The Traumatised Memory – Protection and Resistance E-Book

• Herausgeber: Lehmanns
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 316

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Much has already been written about trauma psychotherapeutic methods. However, little research has so far been done on how psychodynamic traumatic incidents are psychologically mapped and coded into symptoms of the body and into mental images – although this topic is extremely exciting! How is psychological stressful data saved and stored by humans depending on their age, the cruelty level of the incident or the accumulation of terrible events? Which variants of remembrance are available to the body and mind? How can encrypted data be later retrieved and decrypted, so it is therapeutically effective and emotionally acceptable? This book is a collection of theoretical and practical contributions that can be understood by psychotherapeutic colleagues and affected clients alike. The illustrative case examples are also interesting for anyone who wants to experience the logic and contradictions of the fascinating unconscious.

Leseprobe

Ralf Vogt

The Traumatised Memory – Protection and Resistance

How traumatic stress encrypts itself in the body, behaviour and soul

and how to detect it

With contributions by:

Kevin J. Connors

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Image credits:All images are subject to the copyright law and may not be utilised without a written consent by the authors.

Copyright © 2019 Lehmanns Media GmbH, Berlin, Germany All rights reservedPublished by Lehmanns Media GmbH, Helmholtzstr. 2-9, 10587 Berlin, Germanywww.lehmanns.de

ISBN 978-3-96543-027-3 

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all those who provided me the possibility to complete this book. Special gratitude goes to the translators for this project. They are; Sabine Budnick, who translated articles 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 4.1, 4.2 and 5.4, Winja Lutz, who translated articles 1.2, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 and Julian Pottier, who translated articles 1.1, 1.4, 3.1 and 5.1.

Furthermore, I would also like to acknowledge with much appreciation the role of Julian Pottier during editing process.

Last but not least, many thanks go to Sylvia Pötzsch for her support, dedication and organisational skills in overseeing this project as well as her hard work compiling the List of References.

Ralf Vogt, November 2018

Note on “Beseelbare”

1  Theoretical Previews

1.1  Zeitgeist and Trauma Memory

Ralf Vogt

The zeitgeist has a great influence on everyday psychological and psychotherapeutic thinking (Vogt, 2012, pp. 13-15; Vogt, 2014, pp. 6-12). In my view, the reason for this is firstly, the state of the relatively young scientific discipline of psychotherapy, in which many contradictory concepts are practiced and the crystallisation of a relatively clear, universally valid, widely accepted doctrine is still a long way off. Secondly, psychotherapy is traditionally considered to be a “soft” science, as opposed to physics or medicine, although these disciplines have not yet solved the essential problems of their subject matter, such as black holes or cancer treatment. Even a weather forecast, which offers only a rough guide seven days in advance, is trusted by many more people than a psychologist, on top of which, there are even greater demands and human behavioural prognosis with months, if not even years, of validity expectations. Why is that? Most people claim to have sufficient knowledge of their psyche, their inner processes with motives, feelings, thoughts and behaviour. To paraphrase Descartes; I think, therefore I know! Or better still; I suspect, therefore am I! But fun aside, we are entering a minefield. The psyche is a sensitive thing, because no one can say something quickly, this is in contrast to the doctor or scientist, where the people of our time quickly become believers.

In terms of the psyche and its quality characteristics, such as a memory or personality attitude, the personal self-concept of everyone seems more at stake. At the doctor one usually listens to lifestyle criticism quiet easily, such as; “Just peel the cucumbers in the future because they are sprayed with pesticide and industrial fertiliser.” It’s no problem, the cucumber is essentially preserved. You can live with that, unless you are a guinea pig and you enjoy your bowl of cucumber peel.

With psychological feedback on mental processing capacity, the person being addressed quickly becomes sceptical, distant and annoyed – or to put it simply, immediately adopting the opposite opinion because it is just a normal reaction. That means that psychological or psychotherapeutic advice meets a form of half-know-ledge, which often has to be defended immediately and vehemently in the self-image and image of the world. After all, it’s about unconscious processes, and if you do not know what it is about, fear creeps up on you and suddenly you want to drop the entire subject, so as not to experience any unease or inner turmoil. A number of colleagues feel equally stressed when they get the impression that the deserved reputation of the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, could cause objectively incurable damage as a result of modern trauma research.

