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Planting False Memories: Case Histories, Lawsuits, and Theories

Mal12345

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"Everything you remember from last week may not be real, a panel of scientific experts cautioned yesterday. That is because the human brain is frighteningly susceptible to suggestive comments, subliminal messages and other tricks that can form false memories."
http://old.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030217woods0217p5.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome

"In 1986 Nadean Cool, a nurse's aide in Wisconsin, sought therapy from a psychiatrist to help her cope with her reaction to a traumatic event experienced by her daughter. During therapy, the psychiatrist used hypnosis and other suggestive techniques to dig out buried memories of abuse that Cool herself had allegedly experienced. In the process, Cool became convinced that she had repressed memories of having been in a satanic cult, of eating babies, of being raped, of having sex with animals and of being forced to watch the murder of her eight-year-old friend."
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

"Planting False Childhood Memories: The Role Of Event Plausibility"
http://www.cgu.edu/include/Event_Plausibility.pdf

"Planting False Memories Of Cheating"
http://www.writing.uci.edu/holderfield planting.pdf

[Childhood sexual abuse memories require the demand for "plausibility" of the event occurring, which requires that patients and clients believe in the theory that emotional and behavioral problems are always caused by abuse.]
http://www.cgu.edu/PDFFiles/sbos/Pezdek _Blandon-Gitlin_NotMeOrMyFriends.pdf

http://www.rickross.com/reference/false_memories/fsm5.html

"Overall, the misinformation was remembered as being part of the original event about 47% of the time. So, expectedly, a robust impairment of memory was produced by exposure to misinformation— the misinformation effect. But the researchers' new work had a twist: They went on to show that the neural activity that occurred while the subjects processed the events and later the misinformation predicted whether a misinformation effect would occur."
http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/12/4/361.full

"In the course of her therapy at Castlewood Treatment Center for Eating Disorders, Taylor realized a close family member had repeatedly raped her, and that she'd been physically and sexually abused for years. The problem is, she alleges in a new lawsuit, none of it was true."
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2012/07/third_patient_sues_castlewood.php

"All she wanted was a few counseling sessions to help her cope with depression and get on with graduate school. Instead, she spent four years and tens of thousands of dollars in the bizarre world of a hypnotherapist who talked to ancient deities and convinced her she was the victim of satanic abuse."
http://www.stopbadtherapy.com/resource/article/fraud.shtml

"Alan Alda had nothing against hard-boiled eggs until last spring. Then the actor, better known as Hawkeye from M*A*S*H, paid a visit to the University of California, Irvine. In his new guise as host of a science series on American TV, he was exploring the subject of memory. The researchers showed him round, and afterwards took him for a picnic in the park. By the time he came to leave, he had developed a dislike of hard-boiled eggs based on a memory of having made himself sick on them as a child - something that never happened."
http://rense.com/general45/falsemen.htm

"Therapist: Beware of False Memories
By Chaplain Paul G. Durbin Ph.D"
http://www.hypnogenesis.com/pdurbin1.htm

"Remember that wonderful day when Bugs Bunny hugged you at Disneyland? A study presented Sunday shows just how easy it can be to induce false memories in the minds of some people. More than a third of subjects in the study recalled that theme-park moment — impossible because Bugs is not a Disney character — after a researcher planted the false memory."
http://forum.codoh.info/viewtopic.php?t=183

"So the students who had been told that they loved asparagus as children actually came to believe it to be true..."
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/05/11/a-psychological-gimmick-to-get/

'Researchers are showing how suggestion and imagination can create “memories” of events that did not actually occur'
https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/Loftus_ScientificAmerican_Good97.pdf?uniq=-jd60qg


http://ritualabuse.us/research/memo...-false-memory-research-of-elizabeth-loftus-2/

"Whether it is possible to repress traumatic memories completely, and retrieve them pristinely is quite contested in the general population, but not so much amongst modern scientists. On the one hand we have had anecdotes in popular books and on television claiming trauma repression happens, some saying that they recovered memories that were then verified with parents, so it may be possible, but actual genuine cases seem to be rarer than once thought."
http://debunkingprimaltherapy.com/recovered_memory/

"Washington State which gives plaintiffs three years from the time the victim discovered or reasonably should have discovered the abuse and its causal connection to adult psychological problems.(See Wash. Rev. Code Ann $4.16.340, West Supp. 1994)."
http://cogprints.org/599/1/199802009.html

And so on...
 

sprinkles

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Yeah, it's freaky stuff.

