O  A  R  M  H  P

September 2002

Hi Everyone,

What can you say about Pam Freyd? There are not enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe someone who saved your life. To say she is my hero, my idol, does not describe it strong enough. I will never forget the day I read her story. As Bob saw the tears running down my face, he said. "What is the matter?" "This woman has just written our story," I sniffed. "I must find her." Little did I know what I would find.

Pam has led the FMS Foundation with courage, grace, and gallantry. She has faced vicious personal attacks and falsehoods written about her and Peter, yet she has not attacked back. Instead she has quietly answered many thousands of letters with compassion and knowledge. She writes in such an articulate manner that you learn, grow, and feel comforted by her words.

With grace and dignity she has led the fight against unscientific therapy. She has educated the public maybe even the world of the dangerous nature of Recovered Memory Therapy. Someday they will write a book about her. Meanwhile she is my personal nominee for Time Magazine's Person of the Year. When she finally consented to an interview for OARMHP I was elated. Now you can know more about her also. See you in the first week of October!

Love, Carole

Pam, Tell us about yourself. Where were you born? What schools did you go to and what was your occupation before FMSF? 

I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, arriving with the massive hurricane in 1938. Indeed, my mother claimed that I always had as much energy as a hurricane. She said I typically ran instead of walking throughout my childhood.

I attended public schools in Providence. I tolerated elementary school but I truly adored high school where I became immersed in Latin, maths, and art. I have never lost the joy of digging into new subjects that was nurtured in those formative years.

I attended Brown University, although it was formally Pembroke for Female students back 50s. At the end of my freshman year, Peter and I were married and had a baby. We moved to Princeton where Peter was a graduate student in mathematics. I graduated from New York University after we moved to New York where Peter had begun his mathematical career at Columbia.

Because I enjoyed learning about new things so much, I became a teacher—hoping I could share my enthusiasms. This was in the 60s when there was a desperate shortage of teachers and I went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania to become certified. I thought teaching would be a lark. Little did I know! It turned out to be the most challenging activity I have ever tried. In fact, it was only after seven years that I felt that I had developed into a real teacher. During that time, the 60s being what they were, I was active in pushing for equality for women in different areas.

After my children were grown, I returned to the University of Pennsylvania in the early 80s and received my Ph.D. in the area of language acquisition and in particular how children developed understanding of derivational morphology. That involved studying how people access words from memory. Thus, I gained a bit of a background in memory research.

In the mid 80s, I became involved with some educational outreach programs in science. I was a principal investigator on two grants from the National Science Foundation in early childhood science learning.

So, it seems that I was poised at a point to respond to claims about absolute accuracy of recovered repressed memories when accusations began to fly in the early 90s and one of them hit us. I knew that if a person has a misconception about the nature of something in science, it could block further understanding.

It seemed obvious to me that many professionals, the media, and public had a misconception about the nature of memory. That misconception was that we record everything we hear and see, rather like a tape recorder and that the problem with memory is one of access - finding the right playback button. But for anyone who studied memory in the 80s, it was clear that memory did not behave in that manner, that memory is malleable, that it is a creative process, and that we piece together bits and pieced of memory fragments to create a story that makes sense to us in the here and now.

How did you establish the FMS Foundation?

Peter and I have often been described by our critics as being the founders of the FMS Foundation. That is a ridiculous notion. The idea that there needed to be a foundation came from Darryl Sifford, the late columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1991, he wrote a column about a family that claimed they had been falsely accused on the basis of recovered memories.

Sifford received so many letters in response that he said that there needed to be some place for people to get information. The world-

renowned psychiatrist and hypnosis expert, Martin Orne, M.D., Ph.D. was responsible for pulling several families and professionals together, a group that later formed the Foundation. The Foundation, with its stellar scientific advisory board was Dr Orne's conception. Since I had already started writing to families with whom I was in contact, the nucleus of a newsletter was in place. Peter and I were not afraid to be public about our personal tragedy. As a result, I won the "short" straw and became the executive director of the Foundation.

I did not establish the FMSF. There was a group of families and professionals and my husband and I were just one of the families with the same problem. I was not afraid to be public and that is why my name is associated so strongly with this.

How long as the foundation being around and do you think it has established its goals?

The Foundation has been around for more than a decade— with an impact far beyond its small size. That is probably due both to the high acclaim of the members of the Scientific Advisory Board and to the fact that the Foundation focused on scientific issues rather than victim issues.

The Foundation had three major goals: to understand FMS, to stop its spread and to help families reconcile. There is no doubt that we have accomplished the first goal. I think that in most major ways, the second has also been accomplished – but needs to be monitored to see that the problem does not explode again. The last, and to families the most important goal, is in process. We have helped families keep their hearts open.

We have helped many families once the accusing offspring indicated a readiness to return. What the Foundation - or anyone for that matter- is not able to accomplish is to reach a person who is totally encapsulated in the recovered memory belief system. Coming out of that belief system is something only that individual can do. Societal influences can help to provide the climate for change, but it is only with the conflict between the person's belief and what he or she experiences come into conflict that reconciliation becomes possible. That's why contact between accuser and parents is so important. It's easy to vilianize someone who is not there - if the beliefs are false. It is much more difficult to do so when the actions of the person who has been vilianized is right there. The false beliefs won't fit.

What do you see as the future of the foundation and for yourself?

I have been ready to move on to some other activity for a number of years. The sadness of the family stories and the frustration of dealing with professionals more interested in protecting themselves or sitting on the fence than in doing what it right has taken a big toll.

The publicity has probably made it impossible for my own family ever to reconcile. At the same time, I am still fascinated by the unraveling of the recovered memory fad and I find great joy when families do reconcile. I believe that there is still a need for a low-profile Foundation as long as there are people who will provide the financial support to keep it going. When there is no more news to report in the newsletter and when we stop getting calls from families coping with FMS, it will indicate that the Foundation is no longer needed.

How do you feel about your daughter now 10 years later?

My children are incredible people. They have done what they believed was right within the framework of the recovered memory belief system. Obviously, we do not agree. It makes me very sad that they have cut themselves and their children from their heritage. The children that I knew would not have been afraid to be open and willing to meet face to face to clear up differences. I don't know the people my children have become.

How do you feel about your part in the foundations work?

I am not ashamed that I have stood up for what I perceive as the truth. Something very wrong was going on in the early 90s. I am proud that in part because of my efforts the professional organizations wrote statement about the reliability of memory. And I am glad that I have been able to help families keep their hearts open in order to welcome their offspring back when they were ready to return. Even Laura Davis (Courage to Heal) has now changed her perspective and is talking about reconciliation rather than hate.

I feel that I have learned some profound lessons about family and love and courage from the wonderful professionals and families I have met through the FMS Foundation.