|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Merk Pendergrast's Query Letter *Note: Author Pendergrast's letter was excluded from CJR since, as managing editor Gloria Cooper explained to him, it was written as a query letter, not as a letter-to-the-editor for publication. Pendergrast felt strongly that, "by choosing to run what amounted to a one-sided smear piece, CJR should be obligated to run a more balanced article taking up the same amount of space." I shared his concern that members of the media who were informed and engaged in the issues should be heard as a counterpoint to Stanton's attack. Marshall Loeb, Editor Columbia Journalism Review 101 Journalism Building 2950 Broadway Columbia University New York, NY 10027 212-854-1881 Fax: 212-854-8580 email: cjr@columbia.edu
Dear Mr. Loeb: I was surprised and disturbed to read "U-Turn on Memory Lane," by Mike Stanton, in your current issue. Instead of a balanced piece of journalism -- something I certainly expect when I open the pages of CJR -- I found what amounts to a hatchet job on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. I have come to expect this sort of thing from those who believe in the accuracy of most recovered memories, but I did not expect this sort of treatment in your pages. This letter is not intended for publication in this form. I am so appalled by Stanton's article that I think it deserves not simply a letter to the editor, but space for an article of equal length in response. What you have done -- I am sure unwittingly -- is to lend support to the most misguided, destructive form of "therapy" to come down the pike this century. As an investigative journalist who has devoted the better part of three years to interviewing people on all sides of this issue, and to reading virtually everything about how human memory actually works, I can tell you with some certainty that CJR has come down in favor of misinformation, pseudoscience, innuendo, and smear tactics. If you seek to support good journalism, you have made a grave error by printing this article. I am the author of VICTIMS OF MEMORY. I have been a professional journalist and researcher for many years, but I became a full-time book author in 1991. FOR GOD, COUNTRY AND COCA-COLA was chosen as one of the best books of 1993 by the New York Times and has been published in ten languages. VICTIMS OF MEMORY (1995 first edition, 1996 second) has been widely hailed as the most comprehensive, scholarly book about the recovered memory debate. It was recently picked up by HarperCollins for a 1997 British edition. I will attach some review excerpts. I am sure that Mike Stanton is a very good journalist in other regards. A few years back, I met a fellow investigative journalist in North Carolina. We chatted about a number of issues, including tobacco, which I was then researching. Then the subject ame around to the Little Rascals Day Care case in Edenton, NC. He assured me that the day care workers were, he was sure, guilty of molesting the preschoolers. I tried to tell him about how the McMartin case in California been the first nationally publicized case to use coercive interviews that practically bullied children into reporting mythical, and often totally implausible abuse. Little Rascals was a textbook case of the same kind of tactics, and Ofra Bikel's three fine film documentaries, all called INNOCENCE LOST with different subtitles, and aired on PBS, left no doubt about this terrible miscarriage of justice. Yet my friend refused to listen to any other evidence or point of view. It transpired that his wife had recovered "memories" of sexual abuse -- a subject on which he would not hear any other evidence, either. I tell you this just to let you know that I am familiar with cases in which otherwise objective journalists develop seemingly incurable blind spots. I have read Stanton's series on Ross Cheit, by the way, and I was impressed with his coverage of this interesting case. I too interviewed Cheit for my book. But his case, like all such instances of firmly corroborated recovered memories, is not one of massive repression. Briefly, here are highlights of what I would say in an article. There is no question that people can forget isolated or limited incidents of sexual abuse and then recall them, with essential accuracy, many years later. But there is no evidence whatsoever -- other than extremely questionable anecdotal cases without corroboration -- that people can engage in MASSIVE REPRESSION of years of traumatic events. Mike Stanton fails to make that important distinction. It is the cases of massive repression that primarily concern me. By talking about "the magnitude of sexual abuse," Stanton implies that those who question recovered memories are somehow denying the reality or scope of real sexual abuse. This false dichotomy sets up a straw man argument. Along with most critics of recovered memory therapy, I abhor sexual abuse, recognize that it is widespread, and have done everything in my power to increase awareness of that fact. But that has nothing to do with creating illusory memories of mythical abuse. In fact, I am concerned that a "cry wolf" syndrome will develop in which real victims are ignored because of this calamitous FMS phenomenon. Stanton also misrepresents the views of Daniel Schacter, chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, who reviewed my book in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. In his own book, SEARCHING FOR MEMORY, Schacter did NOT say that "there is no conclusive evidence that false memories can be created." On the contrary, he wrote about Elizabeth Loftus' experiments, and others, which have in fact done just that. Schacter was saying that no one could EVER conduct an ethical experiment to induce sexual abuse memories, for obvious reasons. It is ironic, of