Victorian RMT Inquiry: letter from scientists and scholars.

Sent via email 6 September 2005

Anne-Maree Polimeni
Project Officer
Level 30 / 570
Bourke Street
Melbourne, Victoria 3000
Anne-Maree.Polimeni@dhs.vic.gov.au

Dear Ms Polimeni,

We write to you to as a group of scientists and independent scholars who are dedicated to seeing that the scientific literature on human memory is represented accurately. As such, we have serious concerns about the draft report titled Inquiry into the Practice of Recovered Memory Therapy: Draft Report. You will find our biosketches and CVs at the end of this submission.

Beginning as early as p.4, the report is one-sided. For example, to define “False Memory Advocates” as “Advocates” obviates the fact that many of us are scientists, and that we have drawn our conclusions either because of the wealth (or sometimes dearth) of objective scientific data about some idea. Moreover, to define “False Memory Advocates” as

Individuals or associations who do not believe traumatic events can be forgotten for a period of time and subsequently remembered. Rather they believe recovered memories are false memories.

is just plain incorrect. It is ordinary human experience to know that one can not think about something for a period of time and subsequently be reminded of it later. It is another thing entirely to believe that one can banish a sustained trauma into some dark corner of the (putative) subconscious, where it is walled off from awareness yet leaks toxic effects into one’s everyday behaviour—and all the while the memory remains immune from decay, and emerges years later in pristine condition. The quote above immediately creates a false and extreme “straw man” position and attaches it to people who are skeptical of repression.

On p.7, under the heading “Findings,” the following claims are made.

There is profound disagreement amongst experts regarding whether recovered memories are true or false.

This statement misses the point, which is whether there is any objective evidence to support the notion that there is such a thing as the two-part process known as [1] repressing a traumatic experience, and then [2] recovering it, intact and accurate, some years later.

The literature review found no research on clinical techniques used to recover memories of trauma, or the practice of RMT in the mental health literature.

This statement is bewildering, because there is a huge scientific and clinical literature on techniques that could come under the umbrella of RMT.

On p.10 (and again on p.71) the report says

The majority of submissions outlined memory triggers that occurred in a variety of situations outside of therapy, with therapy representing the least commonly reported cue.

The fact that therapy is the least common trigger does not mean that therapy plays no role. There is myriad evidence documenting both the prevalence and the effect of suggestive therapeutic practices in western countries. It is important to understand that the same techniques that constitute suggestive therapeutic practices can be done outside of therapy. For example, people can—and almost certainly do—think about their lives, draw inferences, expose themselves to suggestions, imagine “what if’ scenarios, think about how something might have happened—in between therapy sessions, or even without a therapist. Yet a great deal of scientific research shows that any one of these techniques alone can create false beliefs and false memories; clearly the consequences of using more than one of these techniques makes the danger grow exponentially.

In 5.1.8.1, the report suggests that infantile amnesia is an explanation for how memories might be blocked. Yet nowhere in the discussion of infantile amnesia does the report say that the scientific literature clearly shows that a child who does not have the vocabulary to describe an event as it happens will be unable to describe that experience later, even when he or she acquires the vocabulary (see especially Sinicock & Hayne, 2002). The point is that infantile amnesia is not evidence of either a blocked or a recovered memory.

In 5.1.8.2, the report claims that “later the [dissociated] event can become integrated as a memory and consequently retrieved.” Where is the scientific evidence for this claim?

In 5.1.8.3, the report should make clear that the notion of repression and recovery is simply a notion. There is no evidence that these mechanisms actually operate. In fact, throughout the report, many studies have been cited as evidence that repression and recovery of memories is a demonstrable phenomenon. There are numerous studies that have either been misinterpreted or have methodological flaws such that they cannot support the claim. At Appendix A is a table of 77 frequently cited studies commonly cited as evidence of repression and/or dissociation. Some of these studies appear in the current draft report. The table in Appendix A makes clear that none of these studies actually shows evidence of repression or dissociation. The table is excerpted from Pope, H.G., Oliva, P.S. & Hudson, J. 1. (2002). Scientific Status of Research on Repressed Memories. In D.L. Faigman, D.H.Kaye, M.J. Saks & J. Sanders (Eds.) Modern Scientific Evidence. St. Paul, MN: West Group.

