Why is faith-based counseling increasingly popular among Americans seeking mental-health services? Maybe because many people value an approach that heals the soul as well as the mind:
Religious people often complain that secular therapists see their faith as a problem or a symptom, rather than as a conviction to be respected and incorporated into the therapeutic dialogue, a concern that is especially pronounced among the elderly and twentysomethings. According to a nationwide survey by the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC), 83 percent of Americans believe their spiritual faith and religious beliefs are closely tied to their state of mental and emotional health. Three-fourths say it’s important for them to see a professional counselor who integrates their values and beliefs into the counseling process. More people said they would prefer to see a religious counselor (29 percent) than a psychiatrist (27), psychologist (17) or family doctor (13).
Women are more likely to favor religious counseling than men, and African-Americans strongly embrace faith-based counseling. The AAPC survey found that African-Americans, devout evangelicals, people without a college degree, the elderly and people age 18 to 29 are most likely to fear that a professional counselor won’t take their religious beliefs into serious consideration when treating them.
“People come to Christian counselors for two reasons,” says Randolph Sanders, executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, an association of Christians in mental health and behavioral sciences. “One is faith perspective; they want a therapist who resonates with their worldview. The second is moral ethics; they want a counselor who understands what guides their decisions.”
June 20th, 2011 | 11:56 am
I see a lot of potential problems if just anybody can hang out a shingle and call himself or herself a counselor. What might be a good idea is for various denominations to work with the medical establishment and others who train professional counselors to come up with some standards for appropriate therapeutic approaches that incorporate particular religious beliefs. I can only imagine that Biblical fundamentalists, Catholics, and Episcopalians would all approach the use of scripture somewhat differently. And without some approach for the use of scripture in general and also within each of those traditions, what you might wind up with is each counsellor inventing his or her own Bible-based therapy.
I am sure that in many cases, just talking a problem over with a friend can be helpful. Or talking to a priest, minister, or rabbi. But when in the area of real, diagnosable psychiatric disorders, not everyone is capable of handling them. Also, problems that may seem emotional in nature may be physical, and counselors without formal training may not know they are dealing with a brain tumor, an overactive thyroid, or some purely physical problem that is not going to go away with prayer and Bible reading.
Also, it strikes me that there’s an element of “attend the church, synagogue, or mosque of your choice” here. It’s one thing to seek spiritual direction in the religion you already practice. It’s another thing to seek treatment for psychological problems within the religion you practice. Unless all religions (and all religious counselors) share a common wisdom about the path to psychological health, some counselors are going to be more helpful than others, while some may very well do more harm than good. If you visit someone whose counseling methods are inspired by Harold Camping, the advice may be to just hang on until October 21, 2011, and it will all be over with. Also, let’s not forget the 900 deaths from suicide/murder in Jim Jones’s People’s Temple in Guyana.
June 20th, 2011 | 12:22 pm
I slightly disagree with you David. Consider the debate we’ve been having over SSM and Aly.’s assertion that there is no such thing as a gay person.
During the discussion I presented 3 hypotheticals that I think illustrate an important difference between psychology and medicine.
Hypothetical 1: A man is found unconscious with a broken leg. He is taken to an ER where doctors set the broken leg so that it will recover normally while also working to determine why he is unconscious.
Hypothetical 2: A drug/operation/procedure is discovered that ‘cures Christianity’. Those that undergo it find afterwards that they just cannot believe Christian doctrine. No amount of apologetics/argument/preaching can convince them otherwise. Yet they show no ill side effects, no depression or other issues. They live perfectly normal and productive lives afterwards (consider this a stand in for a hypothetical ‘cure for homosexuality’)
Hypothetical 3: A blood test can detect mild depression. Just as in hypothetical #1, an unconscious man is found with a broken leg. But this time the ER is able to tell the man is also depressed even though he is unconscious. The man’s leg is set but the ER doctor rules that he should not be given drugs to treat his depression until he awakens and can communicate.
Notice in hypothetical 1 no one objects to setting the man’s broken leg. No one seriously takes the fear that he may happen to want his leg broken so maybe we should wait until he can be awakened and asked if he would like treatment for his leg. But also notice in hypothetical 3 no one also objects to leaving his depression untreated until he is able to communicate consent. And, of course, in hypothetical 2 I don’t think anyone would dare advocate giving anyone such a treatment unless we were 100% sure they wanted it…even then many might be troubled by such a thing.
What this seems to imply to me is that psychological issues are unavoidably wrapped up in free will issues. The person with mild depression may *want* to remain depressed, for example. May consider treatment to be an artifical ‘happiness’ and therefore should not be treated unless a counselor is able to establish a consensual relationship with him as a patient. While a man with a broken leg may theoretically refuse treatment, a doctor can treat a broken leg without his consent or even cooporation.
