| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
"Astute, scientifically informed, and compassionate towards the movement's casualties."--"The New York Review of Books"
"The descriptions [of] the 'therapeutic' practices by which memories are recovered are a frightening indictment of at least some members of the burgeoning industry."--"The New York Times Book Review"
"[A] thoughtful, scholarly book . . . concerned with exposing the damage caused by, and the falsity of, the practice of recovered-memory therapy."--"The Washington Post Book World"
"The descriptions [of] the 'therapeutic' practices by which memories are recovered are a frightening indictment of at least some members of the burgeoning industry."--"The New York Times Book Review"
"[A] thoughtful, scholarly book . . . concerned with exposing the damage caused by, and the falsity of, the practice of recovered-memory therapy."--"The Washington Post Book World"
Product Description
According to many clinical psychologists, when the mind is forced to endure a horrifying experience, it has the ability to bury the entire memory of it so deeply within the unconscious that it can only be recalled in the form of a flashback triggered by a sight, a smell, or a sound. Indeed, therapists and lawyers have created an industry based on treating and litigating the cases of people who suddenly claim to have "recovered" memories of everything from child abuse to murder.
This book reveals that despite decades of research, there is absolutely no controlled scientific support for the idea that memories of trauma are routinely banished into the unconscious and then reliably recovered years later. Since it is "not" actually a legitimate psychological phenomenon, the idea of "recovered memory"--and the movement that has developed alongside it--is thus closer to a dangerous fad or trendy witch hunt.
This book reveals that despite decades of research, there is absolutely no controlled scientific support for the idea that memories of trauma are routinely banished into the unconscious and then reliably recovered years later. Since it is "not" actually a legitimate psychological phenomenon, the idea of "recovered memory"--and the movement that has developed alongside it--is thus closer to a dangerous fad or trendy witch hunt.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Very interesting book. Worth reading and would reccommend to people who have been accused of sexual assault.
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Let by-gones be by-gones, we use to say. But when the ghosts from the past come to hunt us, should we ignore them? Elisabeth Loftus, a well-known researcher of psychology, writes about the memory and repression. We do not know how the memory works exactly. But it is sure to be found that it is no file cabinet where our memory is neatly stored. Our memory comes to us in a deformed way.
For a certain time it has been a habit of therapists to retrieve certain memories, such as those of sexual abuse. Loftus brings forward forward that treatments of that kind, with a duration of years and of an intensive nature, may lead to a deteriorisation of the sickness or unjustified accusiations against relatives (or others).
Loftus doubts the existence of repression. Victims of sexual abuse would have developed a certain mechanism to cope with the constant stress that was brougt about by the abuse. They would, to protect themselves, have put these memoris in an inaccessible part of their memory. Only if in therapeutic sessions they went on to retrieve memories, they could reproduce these hidden memories accurately.
Loftus does not believe in the accuracy of the retrieved material. She has managed under lab conditions to implant false memories into human subjects, c.q. the childhood memory of being lost in a mall. The adult subjects seemed to consider the false memory as true.
In the US this idea led to a real controversy between therapists and sceptics, who like loftus beleive that even if a person considers a memory as true - with al the details - it can be untrue.
Loftus emphasizes that she obviously has the utmost respect for the victims.
Does our memory play a game with us, or is our memory just a viedeoplayer with tapes that have no labels?
Frank van de Wiel Breda
For a certain time it has been a habit of therapists to retrieve certain memories, such as those of sexual abuse. Loftus brings forward forward that treatments of that kind, with a duration of years and of an intensive nature, may lead to a deteriorisation of the sickness or unjustified accusiations against relatives (or others).
Loftus doubts the existence of repression. Victims of sexual abuse would have developed a certain mechanism to cope with the constant stress that was brougt about by the abuse. They would, to protect themselves, have put these memoris in an inaccessible part of their memory. Only if in therapeutic sessions they went on to retrieve memories, they could reproduce these hidden memories accurately.
Loftus does not believe in the accuracy of the retrieved material. She has managed under lab conditions to implant false memories into human subjects, c.q. the childhood memory of being lost in a mall. The adult subjects seemed to consider the false memory as true.
In the US this idea led to a real controversy between therapists and sceptics, who like loftus beleive that even if a person considers a memory as true - with al the details - it can be untrue.
Loftus emphasizes that she obviously has the utmost respect for the victims.
Does our memory play a game with us, or is our memory just a viedeoplayer with tapes that have no labels?
Frank van de Wiel Breda
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a much-needed cry for sanity, much like Sagan's _The Demon-Haunted World_. The author, Elizabeth Loftus, is a well-known and well-respected psychologist who specializes in eyewitness memory; anybody who has taken a Gen Psych course should recognize her name.
As a budding psychologist, I found Loftus's comments on the therapeutic community both insightful and well-directed. Her arguments are powerful and difficult to deny; she convinced me shortly after the first few chapters.
Sexual abuse is a problem. A big one. But attempting to root out totally unconfirmed instances of sexual abuse is, as well. Loftus tries to walk a line between compassion for people who have truly been abused and those who believe they have, and scientific accuracy.
Her sharpest knives are reserved for the therapists. The tools of therapy used to "recover" abuse memories which have no corroborating evidence are the same as those used to "uncover" reports of alien abduction, past lives, infant memories, and ritual cult torture. All the above are truly unlikely, so why would memories recovered using this method about abuse be any more accurate than memories about big-eyed aliens?
All in all, this book does a marvelous job in presenting its points and should be a must-read for any serious student of psychology. It shows what a fragile thing memory really is; a lesson we all need to learn.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
