept of repression was not invented by Freud, but was largely popularized by psychoanalysis in Freud's successor. However, depending on the context, this term means very different processes. Freud left no clear definition for this and apparently understood it to mean different things at different times.

The simplest form of repression (referred to here as the first form of the V.) is almost trivial: the deliberate avoidance of thinking about something unpleasant or painful. Although this attempt often has the opposite effect in the short term, in the long term it can largely hide the memory that has been avoided from everyday consciousness. Even so, the memory of it remains accessible. An object e.g. B., which is quite taboo and in this sense is suppressed across entire societies, is the thought of one's own death.

Another version of repression (second form) is the view that repressed content is in fact inaccessible to consciousness. They cannot be made accessible again in any way. However, they still have an impact on the subconscious and modulate fears, ideas and decisions to act.

Revealing therapies are based on a further conception of repression (third form). It is the form described at the beginning of this section. It motivates the therapists to their type of therapy and is also communicated to the patients in order to support their efforts to “remember”. If instead of a repression the separation of traumatic contents is assumed, a view that goes back to Freud's contemporary Pierre Janet , then the task of the therapist is to query the "secret" knowledge of the split off personalities and to make it accessible to the main personality and to restore the different personalities integrate uniform person. These concepts do not differ significantly in terms of trauma detection.

Empirical psychology has made many efforts to scientifically justify and prove the repression. The first form of repression is quite simply based on memory psychology, because the preservation of long-term memories depends very much on the frequency of retrieval. What is not retrieved is forgotten over time or is difficult to activate.

In the case of the second form of repression, empirical evidence is ruled out because the content that has been repressed cannot become conscious again. However, if the repressed content unfolds unconscious effects, it is hardly possible to distinguish this process from the development of conditioned reflexes and similar unconscious learning processes.

Experimental psychology has taken particular pains to prove the third form of repression. There are more than 100 studies with this goal dating back to the 1930s. Many of these studies are flawed even by the scientifically educated layman, but careful studies have also been carried out that allegedly have proven the third form of repression. Some particularly influential studies are those of Briere and Conte, L. Meyer Williams, and van der Kolk and Fisler.

Holmes took a critical look at the studies up to 1990. Further criticism of the studies can be found in H. Pope (1997) and McNally (2004). All three authors state that there is no methodologically impeccable evidence for a displacement in the third form. The studies suffered from various errors, the most important of which were:

  • The studies relied on reports of traumatic experiences without verifying that they actually happened.
  • The studies were based on proven trauma, but they evaluated the fact that those affected did not mention it as evidence of repression without taking into account that there may be other reasons as well (in a very revealing study, della Femina had retrospectively determined that the proven abuse experiences were not mentioned because those affected simply did not want to talk about it).
  • The traumatic experiences occurred in the first three years of life, that is, in the time of childlike amnesia .
  • In the case of proven and remembered trauma, questions were asked whether there had been times in life when this memory was inaccessible. This question is fundamentally nonsensical, because the most you can tell is that you have temporarily not thought of something, but not whether it was inaccessible. The question of whether something was inaccessible at a certain time presupposes that one knew at that point in time what was supposedly inaccessible, and that is a contradiction of the question.

Finally, McNally concludes: "The statement that the mind protects itself by repressing or splitting off traumatic memories and making them inaccessible to consciousness is a piece of psychiatric folklore for which there is no convincing empirical evidence."

Another criticism of the mechanism of repression comes from evolutionary biology . Individuals for whom memories of potentially life-threatening traumatic situations are inaccessible are less well equipped to prevent the situation from occurring again and are therefore at a disadvantage compared to others who remember the situation. Hence, a mechanism of displacement should not have evolved in the course of evolution.

Defense Mechanism

The theory of defense mechanisms is a central point of psychoanalytic theory, which can only be understood in this context. This theory can be exaggerated: The claim that one has never been abused is a sign that a particularly traumatic abuse has occurred.