Since our psyhological well being is unavoidably wrapped up inside our free will (or what appears to be free will to my determinist friends out there), I don’t think you can avoid the fact that people will want and need counselors who approach them from a religious angle. It’s unavoidable. Unlike medicine which has a clear secular bent (if your doctor is Hindu and you’re an evangelical…well that doesn’t really play much impact to how he sets your broken leg……but a Hindu counselor treating an evangelical patient must at least be aware of the cultural and religious differences at play in the relationship, that’s not to say it couldn’t be a fruitful relationship, the patient may in fact need someone from a completely different culture/religion to be approaching his problems)
June 20th, 2011 | 12:48 pm
If you visit someone whose counseling methods are inspired by Harold Camping, the advice may be to just hang on until October 21, 2011, and it will all be over with. Also, let’s not forget the 900 deaths from suicide/murder in Jim Jones’s People’s Temple in Guyana.
Since you mentioned Camping, I’ve been keeping tabs on him just because I find him a fascinating character. He suffered a stroke so his TV stations have been running reruns of his show from the late 80′s I believe. The difference is remarkable. Back then he was energetic, bright, lively….of course age wrecks havoc on all of us.
But also clear is that he was a person who cared quite a bit about counseling. When people called with problems, he really seemed to care and seemed to really be giving them what he thought was the absolutely true advice. Of course I’m not talking about whether he was right or not, just that he seemed to be sincere which I count for a lot. In contrast, his more recent pre-stroke shows seemed, well exhausted. Its as if the whole ‘end of the world’ thing was motivated as much by his sheet exhaustion as his way of reading the Bible. It does make the ‘counseling’ job a lot easier to just chuck most problems into the category of “we’ll all be gone in 3 months or so so whats the point?”.
Anyway, how does this tie into Jim Jones? Well I hate to sound cruel but in one sense all his victims ‘had it coming’. A counselor is not like a doctor, it’s a relationship and by definition relationships are mutual. If one person is abusing his power in a relationship, it’s because the person is not taking his responsibilities seriously. Who you are is one of the most important questions you’ll ever face in life, to simply let someone else have that power is simply the ultimate laziness on your part. Just as Jones was doing wrong by his victims by telling them he was like a God, his victims were doing wrong by Jones by treating him like a God. For all his faults, I think Camping understands that danger and quickly shoos away callers who try to praise him excessively.
June 20th, 2011 | 2:02 pm
I see a lot of potential problems if just anybody can hang out a shingle and call himself or herself a counselor.
Anyone presuming to be in a position to help another person is taking a burden upon themselves.
But the community that currently calls itself “professional” does such a terrible job – with such a total lack of regard for the consequences and impact their policies and practices actually have on their victims’ lives – that it’s hard to imagine any person operating in good faith could possibly do worse.
June 20th, 2011 | 2:22 pm
Boonton,
I am not arguing against religiously oriented counseling. I am just saying:
First, there are physical disorders that can mimic emotional ones, and there must be some mechanism to catch those before a person goes to a religious counselor with no medical training. Such counselors might be required to have all prospective clients undergo a thorough physical exam, for example.
Second, there are real psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia, manic depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the like for which there are established treatments. I suppose there is some room for disagreement here, but in my opinion, treating schizophrenia with prayer and Bible reading would not be religious counseling. It would be faith healing or quackery.
Third, if there are not to be as many “religious” therapies as there are therapists, then major religions should in some way be involved in defining what constitutes Catholic (Evangelical, etc.) mental health counseling.
Of course, there are already a huge number of approaches to mental health counseling, and I am not sure how the average person is supposed to cope with the whole area. You can find therapists who only prescribe drugs, and you can find therapists who are opposed to drugs and insist only on talk. You can find psychoanalysts still doing Freudian analysis, and you can find others who think it is nonsense.
In any case, I am not opposed at all to adding a religious element to counseling, although I think it has its dangers.
June 20th, 2011 | 2:41 pm
This might be a reaction to the lack of counseling, period, and the tendency to medicate. A lot of issues simply don’t warrant prescription anti-depressants, and they are given as a quick fix many times because psychologists don’t want to risk undertreating them.
Especially with kids, its better imo to go through a faith-based counselor than actually counsels then to bring on the Ritalin right away.
June 20th, 2011 | 3:42 pm
Dblade
June 20th, 2011 | 2:41 pm
This might be a reaction to the lack of counseling, period, and the tendency to medicate. A lot of issues simply don’t warrant prescription anti-depressants, and they are given as a quick fix many times because psychologists don’t want to risk undertreating them.
Especially with kids, its better imo to go through a faith-based counselor than actually counsels then to bring on the Ritalin right away.
==========
Exactly.
“I see a lot of potential problems if just anybody can hang out a shingle and call himself or herself a counselor.”
