The underlying science appears to be as bad as the law. This 15 March 2005 paper by John F. Kihlstrom, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, discusses how clinical therapists working with supposed victims typically have no means of independently corroborating what their patients "remember." In this vacuum, the inference that certain symptoms are manifestations of a repressed traumatic memory is taken, circularly, for the corroboration itself. As Richard Webster similarly writes in this excerpt from his 1995 book Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis, "[P]roper caution is replaced by credulity. 'If you think you were abused,' write Ellen Bass and Laura Davis [in The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (2nd Ed., 1990)], 'and your life shows the symptoms, then you were'."
Kihlstrom also points out that studies supporting the theory of recovered memory show "an unhealthy reliance on self-reports--both that the trauma in question actually occurred, and that it was actually forgotten." In addition, the cases put forth as proof are retrospective; if sexual abuse of children causes dissociative amnesia, however, there should be a certain incidence of it going forward from indisputable cases of abuse. To the contrary, as Kihlstrom writes, "[E]vidence based on random or prospective samples" indicate that "multiple personality disorder and other dissociative disorders simply do not figure prominently among the sequelae of documented child sexual abuse." In summary, quoting Kihlstrom, "[E]verything we know about emotion and memory tells us that emotional involvement makes events more memorable, not less." (In these articles in the 17 November 1994 and 1 December 1994 issues of The New York Review of Books, Frederick Crews provides a classic, trenchant debunking of recovered-memory theory and its uses. Click here for an entry on false memory from The Skeptic's Dictionary.)
Even to laymen, recovered-memory theory reeks of the con artist's foolproof reasoning. In Debbie Nathan's Village Voice article above, for instance, she describes an interviewing method for children used in the McMartin preschool case which was modeled on Los Angeles psychiatrist Roland Summit's "child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome," a theory about incest holding that "if there is evidence of sex abuse and a child denies it, this is only further proof that it happened." The appeal of recovered-memory theory--being able to trace the unmanageability of your life to a single cause for which you bear no responsibility--is in itself suspicious. Many of us have thought, Something must have happened to me when I was young--I can't naturally be this fucked up. But intellectual honesty dictates that you double your guard, rather than dismiss it, when assessing such seductive theories.
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Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Alan did you try and e-mail me? Eric?
2 - claire
I found this film ridiculous. Never has the subject of sexual abuse been tackled in such a ridiculous manner. The heavy and disturbing abuse scenes were obviously put in to try and shadow the dreadful acting (minus Neil he took a good shot at it) I was nauseated throughout and felt that the film totally depended on shock value.
3 - Alan Dale
Hey Claire,
Thanks for the comment. The abuse scenes were odd to me b/c their purpose escaped Araki's control. They seemed dreamily erotic, which might make sense for Neil but not Brian. The addition of the recovered-memory detective story turned it all to cheese.
4 - B79
Apparently you don't realize how this works. I was abused from age 4-6 by my neighbor and had 20 years of repressed memory... saw 7 psychologists and I thought all my problems were becasue of my parent's divorce when I was 8. Even the short memories I did have pointed to but never showed proof that anything happened. I lied to myself without realizing I was lying, that the abuse ever happened. But looking back now, I know it did. I was laying on a bed with a camera ponted at me... I was told my the man that if I said anything that my parents wouldn't want me... these things I occasionally remembered in the 20 years but discarded them as just memories with no meaning. Repressed memory DOES HAPPEN. I thought I had a happy childhood. In my teens I was depressed everyday but didn't know why.
As for the movie... that's what happens in real life. I'm sorry that you can't handle the scenes but that's real life. You know that a child might go through when he/she says they were abused and how they can be affected... but do you REALLY know what they went through? These scenes hint to it. A child that young can not mentally process that event... not enough life experience so the mind pushes it away as a defense mechanism. Please be more open-minded about this movie. I basically lived this movie because there was the man's son (my age) with me too.
These "graphic" scenes which really are just implied scenes puts you in the place of the child. If you can't handle it, think of how the child must have felt.
5 - anne
I absolutely agree with the last posting stated. I wrote a paper on this for a graduate level class on the effects of trauma on children--it was assigned by the professor. You don't seem to understand trauma at a basic level and it shows in your review. As for the uneasiness, again, as stated above, these are events that happen to real people. As a society we must come to understand our fellow people's experiences.
6 - Peter
I was abused, and the film is so resonant, I'm still off balance a few days after viewing it twice. The writing of the view is thorough, exceptionally well written, and engaging for as long as it is, but as someone just overwhelmed with watching the movie, I have to tell you memories do get pushed away due to childhood trauma. I was sexually abused, but for many years didn't label it molestation because I was just like Neil, craving male physical contact, and still cannot remember the first incident that led to a year long inappropriate sexual relationship at age 5-6 with my babysitter. The AIDS safe sex stuff bangs you over the head, but I'm fascinated with how many reviews and comments find the mutual seduction either implausible or titillating. Trust me, it's real.
7 - alan
there's a mistake in the title; it should say "unfuckingbelievable".