In the field of technology, such an emotional yearning for stagnation is unimaginable. Who would like to be driving around in Carl Benz’s first automobile at a top speed of 16 km/h today? Which technician would come up with the sad interpretation that when building new cars, we would simply ignore the legacy of Carl Benz, or simply disregard what has traditionally been proven? The zeitgeist in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is sometimes much stronger than the past. The adherence to conservative norms also influences the school of thought in psychotherapy. That in turn, also influences the sluggish adoption of trauma therapeutic concepts. There is, in general, a lack of research in depth psychology-analytic psychotherapy, and so far it has been insufficiently concerned with the investigation of traumatic memory problems and their methodological psychological solution.

The zeitgeist, does not deal with the fear of the unknown traumatic unconscious nor dissociated objects of memory, had been recognised and recorded by Sigmund Freud when, in 1897, after nearly two years of postulating the trauma background hypothesis for severe mental disorders (Freud’s theory of seduction, 1895-1897, see Hirsch, 2004 and Vogt, 2004, pp. 35-39), he turned away from it and put the fantasy hypothesis first and so as a more important explanation for violent, traumatic sexual assaults on children.

Jennifer Freyd (1994) has been investigating the trauma of betrayal for years, this trauma occurs in the victims when violent or compromising abuses by important reference persons and caregivers take places. A summary of this dispute is that the betrayal leaves the deepest emotional scars, especially on endeared people, and this betrayal is also in the area of psychotherapy and university structures a serious factor. This topic has also been tackled by Jeffery Masson (1986) and Vogt (2014, pp. 52-61).

Accordingly, it can be assumed that there should be deeper unconscious / dissociated reasons for the conservative fixation and the non-shaking want to the own self-experience deficit, in addition to all other character blind spots, from both everyday people and in particular, psychotherapists.

The vast media landscape is also not immune here; in our fast-paced world it gains more and more influence as a source of education. For example, within a short period of time the report “The deceived memory” was aired twice on “Scobel”, a well-known science programme on the German TV channel ‘3sat’, on 22.09.2016 and on 30.03.2017. The core of this 45-minute programme was one-sided contributions by the representative ,Loftus (USA), of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), as well as arguments by research shooting star Shaw (GB) on memory manipulation research as well as a discussion contribution by Steller (Germany) as an expert witness and court psychologist. The tenor of this highly biased TV report was the intention to provide evidence that human memory is very unreliable and when influenced by investigators, and psychotherapists alike, could be manipulated quickly. A short counter-hypothesis by Ulrich Sachsse had little impact on the overriding direction of the report.

The unscientific studies of the False Memory movement and the inadequate sprawl of court psychology into fields of clinical psychotrauma therapy are also dealt with by Lutz in this book as well as in our research contribution in this book’s later chapters. For me, this section is primarily about the disposition of the journalistic editorial staff, which just commissioned this report unilaterally and then enthusiastically aired the programme twice in just six months. This comparable short-term reairing of a programme is, for me, not so common, especially in the otherwise often sophisticated selection of topics. It must have something to do with the underrunning climate of the broad-based editorial staff.

It is probably more plausible not to believe the content of the memory, which is traumatically fragmented and therapeutically recoverable as vice versa. As I emphasised at the beginning, the victims are betrayed twice by the trauma-sceptical zeitgeist. Firstly, by the lack of protection and assistance of the social environment towards the victims during and after the violent incident/s of the perpetrator/s and secondly due to of the lack of social environmental support in the work-up and the tendential assumption of morbid fantasy, which is allegedly at work, when trauma contents are later therapeutically reconstructed – insinuations by non-psychotraumatology trained professionals and courts in the context of legal processes.