David talks as if this isn’t exactly what happens with a significant number of atheist counselors, therapists, and the like.
The whole setup for therapy is often so faulty, because in a large number of cases, there is no one to correctly evaluate the progress (or damage or a mixture of both) that the therapy is causing to the patient. Many, many patients are at the complete mercy of any and all incompetence and unethical attitudes and behaviors from their atheist therapist, psychiatrist, whatever. Furthermore, many atheist therapists take on patients having problems that they are unequipped to deal with, but nicely paid to listen to.
Not only is incompetence and lack of assessment an issue, but the issue of all kinds of abuse cannot be forgotten.
Furthermore, for a number of atheist counselors et al, money is an important issue. They will make their decisions on who to help based on how much green will come in.
Lastly, a lot of atheist therapists work on a “snake oil” selling framework. The primary goal is to make the “client” feel good, and that is second to questioning the “client” about myriad unethical attitudes and values.
Obviously, some therapists share their clients’ unethical attitudes to sexuality and personal relationships (and many other issues), so it’s just one “trickster” validating another.
I agree with David though that mechanisms must be put in place to not allow incompetent professionals to take on certain patients, but that goes for both atheist and Christian ones.
June 20th, 2011 | 3:48 pm
I agree with you there are real psychiatric disorders, however there is no real mechanism that ensures they are ‘caught’. A good religious counselor should be able to know when he or she is out of his depth and dealing with someone who has a serious mental problem that needs professional help. But plenty of people don’t go to religious counselors and instead seek it among friends, family, co-workers, radio call in shows, the guy sitting next to you in a bar, etc. Nothing ensures that those random people will properly refer someone with a serious mental problem to a professional.
June 20th, 2011 | 3:49 pm
Especially with kids, its better imo to go through a faith-based counselor than actually counsels then to bring on the Ritalin right away.
Dblade,
What is the faith-based treatment for ADHD? Whom would you entrust your child to, someone who was very religious, or someone who had extensive experience treating ADHD? The choice you presented is a false one. It is not necessary to choose between someone who is too quick to prescribe drugs and someone who offers only religious counseling.
June 20th, 2011 | 4:24 pm
Faith based counseling may simply be psychotherapists who believe themselves and hence won’t consider faith a mental disorder.
It is true that schizophrenia, particularly in its severe paranoid form, is controllable with psychotropic drugs these days but the road there was long with many wrong turns. Look up tardive dyskinesia as an example. As one sufferer explained it to me, the drugs turned him into a robot without free will so he avoided them.
Depression treatment with drugs still has these problems, mainly because depression, unlike schizophrenia, is so diffuse in its definition. From increased risk of suicide to lost of sexual function, the drugs have many and non deterministic side-effects.
Faith based counseling doesn’t work on that level. So the problems have more to do with counseling in general. Bad counseling can create more problems than it helps. And that has nothing to do with whether faith-based or not.
A study some time ago discovered that counseling has about the same success rate as talking to a good friend, i.e. someone who accepts you as your are, who understands you as an individual.I would think faith-based counseling will help meet those criteria.
Understand, psychotherapy, as a whole, has a very mixed record. There were male therapists during the 70s and 80s who would bed their female clients to “bolster the client’s self-esteem”. Then there is the long believed phenomenon of “repressed memory” eventually disproved by science in the late 80s. A number of people were jailed based on that evidence. And yet, many still discuss “repressed memory” as if it were real. And perhaps worst of all and still common is the “blame your parents” approach.
Given a need, I would seek Catholic counselor first as more likely to accept me as I am and understand me as an individual.
June 20th, 2011 | 5:19 pm
Given a need, I would seek Catholic counselor first as more likely to accept me as I am and understand me as an individual.
Mike,
Wouldn’t you prefer a Catholic counselor with professional training, though?
Many, many years ago I knew a clinical psychologist who specialized in treating priests, nuns, and brothers. She was a believing Catholic, but she was also a trained psychotherapist. I was not privy to the way she conducted her therapy sessions, but I am willing to bet she didn’t prescribe prayer and Bible readings.
I think in general therapists will be noncommittal when it comes to a patient’s religious beliefs, and I can see how some patients would find that disturbing. But certainly a professional counselor of one’s own faith is preferable to someone of one’s own faith who has no experience as a counselor.
June 20th, 2011 | 5:22 pm
Let me just add that if someone has a paralyzing fear of, say, elevators, he or she needs to see a behavioral therapist, not a priest, minister, or rabbi.
June 20th, 2011 | 5:59 pm
David:
I don’t think it’s a false choice. I think a focus on faith generally means people wont view conditions as solely neurochemical and might be more amenable to traditional therapy. I can’t be so sure about most psychologists. That profession has not had the best of histories.
June 20th, 2011 | 6:03 pm
Then there is the long believed phenomenon of “repressed memory” eventually disproved by science in the late 80s. A number of people were jailed based on that evidence. And yet, many still discuss “repressed memory” as if it were real.
