The Dangers of False Memories

The dangers of  a false memory is in creating a ‘past’ which did not happen.  Often this leads to psychological problems, and, in law, wrongfully convicting an innocent person.

In False Memory syndrome, an outsider, usually a ‘psycho-therapist’, gains ‘control’ over a patient.  The Patient is vulnerable, open, believing that this therapist knows more about them then s/he knows him/herself.

The Therapist creates a false sexual encounter the patient experienced as a child to explain adult issues. The damage this causes to the person and those around the person can not be over emphasised.

The most famous, and first case, which I mentioned in a previous article was one of the most blatant.

A woman who had an excellent relationship with her parents, was made to believe that her father had sexually abused her as a child.

Now, even a lay person, would  ponder, how could the woman not have remembered this? How could she have lived all these years, in a close relationship with her father, and never did one of these memories pop up?

People who were abused as children may ‘suppress’ the memory, but their relationship with the abuser is not close.

She or he may not give a reason why, but it is clear, from any encounter, that the relationship between the two is problematic.

Yet, a so-called Therapist, ignoring the facts, never meeting the parents, never doing more than making assumptions, caused this woman and her family to fall apart.

After the successful litigation of this case, hundreds of people brought similar cases against their psycho-therapist. This is because hundreds of people had their lives ruined by false memory.

This false memory was created by the therapist without any basis.

As there is so much child abuse going around, it is almost a knee jerk for a practitioner to assume the patient experienced this.  So the therapist, using drugs or hypnotism or both will create this memory.

Creating memories is not difficult.

A few years ago,  the ‘Lost in the Mall’ illusion was created to prove False Memory.

An undergraduate would have his/her parents interviewed to learn which Malls they shopped in the past. This was done without the presence of the under grad.

Once the information was gained, the under grad would enter, and be asked questions, and among them would be; ‘do you recall when you were lost in the Mall?’

The subject would not recall, because this never happened.  The Interviewer was assured by the parents that this never happened.

The interviewer, however, armed with the name of the Mall would sayt to the under grad; “Don’t you recall when you were six years old that you and your parents were shopping at Webster’s Mall, when you got lost?”

The subject remembers Webster’s Mall, obviously. And s/he begins to ponder, and the interviewer might say;

“You used to go to Macy’s…” The subject would remember being at the Mall, being in Macy’s. The more thought put into it, the more effort of recalling being ‘lost’ a few bits and pieces might pop up.  In almost all cases, with a few pushes, a ‘memory’ would be created.

The Under Grad would begin to ‘recall’ the incident.

At the end, the Interviewer would tell the subject that s/he was never lost in the Mall. The subject would insist, because s/he now has such vivid memories of it.

This experiment was done to prove how very easy it is to create False Memories.