The Recovered Memory Debate

Introduction Understanding memory, the search for the engram, is the holy grail of psychology and neuroscience. Researchers are continually searching for answers to different aspects of how memory works. Yet, in 1997 when someone mentions the ‘memory debate‘ it is generally understood that this refers to the controversy involving the recovery of repressed memories of childhood abuse, and the possibility that such memories are illusory. The reasons for this controversy being a ‘memory debate’ lies in the fact that otherwise objective scientists have become adversarial in their treatment of the issue. One camp, ‘the skeptics’ represented by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), has been vehemently arguing that recovered memories are generally unreliable and that therapists have convinced unwitting patients that childhood abuse occurred when it had not. The other camp, ‘true believers’ formed as a reaction to FMSF in order to protect people who claimed to have recovered memories; but, they seem to be willing to believe in the authenticity of any claim of recovered memory without any scientific evidence (Loftus, 1994b). Unfortunately, much of the argument has been political rhetoric and lacking in the hard data that is required for a scientific debate. The media has also contributed to the fray: accepting without question assumptions about recovered memories. For example, one reporter, Lawrence Wright, wrote in a New Yorker article that “thousands of ...people have been accused on the basis of recovered memories...and certainly many are false”(May 24, 1993 p.76). When personally asked how many cases Wright had actually documented, he admitted, “One” (Pope, 1996). Since, the debate deals with very sensitive and important issues, scientists investigating memory must be careful not to appear as trying to feed the fire of one side or the other. Even in our definition of the ‘memory debate’ we must be careful with using words such as ‘repressed’, and ‘illusory’. These terms will be explicitly defined as they are discussed later in the paper.