==========
What nonsense.
As if the mind didn’t have powerful mechanisms of repression, for memories or anything else.
A number of people who had their experiences unrepressed found corroboration from other people who could give testimony and/or all kinds of information regarding their experiences.
The ability for the mind to repress thoughts, emotions, and memories is a human given. And the mind can certainly do this repression operating unconsciously.
June 20th, 2011 | 8:37 pm
Wouldn’t you prefer a Catholic counselor with professional training, though?
Professional training in what, exactly?
Doctors get professional training. You need one of those for actual prescriptions. Not much talking is involved; it’s all about prescribing drugs that might help you – or, of course, might cause you to take a gun to school and shoot everyone (not, of course, that “the profession” has ever acknowledged the astonishing coincidence – that virtually all school shooters just happen to be teenage males taking mood drugs – but notice how school shootings aren’t so common, now that they’ve identified “suicidal tendencies” and “aggression” as…oops!…”side effects”?)
Most therapy is not done by “trained professionals”, but by people who were trained in psychology – which might actually be scientific in another century or two, but is currently nothing but ideology masquerading as theory.
And it does not get results. In fact, these “experts” are often spectacularly wrong – with horrendous, life-wrecking results.
Oops! Lucky for them, they’re not liable for being wrong – it’s all part of how the “scientific method” works. You find out that “transactional analysis” doesn’t cure schizophrenia because after a decade of giving people quack cures, you find that not a single one is cured!
There is one type of therapy that does provide measurable results – it’s called “cognitive behavioral therapy”. Interestingly, you don’t have to be a professional ideologue to “administer” it. In fact, it can work even if you teach it to yourself (there are plenty of do-it-yourself books, for instance “cure your anxiety disorder” type books).
Psychology is a branch of “science” that embarrasses the other branches. The DSM continues to be a book that is determined not according to anything resembling a real scientific method, but rather by what amounts to a vote – the guys “in” the clique just make a committee and decide what is and is not pathological. It’s a real embarrassment. Real scientists should throw them out and say “come back when you’ve got a hypothesis you can test – asking for a teacher’s opinion is no basis for diagnosing a real disease” (although it is worth noting that I believe ADD is the first children’s behavioral disorder to be “treated” with medical marijuana)
June 20th, 2011 | 9:16 pm
@David Nickol,
Why are you so concerned with “untrained” religious counselors? Do you never ask a friend for advice? When to ask a friend and when to seek something more provide a spectrum of possibilities. Perhaps the friend or minister will suggest something more and support you in the pursuit of resolution. I am far more concerned with trained therapists who don’t know the limits of their therapies.
@Alessandra,
Read further. Memories are plastic. That is scientifically known. They can be implanted by suggestion. So called “repressed memories” originally were suggested by Sigmund Freud without any real evidence. They have enjoyed a long life in theory but without supporting evidence. Your suggestions are those kind of theories.
Repression in the sense of trying to forget things is common. Repression to the point of amnesia, total forgetting, is hypothetical. Recovering “repressed memories” is completely unreliable. But that shouldn’t be a surprise as no one ever really knew what it meant to “repress” a memory to the point of forgetting.
I have no doubt that there are people who tried hard to forget traumatic events even pushing them to the back of their minds. I would not be surprised if the “repressed memory” cases with supporting evidence are of this sort. But “recovered” memories of things with no other evidence and no memory until suddenly it “appears” seem far more likely to be implanted memories by therapists sold on “repressed memory” theory who go looking for them and, not surprisingly, find them.
If anyone would need to repress memories, it would be servicemen who have experienced combat. And yet, their problem appears to be that they cannot forget.
June 21st, 2011 | 12:21 am
@Alessandra,
Read further. Memories are plastic. That is scientifically known. They can be implanted by suggestion.
======
No, they can’t. By the very definition of what a memory is, they can’t be implanted.
What you can have is a person who mistakenly thinks a certain image or scene, feeling, etc., in their minds is a memory. It’s not because these mistakes can happen that we cannot have real memories (repressed or not).
The fact that we can all make such mistakes and that we don’t have photographic memories for everything does not do away with one of the mind’s most powerful mechanisms: repression.
‘So called “repressed memories” originally were suggested by Sigmund Freud without any real evidence.’
Ignoring all the evidence that exists is not refuting the existence of evidence.
‘Repression in the sense of trying to forget things is common. Repression to the point of amnesia, total forgetting, is hypothetical. Recovering “repressed memories” is completely unreliable. But that shouldn’t be a surprise as no one ever really knew what it meant to “repress” a memory to the point of forgetting.’
You do not have total conscious control of your memory functions. Trying to forget something is a conscious action. Mechanisms of repression are mostly semi-conscious or unconscious, and therefore, not something the individual has control of.