In 5.1.8.4 and in all related sections of the report, it should be made very clear that Anderson and Greene’s (2001) work (and the related followup work by Anderson et al. in 2004) is quite problematic. For example, the suppression instruction caused memory to be about 10% less accurate. The worst memories were when subjects were asked to suppress the target and then tested with a new cue, but even then, they still remembered about 80% of the target words, compared to about 87% baseline performance. Such a finding is a far cry from massive repression. In fact, it is a far enough cry from repression that a team of prominent scientists at Washington University St. Louis has been unable to replicate the basic finding (see especially Bulevich, Roediger, Balota, & Butler, in press, who in three careful and exacting attempts at following the Anderson & Greene procedure could not replicate the “suppression” effect). That is not to say there is no suppression effect, but it does mean that it might be rather fragile. Fragile suppression, of course, sounds like it has little resemblance to robust repression.

Section 5.2, Clinical Evidence of Blocked and Recovered Memories, is woefully out-of-date and not covered in any depth. We urge the authors of the report to read the book “Remembering Trauma” by Harvard Professor and clinical psychologist Richard McNally (published 2003 by Harvard Press). Although we strongly recommend the entire book, the section called “Traumatic amnesia” is the most relevant to the topic of the report. McNally carefully details the problems with much of the research this report relies on, particularly those in section 5.2

As it is described, the survey assumes that RMT is a discrete and readily identifiable technique; that RMT does not go by any other name; that techniques that may be dangerous but do not go by the name of RMT are safe; and that practitioners freely admit to doing RMT when asked. For example, the report notes in seven different places that clients rarely present n therapy with complete memories. Instead, the report says that the most common way clients present is with memory “fragments.” Yet eventually they surely leave with some memories—otherwise, how would they have some kind of understanding of what the fragments mean? As such, we must ask the obvious question the report did not ask: how did he fragments turn into memories? It is reasonable to assume that at least some of the time the therapist “assisted” in the process of converting fragments to memories.

The legal sources are dated (p.23-25) and seem to have relied on Freckelton and Selby’s 1993 edition of their work on expert evidence. The intersection of legal cases and the media appears thin. For example, the claim that “The media reports do not show reliably that RMT exists in Australia” is confusing, given that some of us have been consulted several times about Australian cases involving allegations of repression and recovery. Take the experiences of just one lawyer, for example: Greg Walsh of NSW has told us “I am involved currently in at least 10 cases where it [RMT] has been used and I can demonstrate quite clearly its use.” We trust our comments have been helpful, and we welcome any questions you might have. For your reference, we have appended our CVs to this letter.

Sincerely,

Dr. Maryanne Garry
Senior Lecturer
School of Psychology
Victoria University of Wellington
Wellington New Zealand
maryanne.garry@vuw.ac.nz

Dr. Pamela Freyd
Executive Director,
False Memory Syndrome Foundation
1955 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA USA
mail@fmsfonline.org

Dr. Donald Thomson
Professor, School of Social Sciences
and Liberal Studies
Charles Sturt University
Bathurst New South Wales 2795
Telephone: (61 2) 6338 4450
Facsimile: (61 2) 6338 4401
Email: dthomson@csu.edu.au

Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus
Distinguished Professor
Psychology & Social Behavior
Criminology, Law and Society
Cognitive Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA, USA
eloftus@uci.edu

Dr. Lynley Hood
P.O. Box 2041
South Dunedin
New Zealand
lihood@ihug.co.nz

Dr. Michael Corballis
Professor, Department of Psychology
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland New Zealand
Ph (+649) 373 7599 ext 88561
Fax(+649) 373 7450
m.corballis@auckland.ac.nz

Website note:
Since this letter was written, the final version of the Victorian Inquiry document has been released, with only a few fairly minor changes.
The practice of recovered memory therapy is an issue that should be of concern to all Australians.
For more information, see: http://recoveredmemorytherapy.blogspot.com/

Biosketch summaries of expertise

Maryanne Garry received her PhD in 1993 from the University of Connecticut, and has been at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand since 1996. Her PhD thesis on expertise and memory distortions received that university’s Harris Kahn Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her research on human memory distortions has appeared in various international journals and books, and she has appeared as an expert witness or submitted sworn testimony about the reliability of human memory in trials in New Zealand, Australia, the US, and in other countries. She has held a New Investigator Award from the US government’s National Institutes of Health, and has received a total of nearly $l million in funding to study the origins of false memories.