It should not be forgotten that we, in Germany, have been marked transgenerationally by two world wars, not only as victims but also as perpetrators. In addition, psychotrauma therapy has never played a role in the previous generations or was not allowed to play a role in the upbringing or education during the militant period. With my 30 years of professional experience, I see the trivialisation of emotional suffering in others and the vehement dismissal of self-concern as the dominant zeitgeist in our transgenerationally lost mother and dreaded homeland (see Mitscherlich & Mitscherlich, 1977; Moser, 2010 and others).

1.2            The Reality of False Memories

Winja Lutz

        The History of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

The story of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) begins ironically with one of the most important trauma researchers, Prof. Dr. Jennifer J. Freyd. Freyd is professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Oregon. She developed the Betrayal Trauma Theory (Freyd, 1991, 1996) and has done extensive research to investigate the influence of betrayal on the effects of trauma. Traditionally fear and terror were seen as the only severity factors in trauma, Freyd and her research team were able to prove that betrayal is at least as influential. The extent of betrayal, for example, influences the severity of the consequences of trauma. If trauma is caused by a perpetrator close to the victim, the victim suffers from more pronounced and long-term follow-up symptoms (Edwards et al, 2012; Goldsmith, Freyd & DePrince, 2012; Kelley et al, 2012).

Moreover, in the case of traumatic betrayal by loved ones, blindness for the betrayal occurs, which Freyd calls "betrayal blindness". If the victim cannot deal with the betrayal by either confronting the perpetrator or breaking off contact, they cannot afford to recognize the betrayal. This is also where Freyd and her research team see gaps in consciousness and perception. Due to the absolute dependence of children, betrayal blindness is particularly pronounced in childhood traumatization within the family. It helps to split off ("forget") the traumatic experiences in order to maintain the vital relationship with the perpetrator (DePrince et al, 2012; Bernstein & Freyd, 2014).

In the course of her research, Freyd also developed the DARVO concept (Freyd, 1997), with which she describes a frequent perpetrator-victim dynamic. DARVO stands for:

D – Deny

A – Attack

R – Reverse

V – Victim

O – Offender

If the victim confronts the offender with the committed acts, then the offender denies what they have done, attacks the victim with accusations and presents themself as a victim (e.g. of slander) and the victim as the aggressor. This results is a role reversal of victim and perpetrator, with which the perpetrator tries to evade their responsibility.

In December 1990 Jennifer J. Freyd privately confronted her parents with the sexual abuse her father had subjected her to in childhood. Within 14 months her parents founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). In June 1991 (six months after the confrontation) Pamela Freyd published the article "How could this happen? Coping with a false accusation of incest and rape" (Doe, 1991), in which she made many personal details public aimed at discrediting Jennifer J. Freyd. Pamela Freyd had already contacted a number of Jennifer’s colleagues passing the article on to them so that it quickly became public who the article was about. This happened right at the time when Jennifer J. Freyd was up for tenure as a professor. In the article, Pamela Freyd describes her daughter as being manipulated by her therapist with the help of revealing therapeutic techniques to develop false memories of her father’s sexual trauma. Although Pamela Freyd generously distributed the article, the media did not immediately take up the subject. Pamela Freyd turned to Howard Lief, her longtime psychiatrist and friend of the family, and asked him for help. Lief organized an interview with Darrell Sifford, an international reporter, for the Freyd parents along with Hollida Wakefield. In this interview numerous false allegations were made, as Pamela claimed the therapist had specifically given her daughter the book "The courage to heal" in the third session. Lief told the reporter the therapist had also worked with hypnosis and Hollida Wakefield claimed that memories of sexual trauma were mostly a practical but false explanation anyway. Women would use them to have an excuse for their mental problems. Darrell Sifford published his column "Accusations of sex abuse, years later" in various newspapers throughout the country in November 1991.

In 1992, Freyd’s parents established the False Memory Syndrome Foundation for parents who were falsely accused of sexual abuse by their children. In early 1992, Pamela and Peter Freyd seriously invited their daughter to join the scientific advisory board of the FMSF. Jennifer J. Freyd refused. Her father wrote to her that he was sorry she resented the extent to which he and his wife had gone public. She should have known that it was one of his few predictable actions. He had asked her to join the advisory board because he assumed she would want to, at least to be informed and to be able to influence the content: "I still insist on thinking of our Newsletter, indeed the whole project, as being primarily a way of communicating with our daughters, [...]" (Freyd, 1993). Jennifer J. Freyd says: "What sort of absolutely bizarre boundary violation would it have been had I accepted their offer to join the FMSF board, a foundation apparently intent on denying my reality: An organization run by my own parents?" (Freyd, 1993).