Repression is a real mechanism, and, just as memories, thoughts, and feelings can be repressed, the mind can unrepress them. It’s not only memories that the mind can repress.
‘I have no doubt that there are people who tried hard to forget traumatic events even pushing them to the back of their minds. ‘
You’re thinking of a conscious action again. And that’s different than an unconscious defense mechanism for repressing traumatic memories.
The fact that some individuals cannot discern properly what was a real memory and what feels like a memory, but may be another mental byproduct of a trauma, does not in any way invalidate the fact that ours minds (including yours) have an inborn repression mechanism. And often enough, repression happens in everyday life, as a defense mechanism for situations which aren’t even all that traumatic.
‘I would not be surprised if the “repressed memory” cases with supporting evidence are of this sort.’
Wrong, they aren’t.
‘But “recovered” memories of things with no other evidence and no memory until suddenly it “appears” seem far more likely to be implanted memories by therapists sold on “repressed memory” theory who go looking for them and, not surprisingly, find them.’
Well, I think you are overly generalizing. I’ve seen no data that suggests that therapists who correctly understand defense mechanisms go around suggesting trauma that didn’t exist more than those who don’t understand them.
Another issue is that the media makes scandals of the cases where something goes wrong (as it should), but usually will never inform anyone of a case where it was clearly shown that the mind unrepressed information and this assessment was indeed correct.
‘If anyone would need to repress memories, it would be servicemen who have experienced combat. And yet, their problem appears to be that they cannot forget. ‘
Some yes, some no. There are plenty of documented cases of traumatic amnesia from war experiences as well.
Trauma isn’t simple and there are many competing mechanisms and byproducts that can co-exist in a person’s mind (difficulty to concentrate, for example, panic attacks, depression, nightmares, etc). None of these are consciously chosen.
June 21st, 2011 | 9:46 am
Alessandra –
the fact is that repressed memory therapy has done untold amounts of horrible damage to people. Even if you are correct that there is validity to it, this kind of thing should not be used as a form of therapy until it can be used reliably and properly — which apparently wasn’t the case when it became fashionable. It’s like using strong chemotherapy drugs before figuring out how to calibrate the dosages so you don’t kill people.
June 21st, 2011 | 10:01 am
Why are you so concerned with “untrained” religious counselors? Do you never ask a friend for advice?
Mike,
I am talking mainly about those who seek counselors (therapists) for diagnosable psychiatric disorders. If I remember my statistics correctly, about a third of people who seek therapy don’t have psychiatric disorders. My point is that the mentally ill should be getting help from people who are professionally trained to diagnose and treat mental illness. People who need friendly advice or spiritual guidance need not see mental health professionals.
It seems to me that if you want counseling about a matter that involves your faith, religiously oriented counseling is fine (if the counselor knows what he or she is doing). There are people who are trained to act as spiritual directors. They would be the most likely people to turn to if you want spiritual guidance. What concerns me is someone with no training and no experience setting up as a therapist and attempting to handle psychiatric disorders. I am sure a good spiritual director or religiously oriented counselor will refer clients with psychiatric disorders to mental health professionals. But what about people who set themselves up as counselors and think of themselves as, at least to some degree, faith healers?
June 21st, 2011 | 11:01 am
Alessandra: No, they can’t. By the very definition of what a memory is, they can’t be implanted.
But Alessandra, you may not like it, but they have been implanted through suggestion and in laboratory conditions with controls. That doesn’t mean the Manchurian Candidate is a book about reality. Our free will would get in the way of that. That means memories are not perfect. It supports Rashomon but in spades. But then even Shakespeare knew this as he empowered Iago over Othello.
Traumatic amnesia and recovered memory are two very different beasts. In the former, physical trauma is involved and the amnesia is broad. In the latter, the claim is mental trauma causes very selective amnesia which can be recovered, years and decades later, in greater detail than our everyday memories. Such cases are not seen among combat veterans. I suggest that is because the cause of their impairment is believed known: combat. In others, the therapists go looking and, thanks to Freud, they spend a lot of time in sexuality.
I suggest you investigate the spate of nationwide preschool sexual abuse cases in the early 80s. First note: there was no physical evidence of sexual abuse in any of the cases. Only one proceeded to a verdict and release of the therapists’ transcripts strongly suggest the source of the children’s memories. For David’s sake, I note all those therapists were trained. Those children, now grown, still have those memories. These prompted the research that demonstrated implanted memories.
I also suggest you check your logic. Definition doesn’t make a memory. Why would you think we can distinguish false and true memories yet have no clue with repressed memories?
I leave you with a quote from Elton John,
“So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do,
You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue
Anyway the thing is, what I really mean,
Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen”
June 21st, 2011 | 2:39 pm
For David’s sake, I note all those therapists were trained.
