The end of a delusion: “The psychiatric memory wars are over”

Dr Paul McHugh

Paul McHugh places Remembering Trauma (Richard McNally, Harvard University Press, 2003) in the context of monitoring the “final phase” of the memory wars. McNally “leaves no defense of recovered memories,” states McHugh.

Noting that people today tend to find the notion of recovered repressed memories “absurd and ridiculous,” McHugh traces the rise of recovered-memory beliefs to a new interpretation of Freud by “mannerists” as contrasted with orthodox Freudians.

“[B]oth the orthodox and the mannerists believed that Western society is the primary source of mental distress: Freud taught that society restricted the expression of our drives, producing conflicts and neurosis: the mannerists claimed that the society protected the sexual predators by its paternalistic structure. Meanwhile, both believed in a dynamic unconscious roiling with repressed secrets. Freud supposed that the unconscious hid our selfish impulses and hungers from consciousness and thus from the censure by a repressive culture; the mannerists held that the unconscious hid the shocking memories from consciousness so that family life could go on. Finally, both believed that therapy should bring the unconscious issues to light: Freud said this would spare the subject from wasting psychic energy repressing his drives and so allow him to flourish in ‘love and work’; the mannerists believed that acknowledging the ‘repressed abuse would lead to a life free from the nightmares, failures in personal relationships, and self-destructive behaviors generated by the unconscious memories.’”

McHugh writes that after the mannerists launched the memory wars, their ideas spread so quickly that by 1991 some “manneristic Freudians were claiming that up to half of patients in psychiatric care were suffering from the effects of repressed or dissociated memories of sexual abuse.”

The second phase of the memory wars, according to McHugh, began in 1992 with the formation of the FMS Foundation and other organized opposition to these ideas and practices. He explains that the Foundation began with the belief that “common sense would soon prevail, and this misdirection of psychiatry from standard practices of evaluation and therapy would promptly stop. But the opposition to the idea of repressed memory received little or no support from official psychiatry or from the editorial policies of such professional journals as the American Journal of Psychiatry.” Many excellent books appeared in the second phase, and the stories of former patients who sued recovered-memory therapists garnered much media and public attention.

“Perhaps the greatest scandal of the memory wars lies in this: The official avenues of clinical and scientific debate failed to play a role in ending these practices, while public rebuke and punishment did. Enormous damage is done to a medical discipline when it is forced to advance and retreat under the gun of the malpractice courts—but when the psychiatric establishment was at best absent, and at worst complicit, in the widespread practice of psychiatric abuse, what alternative was there.”

 

According to McHugh, the second phase of the memory wars was partially effective in changing the situation: At minimum, no one brags about how skilled they are at excavating hidden memories—at least not in public. But the effect of the courts in stopping the practices was limited. With the publication of Remembering Trauma, McHugh says, “The repressed-memory diagnosis has finally been repressed.”

McHugh, P.R. The Weekly Standard 5-26-03

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie -

deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth -

persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”  John F. Kennedy

Dear Carol and Bob,

The problems with our daughter started thirteen years ago in 1990. We have abided by her rules all these years, which meant no communications of any kind. About two years ago she started sending us greeting cards on birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day, Christmas, etc. We responded by sending greeting cards at all the same times. Only once did she write a note to tell us that she and her husband had built a new house into which they had moved. She gave us her new address.

The new house is in a different county from the one in which they had lived for thirty years. In the newspaper last Sunday there was an insert that listed the unclaimed funds for their previous county and I found my son-in-law's name listed as having money to claim. I assumed that there was little chance that he would see it in his new location and after much thought, I decided to send the insert to him with a short note wishing him luck.

I knew the letter might come back unopened. Much to our amazement, however, a greeting card came with a kind note from both our daughter and son-in-law. My daughter's note said:

"After all of our "water under the bridge" it is so nice to know that you are still watching over us. Thanks for caring about our best interests.

Love"

We consider this to be quite a good step toward more communication in the future but we will not try to rush it. We have always followed the theory of letting them lead the way, so we will not rush into anything different right now. Most likely some other opportunity will present itself, hopefully in the near future, and more communication will occur. It has taken a lot of patience for these thirteen years so I guess we can go on a little longer if necessary even if we are now seventy-six years old. All of the FMS parents have given us this patience and hope; otherwise I don't know how we would have handled it. Only FMS parents can understand what a difficult situation this is to live through.

Thank you, Carol and Bob, for all that you have done for us and for the other hundreds of FMS families you have helped over these many years.

With much love and appreciation.