My memory is wonky like that but luckily I already knew all this.

It's really weird to not remember something that did happen but remember something that didn't happen instead.
 

Mal12345

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http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_edent.htm/
"As in other cases, the children will be scarred for life by the memories inadvertently planted by the interviewers. There is probably little difference between a child actually being abused and a child having had false memories of abuse implanted their mind. Both will be partly disabled for life."
 

Mal12345

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http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/witch/felpress1.html
'In the 1990s, as new scientific research has shown how the leading techniques favored by many interrogators in the 1980s (repeated sessions over many weeks, refusal to take "no" for an answer, freakishly exaggerated "anatomically correct" dolls, etc) can create false memories in young children, appeals courts in many states have been reversing "ritual abuse" convictions.'
 

Totenkindly

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Yeah, there was a glut of "I was part of a family demonic cult / ritually abused and raped" accusations in the mid/late 80's and into the early 90's. There are people languishing in jail because they admitted to crimes that later people realized they did not commit. it was kind of the novelty of hypnosis and that type of therapy (where the therapist is "leading" the patient and literally implanting suggestions in their mind that the patient then validates emotionally and then accepting such things as fact based on their feelings), coupled with empowering women in general, that let to this kind of thing becoming full blown for a decade.

Elizabeth Loftus did some major research on this in the 90's and onwards, I think; her "mall" story where subjects became convinced they had been lost in the mall as a child, where 25% of the subjects even could fill in extensive details of this "memory" that their parents then would state never occurred, is rather unsettling.

It's really weird to not remember something that did happen but remember something that didn't happen instead.

Totally... to the degree of "what do I currently assume to be true, as sure as breathing and sight, that will end up tomorrow being shown to be completely false?"

One almost can't describe how debilitating it could be.
 

Seymour

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http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_edent.htm/
"As in other cases, the children will be scarred for life by the memories inadvertently planted by the interviewers. There is probably little difference between a child actually being abused and a child having had false memories of abuse implanted their mind. Both will be partly disabled for life."

It's deeply disturbing that well-meaning folks may have been abusing children they were trying to help... turning them into abuse victims. Ick.
 

Totenkindly

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'In the 1990s, as new scientific research has shown how the leading techniques favored by many interrogators in the 1980s (repeated sessions over many weeks, refusal to take "no" for an answer, freakishly exaggerated "anatomically correct" dolls, etc) can create false memories in young children, appeals courts in many states have been reversing "ritual abuse" convictions.'

I hope so. I just remember that poor guy who admitted her had molested his daughters ritually, because he was susceptible too to suggestion and believed that his daughters would never lie, so if they said he did it, he must have and must have forgotten it. He received a conviction and served jail time because of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurston_county_ritual_abuse_case


Here's an interesting page:
http://www.fmsfonline.org/lipton.html

It also notes that by 1999, the courts were becoming inured against these kinds of cases, since it was becoming apparent that they were not based on substantial evidence and were often the product of therapy rather than history.
 

sprinkles

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Totally... to the degree of "what do I currently assume to be true, as sure as breathing and sight, that will end up tomorrow being shown to be completely false?"

One almost can't describe how debilitating it could be.

For sure. That's part of the reason I get a disability check. Being able to remember stuff properly and keep a coherent persona can be really important for sanity and functioning.

I'm pretty good at faking it for basic interaction but when it comes down to it I've got a lot of real problems that can make it hard to truly interact as expected in the real world. It really is nearly impossible to describe why it's such a big deal and even therapists can't figure me out because I become a totally different animal around them. It's like I have a whole different set of life experiences just for them and I don't even know it until later in retrospect I have some foggy recollection of what the hell just went on, but even that fades pretty fast.

It's almost disgusting some times but I've learned to not hold on to identity too hard. I just have to accept that some times my brain gets stuff wrong, or doesn't get stuff at all.
 

Mal12345

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I hope so. I just remember that poor guy who admitted her had molested his daughters ritually, because he was susceptible too to suggestion and believed that his daughters would never lie, so if they said he did it, he must have and must have forgotten it. He received a conviction and served jail time because of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurston_county_ritual_abuse_case


Here's an interesting page:
http://www.fmsfonline.org/lipton.html

It also notes that by 1999, the courts were becoming inured against these kinds of cases, since it was becoming apparent that they were not based on substantial evidence and were often the product of therapy rather than history.

That's a huge page full of detailed information.