Mike,
Are you implying that untrained therapists are superior to trained therapists? Psychotherapy is a lot less of a science than I wish it were, but if I knew someone having emotional difficulties and wanting help, I would still recommend that they search for a trained and licensed professional. For “life problems,” the advice of a friend may do. For mental illness, seek professional help.
June 21st, 2011 | 4:26 pm
Mike Melendez
June 21st, 2011 | 11:01 am
Alessandra: No, they can’t. By the very definition of what a memory is, they can’t be implanted.
“But Alessandra, you may not like it, but they have been implanted through suggestion and in laboratory conditions with controls. ”
=======
What do you mean by implanted by suggestion?
June 21st, 2011 | 4:43 pm
Mike:
Traumatic amnesia and recovered memory are two very different beasts. In the former, physical trauma is involved and the amnesia is broad. In the latter, the claim is mental trauma causes very selective amnesia which can be recovered, years and decades later, in greater detail than our everyday memories.
=============
You are completely mistaken about the above.
It is the exact same defense mechanism, whether the trauma has a physical component or not. By the way, there is no trauma with a physical component (such as the example of a soldier) which does not include mental trauma.
To note:
Four crucial points:
1. “Amnesia” is a descriptive construct. It directs our attention to the condition of being unable to remember experiences like childhood sexual abuse.
2. “Repression” and “dissociation” are explanatory constructs. They point to hypothesized psychological mechanisms that may be responsible for the condition of amnesia.
3. All constructs exist on a continuum from descriptive to explanatory. When it comes to empirical evidence of traumatic and recovered memories, dissociation is more descriptive of more empirical evidence than is repression.
4. The persistence and the accuracy of a memory are completely separate issues, and not keeping them separate as constructs leads to considerable confusion. People can have memories that are largely true or largely false whether or not those memories have been recovered or continuously available. Thus it is very misleading to discuss “recovered versus false memories of abuse” or present these as mutually exclusive categories.
===========
Mike: “I suggest you investigate the spate of nationwide preschool sexual abuse cases in the early 80s. ”
And I suggest you take a look at this:
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/
This section will be especially interesting to you:
Hypertext Table of Research Findings
(look at the data in the table)
and
The Journal of Psychiatry and Law
Special Issue on Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse
“Most scientific studies can be criticized for methodological weaknesses, but such design limitations should not obscure the fact that the data reported across every one of the 25 studies demonstrate that either partial or full abuse-specific amnesia, either for single incidents of childhood sexual abuse or across multiple incidents of childhood sexual abuse, is a robust finding. Partial or full amnesia was found across studies regardless of whether the sample was clinical, nonclinical, random or non-random, or whether the study was retrospective or prospective. Every known study has found amnesia for childhood sexual abuse in at least a portion of the sampled individuals (pp.178-179, italics in original).
childhood sexual abuse (CSA)
+
Williams, L. M. (1995). Recovered memories of abuse in women with documented child sexual victimization histories. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8, 649-673.
Abstract: “This study provides evidence that some adults who claim to have recovered memories of sexual abuse recall actual events that occurred in childhood. One hundred twenty-nine women with documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked about abuse history. Seventeen years following the initial report of the abuse, 80 of the women recalled the victimization. One in 10 women (16% of those who recalled the abuse) reported that at some time in the past they had forgotten about the abuse. Those with a prior period of forgetting – the women with ‘recovered memories’ – were younger at the time of abuse and were less likely to have received support from their mothers than the women who reported that they had always remembered their victimization. The women who had recovered memories and those who had always remembered had the same number of discrepancies when their accounts of the abuse were compared to the reports from the early 1970′s.”
Excerpt: “[T]hese findings are important because they are based on a prospective study of all reported cases of child sexual abuse in a community sample. Because the abuse was documented in hospital records this is the first study to provide evidence that some adults who claim to have recovered memories of child sexual abuse recall actual events which occurred in childhood. These findings are also not limited to a clinical sample of women in treatment for child sexual abuse. The findings document the occurrence of recovered memories. There is no evidence from this study of child sexual abuse experienced by this community sample of women that recovery of memories was fostered by therapy or therapists. For this sample of women memories resurfaced in conjunction with registering events or reminders and an internal process of rumination and clarification. For women with greater economic means than those of the women who comprised this sample, therapy may play a greater role in recovering memories of child sexual abuse.