In this way, the defense mechanism turns the repressed trauma thesis into a self-evident and therefore non- falsifiable fact. From an empirical point of view, the repressed trauma thesis becomes something that is inaccessible to empirical examination and therefore without scientific character.

Extreme memories

No one will have particular faith in the memory of alien abuse. Yet these memories, as a result of psychotherapy, were apparently not uncommon in the United States in the 1990s.

There are, however, other therapeutically generated memories of abuse in which the greatest skepticism is appropriate regarding the content of the memory alone. It's about memories of ritual abuse by conspiratorial groups of perpetrators. It is essential to clearly distinguish this from organized abuse, which is a sad reality, especially with child pornography and child prostitution.

Memories of ritual abuse are often associated with extremely bizarre claims: victims are supposed to be impregnated, the babies are ritually killed and eaten. The perpetrators use brainwashing to program their victims so that they never reveal the identity of the perpetrator and details of the rites. In the USA there was already talk of thousands of victims killed in 1992. Amazingly, law enforcement agencies have not been able to prove this in a single case. This was explained by the fact that these authorities were involved in the conspiracies themselves.

Because of this, the FBI had to deal with these cases. There is an extensive publication from KV Lanning, the FBI's Supervisory Special Agent. He shows that while these reports are not impossible in principle, they are extremely unlikely. The mere fact that 23,000 homicides a year were known in the USA at that time, the vast majority of which could be solved, makes many thousands of murders, which not only were not solved, but even went completely unnoticed by the public, unbelievable appear. Lanning points out that it is very difficult for lone perpetrators to hide a murder crime. This difficulty increases sharply with the number of confidants. Lanning considers it almost impossible that extensive groups of perpetrators are informed without information leaking out at any point.

There are also reports of ritual abuse in Europe. In 2007, for example, the Mainz Trauma Institute published a study in which 1058 psychotherapists in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate were asked whether their patients had reported ritual violence. 455 of them answered the question and 55 of them answered in the affirmative with a total of 67 cases. Four cases were rated as not credible (criteria unknown). Over a period of 15 years, the therapists had remembered 16 homicides. The therapies were unusually long, up to 10 years. A similar study with similar results was carried out in 2005 from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. These studies also state that, unfortunately, the law enforcement authorities have never been able to prove the offenses. The Mainz study makes a scientific impression from the outside, but it is far from scientific methodology. So there is no factual evidence of the reported cases. The reports are even doubly inauthentic in that they are based on reports by the therapists, of whom the therapists in turn report in the questionnaire. No criterion is given for the alleged credibility. Here, too, 16 homicides that not only remain unsolved, but also for which there are no verifiable facts to justify suspicion, are very unlikely, given a murder investigation rate of more than 95%.

A new German study was presented by the criminologist Petra Hasselmann. In this study, too, there was no evidence of the existence of ritual violence in Germany. On the contrary, the multi-method legal psychological study by Hasselmann is based on statements from more than 30 people affected and offers a deep insight into their worlds. The traumatized expect from those around them that they dispel doubts about the “memories” of violence. In contrast, Hasselmann postulates: A constructive and open approach to doubts as well as a careful processing of what has actually been experienced or what has been incorrectly remembered are necessary in order to cope with the obvious trauma. For the actors in the help system, an examination of simulation, credibility and credibility is inevitable. The study offers helpful insights for everyone who would like to constructively deal with questions of credibility and credibility, false and experience-based memories as well as self-determination and dependency: v. a. Those involved in the help system and in investigating authorities will find useful information in the clearly written study.

In the United States, such extremely unlikely therapy outcomes were viewed by courts as a criterion for faulty therapy, leading to the conviction of therapists. In Germany, ritual abuse remains a controversial issue, also because the Federal Government's abuse commissioner apparently believes the reports.

Consequences for those affected

The consequences for those affected by therapeutically generated false memories are dramatic for everyone involved. This applies both to therapists, who were induced false memories in the therapy, as well as to the suspected perpetrators who are wrongly accused.

