Another adverse effect is the development of new
symptoms unrelated to the primary concern for which
the patient went to the therapist in the first place.
These symptoms include false beliefs and memories
of having been abused—a syndrome now referred to
as false memory syndrome.These symptoms may take
the form of flashbacks, which include detailed memo-
ries and even hallucinations and delusions of the
abuse. Thus, the patient believes that she has specific
recollections of abuse that may not have occurred.
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation was
formed in 1992 by a group of families and profession-
als who saw the need for an organization to determine
and prevent the spread of false memory syndrome and
support and attempt to reconcile families who were torn
apart by claims of repressed CSA. In recent years, there
have been a number of CSA accusers who have reestab-
lished family relationships and acknowledged that their
accusations were false. These “retractors” typically
blame their therapists for suggesting to them that they
were victims of CSA and for encouraging memory
recovery that led to the false memories of abuse.
In 1997, a remarkable legal case was settled in
which a retractor sued her therapist. Ms. Burgus, a
patient of Dr. Braun’s, originally sought treatment for
postpartum depression but was diagnosed as having
multiple personalities. Dr. Braun believed that her
symptoms resulted from sexual and ritual abuse includ-
ing cannibalism and torture; in other words, the pur-
ported sexual and ritual abuse was what led her to be
diagnosed with having multiple personalities. Although
Ms. Burgus had no recollection of the sexual and ritual
abuse, Dr. Braun encouraged her to try and remember
these instances of abuse through hypnosis. Ms. Burgus
eventually realized that these allegations were not true
and subsequently retracted her previous abuse accusa-
tion. She sued her former therapists, including
Dr. Braun and the hospital, for negligence, breach of
the standard of care for uncritical acceptance of a clin-
ical diagnosis, and the use of hypnotic techniques with-
out first advising her of the risks involved. The lawsuit
was settled for $10.6 million.Research in the Field of
Repressed and Recovered Memories
Research on repressed and recovered memories has pri-
marily involved women victims of CSA. There are
three primary resources of information in the extant
field: retrospective studies, prospective studies, andcase histories. Retrospective studies rely on individuals
whose initial disclosure of abuse happens years after
the supposed abuse took place. Prospective studies use
cases documented by social workers or the police to
establish abuse, while case histories consist of data col-
lected from an individual.
In one of the first retrospective studies, more than
half of the participants (mostly women who were
referred to the study by their therapists) stated that they
did not remember their first incident of sexual abuse at
some point in the past. Compared with those who
remembered the abuse continuously, individuals who
reported a lapse in memory also reported that they were
abused at a very young age. Regrettably, it is difficult to
construe this research as evidence of massive repression
in CSA victims, because the main question posed to par-
ticipants was complex and the answers uninterpretable.
In another retrospective study, researchers tried to probe
what people meant when they claimed to have forgotten
abuse at some point in the past. In a large sample of
people who were questioned about their sexual, physi-
cal, or emotional abuse, more than a quarter reported
some form of abuse. Of the participants who claimed to
have forgotten their memories of abuse, just less than
half also claimed that they had avoided thinking about
the instances of abuse. The researcher noted that lack of
continuous memory for an event does not necessarily
constitute repression and suggested that therapists
should proceed with caution when dealing with patients
who claim to have recovered memories of abuse.
Retrospective studies rely on an individual’s self-
report of sexual abuse at a much later date. Such
studies are not ideally designed because the initial dis-
closure and subsequent recovered memories of abuse
cannot be verified and, therefore, may be inaccurate or
altogether false. Prospective studies, on the other
hand, rely on documentation of CSA at the time of the
incident (e.g., by police report). Individuals are later
contacted to see what they can remember.
In one often-cited prospective study conducted by
the sociologist Linda Meyer Williams, 38% of partici-
pants failed to report documented abuse when inter-
viewed 17 years after the reported abuse occurred.
Williams found that the younger a participant was at the
time of the documentation, the less likely she was to
report the specific incident. Some of these cases may be
accounted for by a phenomenon known as childhood
amnesia, which is discussed in the following section.
Critics of the study also point out that just because a
woman didn’t report the abuse did not mean she did not690 ———Repressed and Recovered MemoriesR-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:43 PM Page 690