Other founding members of the FMSF besides Jennifer J. Freyd’s mother Pamela Freyd and her father Peter Freyd, were Martin T. Orne, Elisabeth Loftus and the Underwager / Wakefield couple. Ralph Underwager coined the term "False Memory Syndrome", which made the FMSF appear more scientific. It is important to note that no research exists that would prove the existence of a "False Memory Syndrome". There is no recognized syndrome of this kind in any medical society. "False Memory Syndrome" also does not exist in any classification system of mental disorders nor has it ever. In 2016, Julia Shaw minimized this move by urging people in her blog to stop using the term, saying it is an "ill-conceived term ’false memory syndrome’ may have been uttered once or twice in the 1990s, but science is totally over it."

Prof. Ross Cheit, founder of the Recovered Memory Project, a case archive on corroborated cases of recovered memories, corrected this by pointing out that the term was political, no accidental jargon, and called Shaw’s statement a "colossal misstatement", since the term is still completely common in current research (Cheit, 2016).

In 1993 Ralph Underwager stated in an interview with the Dutch magazine "Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia" that pedophilia could be considered a responsible decision, that sex with children should be understood as part of God’s will (Geraci, 1993, p. 3, Craft, o.D.). "Paedophiles are too defensive [...]. What I think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, I believe this [is] in fact part of God’s will." At the same time, Underwager was one of the most active expert witnesses in court proceedings against perpetrators accused of sexual abuse of children. He often argued that most allegations of sexual abuse were due to faulty therapeutic procedures that led to false memories, not actual sexual abuse.

Martin T. Orne, also a founding member of the FMSF, worked as a psychologist and psychiatrist for the CIA on top secret research such as the MK Ultra program in which mind control experiments were conducted. According to the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Ross studied the participation of psychologists and psychiatrists in CIA mind control experiments. He published Dr. Orne’s participation in various CIA mind control experiments in which he experimented with training Manchurian candidates (people with deliberately conditioned multiple personalities) (Ross, 2006).

Elisabeth Loftus has been a member of the FMSF advisory board from the very beginning. As early as 1991, she described recovered memories as suspicious and questioned whether memories of abuse were real memories or imagination driven by hatred and revenge (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991). Loftus was the one who brought the idea of (unintentionally) implanted memories to the media: "An overly zealous psychologist could unwittingly use his or her influence over a vulnerable patient to plant the seeds of a ’memory’ that is actually a fantasy" (Thompson, 1991). Loftus refers to a concept of fantasy in this quote that is based on a very similar denial dynamic in its origins. In 1896 Freud presented his "Seduction Theory" before an audience of medical colleagues. According to his new theory the symptoms of his hysterical patients were a result of real sexual traumatizations. Freud’s presentation was answered with icy silence and he was criticized and ostracized professionally. The idea of accusing the family and their patriarchs was even more unthinkable in the Victorian era than it is today. In 1905 Freud publicly recanted his theory and presented the Oedipus complex, a relieving theory that the patients’ memories were in fact only childhood fantasies which, in conflict with the person’s superego demands, would lead to hysterical symptoms. Freud bowed to pressure from public opinion; people did not want to know about real sexual abuse of children because they did not want to face the responsibility and the consequences (cf. Masson, 1984; Vogt, 2014). Where Freud at least made the honorable attempt to oppose social denial, Loftus anticipated it and purposefully promoted the concept of "false memories". Subsequently, "false memories" called "implanted" by Loftus became a major topic in the media and psychotherapists were the new bad guys. So-called implanted memories were presented as gross malpractice and thus open to legal proceedings. In the 1990s psychotherapists were accused and sentenced in hundreds of court cases. Even more often court cases failed to convict the accused because of the victim’s memories categorized as "false".