Consequences for the therapist

The therapeutic view is usually: If a patient can easily live after therapy with the awareness that they have experienced and survived a severe trauma such as sexual abuse, the therapist has achieved what was expected of him.

Unfortunately, this is usually not the case. This is because the effects of trauma on memory do not depend on whether the memory is incorrect or based on facts. The effect is the same. Because there is no limit to the severity and cruelty of the experiences in the imagination, the traumas, the false memories of which were generated in psychotherapy, are often particularly severe. This is often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, a real trauma experienced in the past would be a prerequisite for their diagnosis. Nevertheless, patients who have developed false memories of severe trauma are often diagnosed with PTSD because the relevant symptoms are met with the exception of a proven trauma.

Among these symptoms is also a pronounced avoidance behavior . The patient tries to avoid touching or dealing with anything related to the trauma.

The psychologist John Kihlstrom tried to take these facts into account when defining a false memory syndrome. Although this definition has never found its way into one of the ICD or DSM diagnostic catalogs, it is a good description of the disorder that often remains after a revealing therapy:

“A disorder in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships revolve around the memory of a traumatic experience that, while objectively wrong, is firmly believed by the person. ... The syndrome is particularly harmful because the person persistently avoids any confrontation with facts that might call the memory into question. This takes on a life of its own, encapsulated and immune to corrections. The person can be so focused on this memory that they are practically incapable of dealing with the real problems of their life. "

Because of this immunity to all doubt, the patient often has to live with this serious disorder for the rest of their life.

Another heavy burden for the therapist is that the therapists almost always demand that all contact with the suspected perpetrators and their surroundings be broken off. The reason for the measure is, among other things, that these contacts could endanger memories that have not yet been sufficiently established. As a rule, the therapist also loses the environment of previously loved ones.

Consequences for wrongly accused

The accused usually suffer very much from the loss of contact. In most cases, it is the parents who lose touch with their loved ones in this way. Added to this is the outrage that they have been accused of an act they did not commit and which they deeply detest. Often they seek external help from pastors or psychotherapists to cope with it.

In many cases, however, a criminal complaint against them also follows.

Legal implications

The courts are increasingly concerned with cases of wrong, mainly therapeutically induced memories.

On the one hand, accused persons sometimes wrongly sue the accused for failure to assert or for withdrawal. Actions for injunctive relief are usually only successful if the accused has made his allegation publicly. In this case it is required to provide evidence. If the memories are false, he will not be able to prove it and will have to refrain from making the claim. In the case of an action for revocation, the burden of proof rests with the plaintiff, who is rarely able to do so.

More often it is the case that the suspected perpetrator is reported and has to answer criminally for a crime, in particular for sexual abuse. As a rule, there are no witnesses apart from the accused and the alleged victim. The victim claims what he has "regained" as memories, which the alleged perpetrator denies. This constellation of testimony-versus-testimony is not clear, but in the German legal system it can lead to a conviction, as the judge can freely evaluate the evidence . If he believes the plaintiff even though their memories are false, an innocent person will be convicted. The decisive factor is the judge's opinion, which can also be based on bias. In the case of sexual offenses in particular, it is difficult to rule out biases, as the media are constantly fueling this bias.

Since 1999 there has been a change in the case law in favor of the defendant. In a decision of principle, the BGH stipulated the requirements for the assessment of witness statements. Accordingly, in the case of the testimony-versus-testimony, the credibility of the testimony must be carefully checked. This places considerable demands on the judge and requires knowledge of testamentary psychology that judges generally do not have, as they are not part of their training. In this case, the involvement of a testimonial psychological expert is required as an expert. However, the judge can also dispense with the expert if he himself has the necessary expertise. This must be explicitly stated in the reasoning for the judgment. If this is not the case, this is a reason for revision.