Regarding the accuracy of the accounts, this study suggests that while the women’s reports of some details have changed (N.B., this may be a problem in the original account, not the adult memory) the women’s stories were in large part true to the basic elements of the original incident. Interestingly, despite limited discrepancies, the women themselves were very often unsure about their memories and said things such as ‘What I remember is mostly a dream.’ Or, ‘I’m really not too sure about this.’ These are statements which may arouse skepticism in individuals who hear the accounts of women who claim to have recovered memories of child sexual abuse (e.g., therapists, judges, family members, researchers, the media). The findings from this study suggest that such skepticism should be tempered. Indeed, the woman’s level of uncertainty about recovered memories was not associated with more discrepancies in her account. While these findings cannot be used to assert the validity of all recovered memories of child abuse, this study does suggest that recovered memories of child sexual abuse reported by adults can be quite consistent with contemporaneous documentation of the abuse and should not be summarily dismissed by therapists, lawyers, family members, judges, or the women themselves” (pp.669-670).
============
I doubt you’ll want to read more, but if you would like read more material just let me know.
June 21st, 2011 | 5:00 pm
pentamom
June 21st, 2011 | 9:46 am
Alessandra –
Even if you are correct that there is validity to it, this kind of thing should not be used as a form of therapy until it can be used reliably and properly — which apparently wasn’t the case when it became fashionable. It’s like using strong chemotherapy drugs before figuring out how to calibrate the dosages so you don’t kill people.
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I agree, and it’s so sad that there were cases where therapists made mistakes, *because* then it turns the public, who is mostly completely ignorant on the subject, against any victim who starts to recover abuse memories.
And, unless these victims are supported by experienced professionals, the real abuse they experienced is carelessly dismissed as some loony delusion.
As I said before, the media never presents a single case of this tremendous injustice, so, what image do you have in your mind? It’s a very negative one towards the victims and the therapists. But that is the power of the media to distort our perception of reality.
And it is also totally annoying just how prone to fashions and fads the psychotherapeutic establishment is.
We are now witnessing the “normalize homosexuality” fad, which has disastrous consequences. We can only hope that someday they will evolve and start being responsible.
“the fact is that repressed memory therapy has done untold amounts of horrible damage to people.”
Well, I don’t know if it has. You don’t have any information about how it has helped people, so how can you do a fair assessment?
My guess it’s that with some of these cases that became the intense focus of media attention a couple of decades ago, people have been much more careful. We would hope they would learn something…
June 21st, 2011 | 10:51 pm
People can have memories that are largely true or largely false whether or not those memories have been recovered or continuously available. Thus it is very misleading to discuss “recovered versus false memories of abuse” or present these as mutually exclusive categories.
I’m not sure I follow this. If a memory is false then how is it ‘recovered’? Recovered implies that it existed at some point in the past. But if it is false, if the event in the memory never happened then ‘recovered’ is a misleading word, the better word would be ‘implanted’ as in why do I remember X happening when the facts are clear X never happened? ‘Recovered’ would only make sense if for some reason you had a memory that X happened, even if it didn’t, then that memory went away and then came back again.
I’m wondering here if amnesia and ‘forgetting’ are getting mixed up. To illustrate, a person I know who was in a car accident had no memory if the impact. Just the light turning green, driving forward then waking up in the hospital. The impact caused the short term memory not to be preserved in long term memory…when trying to recall the event she technically has no idea why her chronology went from Green light->going->wake up in hospital.
On the other hand, many of us had the experience of having a fight with a friend or family member long ago. Years later we remember that we had a big fight with that person and are still kind of sore at them but we can’t quite recall what it was all about. But as our memory is jogged by, say, a mutual friend or reading our old diary we remember the details and then it all comes back as to why we had stopped talking to that person.
“Repressed memory” seems like its not quite forgetting but more like the car accident where the memory is literaly not there. Unlike the person who we know we are mad at but not quite sure why, the victim isn’t even aware that there’s a problem with the abuser. It literally didn’t happen to them as far as their memory is concerned.
“Recovered” then would seem to imply that the memory of that event could somehow be revealed to the victim….as in the car accident example, if somehow the ‘lost’ memory of seeing the other pickup truck running the red light and approaching the car could be recalled via the proper treatment, therapy, hypnosis or whatnot. But here you’d have to be careful that you’re really recovering a memory and not simply creating one…..the brain knowing the truck ‘must have’ run the red light and hit your car because here you are in the hospital will so create one….
Forgive me if I botched the correct technical definitions of the terms, I think I have the ideas correct to help explore the question….
June 22nd, 2011 | 1:45 am
‘People can have memories that are largely true or largely false whether or not those memories have been recovered or continuously available. Thus it is very misleading to discuss “recovered versus false memories of abuse” or present these as mutually exclusive categories.’
I’m not sure I follow this. If a memory is false then how is it ‘recovered’?
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It is referring to the degree of accuracy.
“Interestingly, despite limited discrepancies, the women themselves were very often unsure about their memories and said things such as ‘What I remember is mostly a dream.’ Or, ‘I’m really not too sure about this.’ These are statements which may arouse skepticism in individuals who hear the accounts of women who claim to have recovered memories of child sexual abuse (e.g., therapists, judges, family members, researchers, the media). The findings from this study suggest that such skepticism should be tempered.”