It may make sense to embed these developments historically and to ask oneself why such a conspicuously high level of activity was observed at this time in particular. Without being able to determine the factual effect this had, it can be observed that in the US up until 1988 childhood sexual abuse crimes became statute-barred when the victim reached the age of majority. Since 1988, this legal situation has changed in more and more states, extending the statute of limitations beyond the age of majority.

Perhaps the extremely vehement reaction of Freyd’s parents and their comrades-in-arms is just coincidence, but Jennifer J. Freyd points out very accurately that it would be a trap if we assumed: "[...] that this debate is merely about memory: memory research, memory veracity, memory fallibility. If there is anything my story can demonstrate, it is that the FMSF is not just about memory research, it is at least partly about a family in pain [...]" (Freyd, 1993).

        Research paradigms

Our memory is undeniably fallible. Memory research is extremely interesting and varied while only a small branch is dealing with deliberately implanted false memories. Brewin and Andrews (2016) have made the effort of conducting a meta-analysis to extract scientific criteria with which we can better understand and evaluate this kind of research. Basically three experimental paradigms are used to attempt the implantation of false memories in subjects:

Imagination Inflation Subjects are prompted to repeatedly imagine events that never happened as vividly as possible.

False Feedback Subjects are supplied with false information that suggests the false event actually happened.

Memory Implantation Subjects are being told of corroboration of the false event, i.e. relatives have supposedly confirmed it happened, or subjects are being shown manipulated photos.

Most studies that combine all three paradigms claim practical relevance with regard to memories of childhood abuse while omitting critical limitations:

Definition and operationalization of "false memories" vary significantly across different studies

Differentiating between true and false memories requires a highly complex evaluation process

Many of the implanted memories are so common that it is impossible to rule out subjects remembering actually true or very similar memories

Memory contents used in studies range from eating preferences to getting lost in the mall and have little or no similarity to childhood abuse

Techniques applied in these studies do not resemble conditions in psychotherapy

Brewin and Andrews (2016) have proposed three criteria for the evaluation of the quality of autobiographical memory:

1.

Autobiographical BeliefA cognitive belief the event did happen

2.

Recollective ExperienceA corresponding sensorial complex and complete recollection of the event

3.

Confidence in MemoryConfidence in the truthfulness of the memory

These three criteria are hard to differentiate and can occur in various combinations. One study showed two thirds of the subjects believed they remembered seeing TV coverage of an assassination of a Dutch politician. When probing more deeply it turned out that 80% only had an autobiographical belief but no recollective experience (Smeets et al, 2009). Study subjects can believe their memory but have no recollective experience. Study subjects can have a recollective experience of the event but still have no confidence in the memory. Brewin and Andrews (2016, p. 4) come to the conclusion: "While autobiographical belief is a component of memory, we suggest that a ’full’ memory for an event, whether true or false, should ideally rest on the combination of the second and third elements. We refer to recollective experiences that have not been demonstrated to be held with confidence as ‘partial’ memories." Some might find this pedantic and unnecessary but the following example should help to illustrate why this kind of detailed evaluation is indeed important.

        Shaw and Porter’s Rich-False-Memories Study

Shaw and Porter (2015) tried convincing young adults they had committed a crime in their youth and the police had been involved. They implemented all three paradigms described above (Imagination Inflation, False Feedback, and Memory Implantation). Despite tried and tested evaluation coding systems Shaw and Porter developed their own coding system to evaluate the memories of their study subjects. According to their own statement their coding system was more conservative than the established systems. According to Shaw and Porter’s publication 70% of the subjects developed rich false memories of the implanted criminal offence.

Wade et al. (2017) have disproved Shaw and Porter’s success rate. They replicated the study using various blind raters that coded the memories of the subjects using Shaw and Porter’s coding system versus two established systems. Being blind raters they did not know what Shaw and Porter’s or Wade at al.’s study tried to examine. Using Shaw and Porter’s system these raters came to the same conclusion of 70% rich false memories but using either of the established systems only 26-30% of the subjects were classified as having false memories with recollective experiences.