Victim support organizations

There are many associations and clubs that have made it their task to support victims of crime and the like. In general, the White Ring ( Weisser Ring e.V. ) supports crime victims of all kinds, including, of course, victims of sexual offenses. The influential Wildwasser eV associations specialize in sexual abuse . V. and dark chocolate e. V. These victim support organizations provide vital support for victims of despicable crimes.

The assessment of the activities of these organizations becomes more problematic when it comes to cases of false memories. In their largely ideological and declared partisan attitude, they do not usually check whether reports of sexual abuse are based on real experiences or on false memories. On the contrary: Whitewater publications refer to false memories of sexual abuse as child molesters' tricks to protect themselves from prosecution. The work of these organizations is also problematic for assessing the statements of witnesses, as they influence the design of the statements through one-sided, partisan advice to the victim witnesses.

A victim support organization for those affected by false memories in Germany is False Memory Deutschland eV The association works in an emphatically impartial manner and advises both wrongly accused and people who have been induced to false memories in psychotherapy. In addition to advising those affected, the association is dedicated to informing the public about the existence and danger of false memories of sexual abuse.

literature

  • Bass, Ellen, and Davis, Laura: In spite of everything: Ways to self-healing for women who have experienced sexual violence , Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-922166-61-X
  • Clancy, Susan A .: The Trauma Myth , New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-465-01688-4
  • Crombag, Hans FM and Merckelbach, Harald. G .: You don't forget abuse, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-333-01003-8
  • Delfs, Hans: False Memory - "Memories" of Sexual Abuse That Never Happened , Pabst Science Publishers 2017, ISBN 978-3-95853-324-0
  • Hasselmann, Petra: "Ritual violence" and dissociative identity disorder: A multi-method study of expectations of actors in the help system , Pabst Science Publishers 2017, ISBN 978-3-95853-288-5
  • Huber, Michaela: Multiple personalities: Mental fragmentation after violence , Paderborn, 2010, ISBN 978-3-87387-645-3
  • Loftus, Elizabeth and Ketcham, Katherine: The therapied memory , Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-404-60443-1
  • McHugh, Paul R .: Try to Remember , New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-932594-39-3
  • McNally, Richard J .: Remembering Trauma , Cambridge (Mass.) 2005, ISBN 0-674-01082-5 .
  • Ofshe, Richard and Watters, Ethan: The misused memory , Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-30556-8
  • Rückert, Sabine: Injustice in the Name of the People , Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-455-50015-8
  • Schacter, Daniel: We are memory, memory and personality , Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-498-06324-3
  • Shaw, Julia: The deceptive memory , Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-446-44877-3
  • Steller Max: Nothing but the truth? , Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-453-20090-6
  • Yapko, Michael D .: Misdiagnosis : Sexual Abuse , Ulm, 1996, ISBN 3-426-84089-8
  • Pendergrast, Mark: Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives , Hinesburg VT 1996, ISBN 0-942679-18-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oskar Bernd Scholz, Jonathan Endres: Tasks of the psychological expert in suspected child sexual abuse: findings, diagnostics, assessment. In: New journal for criminal law . tape 15 (1) , 1995, pp. 6-12 .
  2. ^ Kühnel, Sina and Markowitsch, Hans J .: False memories . Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8274-1805-0 .