course, that such unofficial "experiments" have been conducted across the U.S. in the privacy of therapy. (I assume you have Daniel Schacter's letter in response to Stanton's article, which he emailed to me today.) I am also dismayed by the tone and loaded words Stanton uses in his piece. The FMS Foundation is described as "a strange and little-understood organization" founded by parents of "the most influentially dysfunctional family in America." The foundation has vented its "wrath" on journalists. It is an "aggressive, well-financed p.r. machine adept at manipulating the press." It is a "media darling" offering a "juicy new angle." It has led to a "backlash." It convinced a newspaper to devote "reams of copy to the emotional but unverified tales of accused parents." You get the idea. If this is supposed to be objective journalism, we are in big trouble. Stanton then proceeds to use smear tactics on people currently or formerly associated with the FMS Foundation. Some of the nasty things he has to say are true. As you can read in my book, I too am extremely disturbed by the interview Ralph Underwager (a former FMSF advisory board member) gave to a Dutch pedophile magazine. But attacking individuals rather than dealing with the issue ignores the message of the FMS Foundation, which is extremely important. Stanton briefly acknowledges that "irresponsible therapy" has helped people "concoct memories of things that never happened." But he then proceeds to imply that many, if not most, of the accused parents are really guilty. I take this rather personally, since I have lost all contact with my two young adult daughters because of this form of therapy. I can tell you exactly how it feels to be unable to even talk with your children, with whom you formerly had a close, affectionate relationship. In my book, I estimate (using well-conducted surveys) that several million families have probably been destroyed by the belief in massive repression. The cases frequently involve a belief that incest occurred from the preschool years through the teens, and that the memory of this long-term abuse was completely repressed. Many of them also involve belief in "preverbal" memories or so-called "body memories," assuming that people can recall traumatic events from before the age of three. Scientists have concluded that no one can remember -- or recall -- anything explicitly from this period of "infantile amnesia," because the hippocampal area of the brain is not yet developed sufficiently. The hippocampus is needed to transfer short-term into long-term memory. But I see that I am beginning to write the article. I will have to cover Freud and his influence in some detail, since Stanton is inaccurate there as well. I will have to contest his assertion that there are "many documented instances of recovered memory," since that is incorrect. There are very few, and those do not involve massive repression. Nor is there a "documented body of knowledge showing that people can forget horrific events and recall them years later" -- at least, certainly not involving prolonged abuse. On the contrary, there are numerous studies of Holocaust survivors, flood or tornado victims, or children who witnessed their parents murdered, which indicate that people recall such trauma all too well. Stanton notes correctly that hypnotically refreshed memories are inadmissible in California courts, but he doesn't explain why. There is an overwhelming body of research to indicate that hypnosis does not enhance real memory, but it does frequently lead to false memories or "confabulations," especially when there is an expectation of the sort of memory that is sought in the trance state. Stanton mentions the case of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin but does not tell the reader that his accuser retracted his allegations because he discovered that hypnotically induced memories cannot be trusted. Nor did Stanton point out that the hypnotist in the Bernardin case was a former delicatessen worker who had learned hypnosis in a weekend workshop. What you have done by publishing Stanton's article, in short, is to lend support to a piece of pernicious pseudoscience that has destroyed lives and families. The worst victims are not the accused parents but the accusing children, who routinely lose not only their families but their marriages, jobs, and sanity. They frequently end up in restraints in psychiatric units. Many attempt suicide. Many have succeeded. My book is probably the most important piece of journalism I will ever write. I became a writer because I was idealistic and egotistical enough to believe that I could, in some way, make the world a little better by what I wrote. I am sure that Mike Stanton has the same motivation. But we must be very, very careful as journalists, constantly guarding against the possibility that our espousal of a cause may blind us to the truth. I am aware of this danger for myself. I truly have attempted in every possible way to find proof for massive repression. I have failed to do so. I don't think it exists. I cannot prove that, since one cannot prove a negative. I can't prove that ghosts or witches or alien abductions don't exist either. But the burden of proof for such improbabilities lies properly with the believers. And the proof just isn't there. I could not find one firmly substantiated case of massive repression. I look forward to hearing from you shortly with an answer to this rather long query letter. If you would agree that I should write an article on this subject, please give me a maximum word count and a deadline date. Yours, Mark Pendergrast Author of: VICTIMS OF MEMORY: SEX ABUSE ACCUSATIONS AND SHATTERED LIVES Hinesburg, VT: Upper Access Books, 1996, second edition
| |
|
|
|
These Are No Ordinary Memories | Reviews Get the Book
|