One of the sad things about this is that it's been known since at least the 19th century that some people like to turn themselves and admit to crimes they didn't commit. It takes some common-sense on the part of police detectives to weed these people out, but obviously in certain cases common-sense has been thrown to the wind in order to gain political points.
 

Totenkindly

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That's a huge page full of detailed information.

One of the sad things about this is that it's been known since at least the 19th century that some people like to turn themselves and admit to crimes they didn't commit. It takes some common-sense on the part of police detectives to weed these people out, but obviously in certain cases common-sense has been thrown to the wind in order to gain political points.

Well, I think too that some people are just gullible and wanted to believe this crap. I'm just kind of embarrassed this kind of stuff happened for so long; with the satanic cult thing (a holdover from the 70's), there has been no real evidence of such a vast conspiracy. They've found nothing, despite all of these babies seemingly been sacrificed. finally enough sane voices were heard and they realized how dumb it was; they should have known better, as "eye witness testimony" habitually brings up differences of 'facts' in police investigations. The police should have known this, the court should have known this -- that human memory is not all it is cracked up to be.

But even ten years ago, we had some weird therapists going to trial for practicing unique methods of regression therapy on kids, a few of whom smothered to death. There will always be quacks and freaks in a country so large, that supports diversity in the population.
 

Lark

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Darren Brown did a show in which he convinced a guy he was responsible for a murder by planting false memories. I thought it was a terrible thing to do for entertainment and hoped that it was lies and trickery with a convincing actor involved in it all.

Although Brown has done the show on christian tele evangelism to undermine faith in God and I think moved on to undermining faith in human nature now aswell.

On one or two occasions I've had insanely vivid dreams about having been involved in or having knowledge of or witnessing a murder, so vivid that when I woke I sort of believed they could be memories, I almost believed it was a repressed memory but I talked with my parents and they were like WTF, you'd know if you'd killed someone eejit. In time I realised that a lot of TV shows which featured this theme on around about the time I was "recalling" these memories from and I think that I'd internalised some of these as "truth".
 

Totenkindly

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honestly, I don't really care whether something "undermines" something else; if it is false, then it deserves to be replaced by something containing more truth. That kind of attitude where one fears to undermine something because evidence leads elsewhere is what perpetuates subjective morality and justification for any practice as long as it serves the ends of the people involved.
 

Lark

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honestly, I don't really care whether something "undermines" something else; if it is false, then it deserves to be replaced by something containing more truth. That kind of attitude where one fears to undermine something because evidence leads elsewhere is what perpetuates subjective morality and justification for any practice as long as it serves the ends of the people involved.

Hmmm.
 

Lark

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Hmmm? I thought you'd support this, based on your overt post trail here.

Its almost an exact statement of what is actually my beliefs, if we believe the same thing then there has got to be an intractable difference in what is meant by objective and subjective morality because obviously you'd believe yours objective and mine subjective and I believe the exact opposite.
 

Totenkindly

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That's kind of my point, as we both would state this to be truth but to me you seem to weight tradition and established practice as truthful because of their precedence, whereas i'm more concerned about them reflecting how they actually play out for good or ill.
 

Lark

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That's kind of my point, as we both would state this to be truth but to me you seem to weight tradition and established practice as truthful because of their precedence, whereas i'm more concerned about them reflecting how they actually play out for good or ill.

There is a division between tradition and innovation, I do reject innovation if I think it threatens what I see tradition as having served, often in an unacknowledged and "anonymous" way, not because it is simply contra tradition. I also use that word tradition in a sociological or normative sense, not in an ideological, identity or prefabricated way.
 

sprinkles

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[MENTION=7]Jennifer[/MENTION]

This is what happens in dogged pursuit of 'right' and 'justice'.

At a certain level it creates divisions and everyone gets harmed, including the bystanders and victims.

For example they take a child who doesn't know what is going on and start asking them questions, like "did so and so hurt you" and the child is just uncomfortable because it's really weird to be asked those questions for no apparent reason. The interviewers take this discomfort as hiding or repressing some form of abuse, and they persist, and persist, trying to get a 'truth' that they are already looking for which in some cases isn't even there.

Honestly, people who constantly look for wrong are either going to find it, or cause it.
 

Mal12345

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Even better: the interrogation technique where a social worker takes a "victim of child abuse" on a little drive around town, digging him or her in the side with a sharp object whenever the "wrong" answer is given.

A little torture - I mean, encouragement - never hurts a government case, right? And the child will be afraid to tell anybody about it.
 
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