  3. ↑ Daniel L. Schacter: We are memory . Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-498-06324-3 .
  4. ↑ Sacks, Oliver: The stream of consciousness . Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-498-06434-1 , pp. 112 .
  5. ^ Hermann Ebbinghaus: Original manuscript "Ueber das Gedächtniss" 1880 . Passiva Universitätsverlag, Passau 1983, ISBN 3-922016-35-9 .
  6. ^ Emil Kraepelin: About falsification of memories . In: August Hirschwald (Ed.): Archive for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases . tape 17 , no. 3 . Berlin 1886, p. 830-843 .
  7. ↑ James Deese: The Structure of Associations in Language and Thought . Ed .: Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore 1965.
  8. ^ Henry L. Roediger, Kathleen B. McDermott: Creating False Memories: Remembering words not presented in Lists . In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition . 1995.
  9. ↑ McHugh, Paul et. al .: From Refusal to Reconciliation . In: The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease . tape 192/8 , 2004, p. 525-531 .
  10. ↑ Patihis, Lawrence, and Pendergrast, Mark: Reports of Recovered Memories of Abuse in Therapy in a Large Age-Representative US National Sample: Therapy Type and Decade Comparisons . In: Clinical Psychological Science . May 31, 2018, doi : 10.1177 / 2167702618773315 .
  11. ^ Crews, Frederick: The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute . In: The New York Review of Books . New York 1995, ISBN 0-940322-07-2 .
  12. ^ Maran, Meredith: My Lie: A True Story of False Memory . Hoboken, NJ 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-50214-3 .
  13. ↑ Patihis, L. et al .: Are the "Memory Wars" Over? A Scientist-Practitioner Gap in Beliefs about Repressed Memory . In: Psychological Science . tape 25 , no. 2 , 2014, p. 519-530 .
  14. ↑ Van der Kolk, Bessel: The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Posttraumatic Stress . Ed .: Harvard Medical School. 1994.
  15. ↑ Van der Kolk, Bessel and Fisler, Rita: Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: Overview and exploratory study . In: Journal of Traumatic Stress . tape 8 , p. 505-525 .
  16. ↑ Van der Kolk, Bessel: The Body Keeps the Score . New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-670-78593-3 .
  17. ↑ Terr, Lenore: Childhood traumas: an outline and overview . In: American Journal of Psychiatry (Ed.): 148 (1) . January 1991, p. 10-20 .
  18. ↑ McNally, Richard J: Remembering Trauma . Ed .: Harvard University Press. Cambridge (Mass.) 2005, ISBN 0-674-01802-8 , pp. 159-185 .
  19. ^ Fred H. Frankel: The Concept of Flashbacks in Historical Perspective . In: International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis . tape 42 , no. 2 , 1994, p. 321-336 .
  20. ↑ Renate Volbert: Lecture: How do pseudo-memories arise in therapies and can they be distinguished from real memories? Düsseldorf April 2014.
  21. ^ McHugh, Paul R .: Try to Remember . New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-932594-39-3 , pp. 193 .
  22. ^ Loftus, EF, & Pickrell, JE: The formation of false memories . In: Psychiatric Annals . tape 25 , no. 12 , p. 720-725 .
  23. ↑ Porter S., Yuille JC, Lehman DR: The nature of real, implanted, and fabricated memories for emotional childhood events: implications for the recovered memory debate . In: Low Human Behavior . tape 23 , no. 5 , October 1999, p. 517-537 .
  24. ↑ Shaw J., Porter S .: Constructing rich false memories of committing crime . In: Psychology Science . tape 26 , no. 3 , March 2015, p. 291-301 .
  25. ↑ Bass, Ellen and Davis, Laura: In spite of everything . Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-922166-61-X , p. 27 ff .
  26. ↑ Blume, SE: Secret Survivors . New York 1990, p. xxvii .
  27. ↑ McNally, Richard J .: Remembering Trauma . Cambridge (Mass) 2005, ISBN 0-674-01802-8 , pp. 101 .
  28. ↑ Pope H., Hudson J .: Is childhood sexual abuse a risk factor for bulimia nervosa? In: American Journal of Psychiatry . tape 149 , no. 4 , April 1992, pp. 455-463 .
