'Repressed Memory' and Childhood Trauma by Harrison G., Jr., Md. Pope
Can individuals "repress" the memory of traumatic childhood experiences? Does childhood sexual abuse cause victims to develop psychiatric disorders years later in adulthood? Dr. Harrison Pope examines the evidence for these two hypotheses, and takes a rigorous and incisive look at the studies available. His conclusions are startling - there is presently no satisfactory evidence that people can actually "repress" memories, nor is there adequate evidence that childhood sexual abuse causes adult psychiatric disorders. The fact remains that the "evidence" cited in many of these studies can be more readily explained by more mundane processes, such as early childhood amnesia, ordinary forgetfulness, or elective non-disclosure. Psychology Astray is written for students and scholars in the fields of psychology, mental health, medical research and law. The flaws in existing studies are exposed and illustrated, using simple and colorful analogies from ordinary life which everyone can understand. Psychology Astray, PDTyrrell@aol.com, August 28, 1998 Psychology Astray is a pretty good book, although the author does make some presumptions known to be wrong himself. Pope uses - homosexuality can not be changed by psycotherapy - as an example of the misinformation taught for years in his chosen field. 1000 page books have been published that maintain that it can be and is. Something about barometric pressure doesn't cause bone discomfort where a major bone is connected different than usual with another one is in there too which is wrong. He delves into what they know about schizophrenia, without mentioning that it is the most misdiagnosed mental disorder there is. (Social workers often are the ones who decide who is schizophrenic in mental institutions). The field of psychology has a lot of problems, it really does. It would be easy to prove that the roughly 100 year old area of study is responsible for far more harm than good that it's done. Lobotomies. Wrongly detained individuals. Prescriptions for addictive drugs for the wrong symptoms. Pope points out that what qualifies experts as such is often miscalculated credentials. Like cops, part of the problem is the egotisticalness of the majority of students who choose the field, the "it takes a village to raise a child" crowd in abstract. They know what's best for you because they learned the later discredited stuff in school of predecessors who did the same. Most of them want everyone to be the same and feel that other people who are they're own people should not have the right to be or even act paranoid. Dr. Pope does a pretty good job of exposing the lack of evidence about one particular subject that gets reported on the news as fact by producers who did take the same classes and were taught by the same professors who learned the same or similar mis-information. * * * There are some people who have been abused sexually and physically as children, and who have partially or totally blocked the memories from view. The problem is that these are far fewer than the modern psycho-babblers would have us believe. Until lately, it was politically correct to believe the abused, never the accused. The "technology" of modern psychology is so varied and flawed that whatever results are obtained are highly questionable. Basing personal and family decisions, and legal actions upon the findings of psychotherapists doing "repressed-memory" work is ludicrous considering the horrendous state of the field's methodology.
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