In addition, Wade et al. compared a general definition of memory by asking laymen to evaluate when subjects were talking about real memories, without any of the coding schemes. Wade et al. wanted to find out which coding scheme would mirror general opinion. The estimation of the general population coincided with the established coding systems not with Shaw and Porter’s system.

Shaw and Porter state that 70% of their study subjects developed rich false memories but even if we adjust this to 26-30% we have to take into account the subject’s confidence in their memories. Different authors take the view that an increase in confidence does not permit to draw any conclusions about the real autobiographical belief if confidence ratings stay in the bottom half of the scale (Mazzoni et al., 2001; Smeets et al., 2005). On a 1-7 Likert scale subjects of Shaw and Porter’s study rated their confidence in their false memory with an average of 2.86 (see table 1). With a confidence interval of [2.37, 3.36] the subject’s confidence in the false memory did in no single case reach the middle of the scale. According to Brewin and Andrews (2016) we can only speak of partial memories altogether instead of the "rich false memories" Shaw and Porter propagate.         

It is equally important to take a closer look at the techniques used in false memory research for ethical reasons, as they turn out to be quite questionable. ‘Gaslighting’ is a play from 1938, which was made into a movie with Ingrid Bergmann in 1944. In the gaslighting story a husband drives his wife insane by manipulating her perceptions and denying her reality. ‘Gaslighting’ is "a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim"(MacDonald, 2012).

Different criteria play a significant role in ‘Gaslighting’:

Relationship (1)Perpetrator and victim have some form of relationship

Distortion of reality (2)The perpetrator aims to distort the victim’s reality

Irrefutability (3)The victim has no chance to refute these distortions

Adjustment pressure (4)The perpetrator puts pressure on the victim to agree to his representation of reality

Following are the strategies that were explicitly applied in all of the interviews Shaw and Porter (Shaw & Porter, 2015, p. 294) conducted in their study and how they relate to the ‘Gaslighting’ criteria:

Building rapport (e.g., asking "How has your semester been?" when they entered the lab)

Relationship (1)

Using facilitators (nodding, smiling, commendation)

Relationship (1)

Purposeful use of pauses and silences (longer pauses seemed often to result in participants providing additional details to cut the silence)

Adjustment pressure (4)

Open-ended prompts ("What else?")

Adjustment pressure (4)

Irrefutable false evidence ("We know from your parents.")

Irrefutability (3), Distortion of reality (2)

Social pressure ("Most people are able to retrieve lost memories if they try hard enough.")

Adjustment pressure (4)

Suggestive Techniques (scripted guided imagery)

Depending on how it is conducted: Adjustment pressure (4)

Presumed additional knowledge ("This sounds like what your parents described," "I can’t give you more details because they have to come from you.")

Irrefutability (3), Adjustment pressure (4)

When participants reported that they could not recall the false memory, Shaw responded disappointed but sympathetic ("That’s ok. Many people can’t recall certain events at first because they haven’t thought about them for such a long time.")

Relationship (1), Adjustment pressure (4)

All interviews were conducted in a false office, that openly contained many books on memory and memory retrieval

Distortion of reality (2)

This kind of research consciously and deliberately uses techniques that are known to be emotionally abusive, accepting emotional strain for their subjects – for what reasons?

Some of the memory researchers openly claim their efforts are aimed at preventing innocent convictions, Loftus herself said: "It’s better to let 10 people who are guilty go than to convict one innocent person" (3sat, 2017 (Translated by author)). In the case of Timothy Hennis, who was found guilty of raping a woman and then murdering her and her two children in 1986, Loftus testified for the defense as an expert witness in Hennis’ appeal in 1989. Hennis was acquitted. 1989 there were no standard DNA tests. In 2010 Hennis was found guilty before a military court because of positive DNA identification.