  29. ↑ Ofshe, Richard and Watters, Ethan: The Abused Memory . Munich 1994, p. 108-134 .
  30. ↑ Bass, Ellen and Davis, Laura: In spite of everything . Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-922166-61-X .
  31. ^ Read and Lindsay, Recollections of Trauma , New York 1997, ISBN 978-1-4757-2672-5
  32. ↑ Patihis, Lawrence, and Pendergrast, Mark: Reports of Recovered Memories of Abuse in Therapy in a Large Age-Representative US National Sample: Therapy Type and Decade Comparisons. In: Clinical Psychological Science , May 31, 2018, doi: 10.1177 / 2167702618773315
  33. ^ Maran, Meredith: My Lie: A True Story of False Memory , Hoboken NJ 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-50214-3 .
  34. ^ Simpson, Paul: Second Thoughts: Understanding False Memory Crisis and How It Could Affect You , Nashville TN 1997, ISBN 0-7852-7418-9 .
  35. ↑ Courtois, Christine A .: nformed Clinical Practice and the Standard of Care: Proposed Guidelines for the Treatment of Adults Who Report Delayed Memories of Childhood Trauma . Ed .: Recollections of Trauma, Scientific Evidence and Clinical Practice. Springer Verlag, New York 1997, ISBN 978-1-4757-2674-9 , pp. 337-370 .
  36. ↑ Briere J., Conte J .: Self-reported Amnesia for Abuse in Adults Molested as Children . In: Journal of Traumatic Stress . tape 6 , 1993, pp. 21-31 .
  37. ^ Meyer Williams, Linda: Recovered Memories of Abuse in Women with Documented Child Sexual Victimization Histories . In: Journal of Traumatic Stress . tape 8 , 1995, p. 629-647 .
  38. ↑ Van der Kolk, Bessel and Fisler, Rita: Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: Overview and exploratory study . In: Journal of Traumatic Stress (Ed.): 8 . S. 505-525 .
  39. ^ Holmes, David S .: The evidence for repression: An examination of sixty years of research . In: Jerome L. Singer (Ed.): Repression and Dissociation . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1990, pp. 85-102 .
  40. ^ Pope, Harrison G .: Psychology Astray: Fallacies in Studies of "Repressed Memory" and Childhood Trauma . Boca Raton FL 1997, ISBN 0-89777-149-4 .
  41. ↑ McNally, Richard J .: Remembering Trauma . Cambridge (Mass) 2005, ISBN 0-674-01802-8 , pp. 186-228 .
  42. ↑ Femina, DD et. al .: Child Abuse: Adolescent Records vs. Adult recall . In: Child Abuse and Neglect . tape 14 , p. 227-231 .
  43. ↑ Ganaway, GH: Quoted in Hacking, Ian: Multiple Personality: On the History of Personality in Modernity from a 1993 lecture . Munich 1996, ISBN 3-446-18745-6 , pp. 155 .
  44. ↑ Lanning, Kenneth V .: Satanic Ritual Abuse . Ed .: Federal Bureau of Investigation - FBI. 1992 ( sacred-texts.com ).
  45. ↑ Wagner A. And Bosse B .: Ritual violence in Rhineland-Palatinate, results of a survey among established therapists and therapists in 2007 . Ed .: Trauma Institute Mainz.
  46. ↑ Prof. Dr. Hasselmann, Petra: "Ritual violence" and dissociative identity disorder: a multi-method study of expectations of actors in the help system . Pabst Science Publishers, 2017, ISBN 978-3-95853-288-5 .
  47. ↑ Kihlstrom, John: quoted and translated from McHugh, Paul R., Try to Remember . New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-932594-39-3 , pp. 67 .
  48. ↑ Prof. Dr. Volbert, Renate: Assessment of statements about trauma . Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-456-84085-3 .
  49. ↑ Jansen, Gabriele: Witness and statement psychology . 2nd Edition. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-8114-4861-2 .
  50. ↑ Schalleck, Martha: “ Nothing ever happened?” - The false accusation on trial or: The denial of sexual abuse today . In: Wildwasser Working Group against Sexual Abuse of Girls eV (Ed.): Documentation of the specialist conference on the occasion of the 25th anniversary . S. 34-36 .
  51. ↑ Jansen, Gabriele: Witness and statement psychology . 2nd Edition. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-8114-4861-2 , pp. 88-90 .