Elizabeth Loftus is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. She holds positions in the Departments of Psychology & Social Behavior, and Criminology, Law & Society. She also has appointments in the Department of Cognitive Sciences and is a Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. Since then, she has published 20 books and over 400 scientific articles. Her 4th book, Eyewitness Testimony, won a National Media Award (Distinguished Contribution) from the American Psychological Foundation. One of her most widely read books, “The Myth of Repressed Memory” (co-authored with Katherine Ketcham) was published by St. Martin’s Press and has been translated into Dutch, Taiwanese, French, German, Japanese and other foreign languages.
Loftus has been an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of cases, including the McMartin PreSchool Molestation case, the Bosnian War trials in the Hague, the Oklahoma Bombing case, and in numerous cases involving allegations of “repressed memories”, such as those involving George Franklin of San Mateo, California, Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, and Gary Ramona of Napa, California.
Loftus’s research of the last 20 years has focused on human memory, eyewitness testimony and also on courtroom procedure. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. She has received five honorary doctorates for her research, and numerous awards and honors including the American Psychological Society James McKeen Cattell Fellow award (“for a career of significant intellectual contributions to the science of psychology in the area of applied psychological research”). She received the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society, 2001 (for “ingeniously and rigorously designed research studies...that yielded clear objective evidence on difficult and controversial questions.”).
In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences bestowed upon her the inaugural Henry & Bryna David Lectureship (an award for “application of the best social and behavioral sciences research to public policy issues”) The article that she wrote in conjunction with this award was subsequently selected for inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. In 2003, the same year that she received the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology, she was also elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 2004 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, she won the Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology (to honor ideas of “great significance and impact”), and with it came a gift of $200,000. Also in 2005 she was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which is Scotland’s national academy of sciences and letters, established in 1783. Perhaps one of the most unusual signs of recognition of the impact of Loftus’s research came in a study published by the Review of General Psychology. The study identified the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, and not surprisingly Freud, Skinner, and Piaget are at the top of that list. Loftus was #58, and the top ranked woman on the list.

Pamela Freyd has been the Executive Director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation since its inception in March 1992. She also serves as the Editor of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation Newsletter. She received her Ph.D. in Education at the University of Pennsylvania In 1981. Dr. Freyd has extensive teaching experience at both the K to 12 and college level. She has been a principal investigator on two grants from the national Science Foundation that focused on science education. Before working at the FMS Foundation, she was a Research Associate at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lynley Hood is a Dunedin-based scientist, independent scholar and author. Her academic qualifications include an MSc in Physiology (University of Otago, 1968) and a LittD (University of Otago, 2003) for “published contributions of special excellence in literary, social and historical knowledge”. In 2002, her fourth book A City Possessed: the Christchurch Civic Creche Case: Child Abuse, Gender Politics & the Law (2001), won three major book prizes, including New Zealand’s premier non-fiction award, the Montana Medal. She has addressed many professional and lay groups and written extensively on her ongoing research into the history, social dynamics and legal implications of mass allegation sexual abuse cases.

Don Thomson is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Post-Graduate program in forensic psychology at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. He also is Adjunct Professor of Psychology at James Cook University in Queensland and Adjunct Professor of Law and Justice at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. He is a registered psychologist in Victoria and New South Wales He is also a barrister at the Victorian Bar. The focus of much of his research for over 30 years has been the process underlying remembering and forgetting. Dr Thomson is a former Chairperson of the Victorian Psychological Council and President of the Victorian Psychologist Registration Board.

Michael Corballis received his PhD from McGill University, Montreal, in 1965, and was Professor of Psychology at McGill until 1977, when he took up his present position as Professor of Psychology at the University of Auckland. He has published over 150 research articles and 30 book chapters, and authored, co-authored, or co-edited 5 books on many aspects of cognitive neuroscience, including memory, imagery, perception, language, and cerebral asymmetry, with funding from the National Research Council of Canada, the National Institutes of Health in the US, and the Marsden Fund of New Zealand. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the Royal Society of New Zealand, and in 2002 was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ON ZM) for services to psychological science. He has argued in the New Zealand press that cases involving claims of child sexual abuse need to be informed by a better scientific understanding of the nature of memory.

NB: letter originally included reference documents and complete CVs not included here.


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