It remains curious why researchers like Loftus, Shaw and others conduct their research of false memories with such a blatant fighting spirit that they present their results with triumph and complacent pride of their powers of manipulation instead of being constructive and modest. For instance, it would be entirely reasonable to research ways in which we can design psychotherapy in order to enable memory retrieval and processing of unwanted and painful memories while ensuring our clients do not start to confabulate but are able to trust their own memories. Imagination inflation using guided imagery might be the technique from false memory research that closest resembles trauma therapy. Research shows that research subjects from studies using imagination inflation rated their false memory as more probable over the course of the studies but it also shows that only a minority of subjects showed these effects and they were not sustainable. One idea is that this effect only shows the subjects reduced their belief an event did not happen instead of increasing their belief it did happen (Mazzoni et al., 2001; Smeets et al., 2005). In general, of the three criteria imagination, inflation mainly influences autobiographical belief. But data and statistics of existing studies are hard to compare and evaluate due to varying forms of operationalization (Brewin & Andrews, 2016, p. 8).

        Loftus’ Lost-In-The-Mall Study

Loftus began working on the topic of "memory implantation" as early as 1991 and organized experimental surveys by her students serving as an academic performance – without submitting this to the Ethics Committee. Her bachelor students tried to persuade 8 to 14 year old family members at home they had been lost in a shopping mall when they were younger. Loftus presented the results of this experiment with children, which was not approved by the Ethics Committee, as a "pilot study" (Goleman, 1992) and presented the results at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association in 1992 (Loftus, 1992).

Loftus subsequently planned her main study, whose application to the Ethics Committee was rejected. They rightly asked: "What if your subjects are under emotional stress and became upset at the deception inherent in the experimental situation? How do you plan to screen out vulnerable subjects? What will you do if someone becomes seriously distressed when informed of the deception? What if a subject finds the false memory disturbingly similar to an event that actually happened? Will your subjects experience a sense of betrayal at being manipulated?" (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994, p. 100). Loftus finally managed to get her study through the Ethics Commission in 1992. However, after approval by the Ethics Committee, methodological changes were made to the study design, which in turn would have required another approval which was never obtained (Crook & Dean, 1999).

In the published Lost-In-The-Mall study, Loftus’ students recruited 21 women and three men aged between 18 and 53 as study subjects. In addition, one relative per study subject took part. The relatives were parents or siblings, as they needed to know the subject’s childhood. The relatives were interviewed to gather three real childhood experiences of the subjects. In addition, information was requested on actual shopping trips in shopping malls:

Where did the family often go shopping during the subject’s childhood?

Which family members went along most of the times?

Which shops were interesting for the study subjects?

Confirmation the study subjects never got lost in the mall

The study subjects were presented with four stories, three of which were true childhood experiences and the third story described the false experience of how they had been lost in the shopping mall. In the false story, subjects were told that according to information from their relatives:

they had been lost for quite some time

they had cried

it happened when they were about five years old

they were eventually found by an elderly woman

and brought back to their family

First, the study subjects got these four stories sent as a booklet and were asked to write down their own memories of the incidents. Afterwards, two interviews took place approximately 1-2 weeks apart. In the interviews, the subjects were asked to describe all the details they could remember. Then they were asked to rate the clarity of their memory on a scale of 1-10, and on a scale of 1-5 their confidence they would be able to remember more details with more time.

In 1994, Loftus documented to the Human Subjects Committee (HSC) only two study participants who described vivid false memories. In 1995 she then published an article in which she stated that 25% (6 of 24 subjects) partially or completely remembered the wrong experience (Klein, 1995). Originally, only two study subjects, accounting for 8.33% reported a complete false memory in a lively and detailed way. Interestingly, study subjects could not remember 31.9%, i.e. 23 of the 72, true experiences. This result is a frequent by-product of research into false memories, so that scientists indirectly provide evidence of the ability to forget/suppress real experiences. In the New York Times, Goleman reported: "About 10 percent of adults will come up with a specific elaborated memory from childhood, and another 15 percent or so will say they feel a vague sense of certainty that it occurred if you keep asking them about it," said Dr. Loftus. But she also found that about 75 percent of those studied did not manufacture false memories in this experimental situation, despite the implicit pressure to produce one. (Goleman, 1994).

