The Myth of Repressed Memory.

I agreed to review this book when I was told that the author was Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist and expert on memories and memory development. I was familiar with issues surrounding repressed memory, having evaluated a number of patients with claims of repressed memories of early childhood trauma, including memories of childhood sexual abuse.

I also was vaguely familiar with the Elieen Franklin case. Eileen was a young woman who allegedly recovered repressed memories of her father, George Franklin, sexually abusing her best friend, Susan, and then murdering her. George Franklin was tried for the murder and convicted on the basis of Elieen's testimony.

Loftus had testified in that trial, along with Dr. Lenore Terr, an expert in childhood trauma, and Dr. David Speigel, an expert on dissociation, multiple personalities, and repressed memories. Terr testified for the defense and wrote about her experience. I read Terr's account of the trial from defense witnesses or other participants who might portray the events of the trial in different perspectives.

In this volume, Loftus gives a fair and balanced treatment of the highly controversial trial md the subject of repressed memories. Early in the book, Loftus reveals her own traumatic childhood memory, which for a brief period of time she believed she had repressed: the memory of her mother drowning in a swimming pool.

She reports that when she was 14 years old, she, her mother, and her Aunt Pearl were on vacation, visiting an Uncle Joe in Pennsylvania. On one bright, sunny morning, she said, she woke up and her mother was dead, drowned in a pool. She comments,

That is the happening truth. The story truth is something quite different. In my mind, I've returned to the scene many times and each time the memory gains weight and substance.... The last I remember of my mother was a tip-toed visit the evening before her death, the quick hug, the whispered "I love you."

Loftus then reports that 30 years later she was informed by Uncle Joe's brother that she was the one who had found her mother dead in the pool. She tells the reader that after initial shock she began to remember and eventually I could see myself, a thin, dark-haired girl, looking into the flickerig blue and white pool, my mother dressed in her nightgown, floating face down . . . Mom, mom?' I asked the question several times."

Now, she says, her mother's death finally made sense. "The memory had been there all along but I just couldn't reach it. For three days, my memory expanded and swelled."

In the denouement of this tale of an allegedly repressed memory, Loftus informs the reader that her brother called to tell her that Uncle Joe had checked the facts and realized he had made a mistake. His memory, at age 90, had temporarily failed him. Now, he remembered - and other relatives confirmed - that it was not Loftus but Aunt Pearl who had found the body in the pool. Thus, Loftus reveals that she had had an experience with a "false memory" that she elaborated and fabricated in great detail after believing it was a repressed traumatic memory.

Later in the book, Loftus reveals another traumatic experience that deeply affected her, a memory she had not been able to "forgive and forget," a memory of molestation by a babysitter that occurred when she was six years old. "I never forgot this memory, nor did I repress it," she told a colleague years later, "and even though it affected me deeply, I chose to leave it in my past. I think that's where it belongs."

Thus, on at least two occasions, Loftus informs the reader of personal experiences that may have colored her investigation into the science of repressed memory.

However, in clear and concise language, and with great detail, she reports on the state of science and the state of the art in the area of repressed memory. She describes experiments she and colleagues have conducted in planting false memories in laboratory patients, including children, adolescents, and adults. However, the laboratory is not the real world, and the traumatic events described are not sexual abuse. She describes how memories expand and are colored and influenced by the multiple sources they are based on.

Earlier I said this is a balanced work. Throughout, the reader is informed about the state of the art and science in memory research in a balanced way. However, this is not a textbook on memory research, and the experiments have been selected to support Loftus's point of view. That is, despite the description of research studies, she concludes there is no controlled scientific support for the idea that memories of trauma may be banished into the unconscious, suppressed, and then reliably recovered years later.

Loftus also provides an in-depth description of some of the more highly publicized and notable cases of "repressed memories." In addition to the case of Eileen Franklin, she presents the case of Paul Ingram. Briefly, Ingram's two children accused him of sexually abusing them after they had participated in a retreat sponsored by the Church of Living Water, a fundamentalist Christian denomination that is located in Olympia, Washington.

Ingram at first denied the alleged abuse, but after a long, hard interrogation by detectives, he confessed. He admitted that because his daughters wouldn't he he must have abused them, even though he did not recall the abuse. Without the memories, Ingram was simply parroting what the detectives told him he had done to his children, and his statement could not be considered a legally sufficient confession. However, after more interrogation and suggestion, Ingram began to discuss what he "would have done" had he molested his children. Later, when queried, "Is that what you would've done or did you?" Ingram responded, "Uh, I did."

His daughters' stories expanded to include Satanism and baby killing, and, eventually, sexual intercourse with animals.

Ingram was interviewed by Richard Ofshe, an expert on cults and mind control, who became convinced that Ingram had been influenced to make up the memories because of an inherent desire to please his interrogator and a need for reassurance about his family's safety.

To test this theory, Ofshe decided to implant a memory by suggesting to Ingram that he had observed his son and daughter having intercourse - something neither had alleged.

Ingram, after momentary reflection was able to imagine the scene and see himself in it. Later, ingrain handed Ofshe a three-page, handwritten confession of the scene, complete with dialogue. Thus, Ofshe had influenced Ingram to confess with rich and abundant detail to something that had never happened. When Ofshe told Ingram that he had invented the whole scene, Ingrarn became agitated and emotional and insisted that his memories were authentic.

This story continues like a soap opera, but in reality it is a tragedy of mythic proportion. Ingram entered a guilty plea at the time of sentencing. Later, almost a year after he entered the guilty plea, he announced in court, "As I stand before you, I stand before God, I have never sexually abused my daughters. I am not guilty of these crimes." Thus, what began with an implanted memory in the children, progressed to an implanted memory in the father and to a retraction of an implanted memory. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Loftus makes it clear that her book is dedicated to the principles of science, which demand that any claim to truth" be accompanied by proof. She also makes it clear that her book is not a debate about the reality or horror of sexual abuse, incest, and violence against children. "This is a debate about memory," she says.

Dr. Loftus md her coauthor, Katherine Ketcham, do not deny that sexual abuse occurs and that it is devastating and traumatic. Then, do, however, ask for scientific proof or the validation of theories that posit repressed memory. They force the reader to reflect on the damage that these unproven theories may do to children, families, communities, and the well-meaning but naive therapists who act on these theories.

Elissa Benedek is a forensic psychiatrist at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ann Arbor, Michigan.