A recovered memory of trauma that happened in early years of childhood may often not be a crystal clear Hollywood movie inside the victim’s head. It may or may not comprise an image, it may or may not comprise body memories (somatic memory).
The recovered memory may be confused, dreamy-like, fragmented. It may have some aspects which are clear and others which are not. So you cannot think that a recovered memory will always be 100% perfectly clear and accurate. Therefore, it is incorrect to think that memories can only be determined to fall into an oppositional binary of being either all correct or all wrong.
‘If a memory is false then how is it ‘recovered’? ‘
It’s not the entire memory that is false, because obviously, as you say, then it’s not a memory, but that there can be some elements to the memory which have been distorted, disordered, etc. The fact that the memory is not 100% clear or accurate does not make the entire memory false.
June 22nd, 2011 | 7:39 am
I can see how there’s wide variation with accuracy. IMO a ‘true memory’ though would be defined as being caused by an actual event such as a person once dated a blonde woman with green eyes in college. Aspects of that memory may be inaccurate. He may remember her being an English major while the ‘video tape’ will show she said she was a Communications major…but its a real event.
But can you have a truely false memory? For example, a memory of being woken up last night by a car alarm going off when in fact no such alarm ever went off or can a memory be purposefully implanted such as a ‘recovered abuse memory’ that appears after aggressive suggestion by a thereapist?
I wonder if the abuse victims truely had no memory of their abuse. Or did they avoid the abuser, know that ‘something’ was not right about him? It seems to me if it was a true repressed memory they would have been as shocked as anyone else to learn about the abuse when it was revealed.
June 22nd, 2011 | 11:26 am
Boonton,
I was just reading some interesting things about memory which I don’t have available to quote, but here’s a very brief account from another source:
There is an ongoing group called the 9/11 Memory Consortium which did much the same thing, and I think they continue to follow up periodically. It had formerly been thought that so-called “flashbulb memories” of events like the Kennedy assassination, the Challenger disaster, 9/11, and so on, were particularly vivid and long-lasting. Apparently flashbulb memories are indeed particularly vivid, but they aren’t accurate at all. Memory isn’t so much retrieving something from storage, but reconstructing something.
June 22nd, 2011 | 12:21 pm
While I’m probably inclined to disagree with Alessandra much more often than I agree, I think she has made a point that it hasn’t been proven that ‘repressed memories don’t exist’. I think its clear there was a lot of abuse and fraud with the ‘repressed memory fad’ of the 80′s and 90′s but that doesn’t mean such a thing is impossible.
Maybe the reason you don’t see it in combat victims is that the child’s brain is more vulnerable to a repressed memory…also maybe there’s more to it than a tramatic event. Maybe it needs to be a tramatic event coupled with a compelling ‘need’ for the event not to have happened. For example, a child needs a loving relationship with her father and also ‘fit in’ with the rest of the family that expects her to obey and honor her father. If she is abused, the mind may make sure that need is accomplished by ‘blanking out’ the event. A combat victim does have this turmoil….as bad as it is, injuries and horrible things are to be expected in combat. There is no psychological/social pressure to pretend such things don’t happen in combat.
June 22nd, 2011 | 12:46 pm
Boonton
June 22nd, 2011 | 12:21 pm
While I’m probably inclined to disagree with Alessandra much more often than I agree, I think she has made a point that it hasn’t been proven that ‘repressed memories don’t exist’. I think its clear there was a lot of abuse and fraud with the ‘repressed memory fad’ of the 80′s and 90′s but that doesn’t mean such a thing is impossible.
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Not only that, I’ve posted data that shows that repressed memories exist, and the repression mechanism also exists. This just goes to prove once again that cognition is powerless against rigid minds.
” I think its clear there was a lot of abuse and fraud with the ‘repressed memory fad’ of the 80′s and 90′s”
I doubt that you could come up with even a rough number for how many cases turned out to be problematic. You just hear two or three scandals in the media and all of a sudden, it’s “thousands of cases” in the 80s…
In addition, on a related note, what is curious is that there seems to be so many active participants on this blog who seem neither Catholic, nor socially conservative, and who, consequently, hate or disagree with most of what Catholicism teaches. What attracts them to this blog, I don’t know.
June 22nd, 2011 | 1:37 pm
Alessandra
But have you really capatured cases of repressed memory. You’ve shown that there’s women who claim to have had resurfaced memories of abuse and we know the abuse happened because of independent records like hospital reports etc. But how do we know these are repressed memories? Did the women really have totally no idea they were abused by the abuser until their memories were ‘triggered’ or, like my example of remembering you’ve had a fight with someone long ago, did they always know something was amiss with the person but had pushed the memory deep down?
June 22nd, 2011 | 4:40 pm
The link is provided so that you can read the studies in detail.
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