The Lost-In-The-Mall study revealed fundamental differences between true and false memories:

The study subjects described the false memory in fewer words

They rated the clarity of false memories much lower

They were less confident that they would remember more details. At no time was memory confidence higher than 1.8 on a 5-point scale

According to the evaluation criteria introduced by Brewin and Andrews (see above), Loftus’ study did not yield any complete false memories (Brewin and Andrews, 2016).

        Conclusions

"The mall study results suggest that if a psychotherapist were to devise a plausible false memory of childhood trauma and tell a client, ’I was given this information by your relative who was present at the time,’ then the client may accept this false account as fully or partially true" (Crook & Dean, p. 44, 1999).

On deeper exploration of the research on implanted false memories it becomes clear how complex this issue is and how misleading the research results. Independent of our personal opinion, it is our duty as scientists to consider our results critically and to offer them to the public with prudence and caution. Loftus and Shaw present their research results boastfully and oversimplified instead of showing restraint and caution. They fail to point out possible limitations (e.g. the absence of confidence) and do not correct mistaken representations by the media: "Although researchers are not responsible for media inaccuracies regarding their research, they are ethically required to attempt to correct inaccuracies to the extent that this is possible" (Crook & Dean, 1999, p. 45).

It is known that scientists are not objective cold calculators but instead are influenced by their personal history just like everyone else, Julia Shaw herself said: "Research is me-search [...]" (3sat, 2017). Thus, personal (traumatic) history might indeed have played a role in how a Mrs. Loftus or a Ms. Shaw came to be interested in the issue of false memories as well as in the kind of scientific attitude they developed. For instance, Mrs. Loftus describes how she was sexually abused by a babysitter when she was six years old. This memory: "flew out of me, out of the blackness of the past, hitting me full force" (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991, p. 149). Ms. Shaw reports her dad had been mentally ill (Kippenberger & Rosen, 2016) and her autobiographical memory is "not especially good" (3sat, 2017).

In addition to the difficulty in classifying false memories correctly it is also important to point out the content-related incoherence. Most of what is used to be implanted as a false memory in scientific studies nowhere near resembles childhood abuse. They are inherently less stressful emotionally and free of the kind of betrayal Freyd has emphasized as an essential factor in betrayal blindness and thus dissociation (Freyd, 1996).

For example, one important point of criticism regarding Loftus’ Lost in the Mall study relates to the plausibility of the false memory. Being lost in a mall is a common experience and research has shown this kind of plausibility increases autobiographical belief (Brewin & Andrews, 2016). In a study by Pezdeck, Finger and Hodge (1997), the authors tried to implant a more complex false memory, more similar to childhood abuse: The memory of getting painful rectal enemas as a child. This study showed a success rate of 0%. But 15% of the same subjects were led to believe they had been lost in a mall.

When we attempt to draw conclusions about clinical psychotherapy from research, namely the conclusion psychotherapists could be able to implant false memories of childhood abuse in patients, then, above all we have to focus on actual comparability with the psychotherapeutic setting. Scientists researching false memories use techniques that would never be employed in any ethically acceptable psychotherapy. Above all, no psychotherapist would tell their patient that they know, corroborated by the relatives, that the patient was traumatized in childhood. If we look at the psychotherapeutic setting very critically, we might find situations in which the psychotherapist tells their patients that their symptoms are strongly indicative of sexual abuse. Coupling the expert authority of the therapist with the more intense relationship, compared to what we find in short-lived scientific studies, we might assume this could foster confabulation. Whether this would really lead to false memories is questionable. Most of all because real patients in real psychotherapies usually do not like to remember split-off forgotten traumatic experiences as they come with feelings and sensations that are extremely hard to bear, irrevocably overthrowing their conception of their world. Also, psychotherapists do not usually push their patients towards remembering buried childhood abuse and they do not respond happy and proud if they do. In Shaw and Porter’s study, Julia Shaw conducted all interviews herself and acted openly motivated in bringing the subjects to remembering the false event. We do not have research that studies the quality of memory in traumatized psychotherapy patients on the basis of comparable criteria. It could be interesting to compare the memory-confidence of study subjects in their false memories with the memory-confidence of psychotherapy patients in their recovered memories.