ABSTRACT
One of the most controversial topics in Psychology in the past two decades. What appears to have happened is that the huge expansion of psychotherapy from 1970 onwards, combined with a dramatic increase in multiple personality disorder cases, resulted in a growing number of people engaging in ‘recovering’ long forgotten memories in therapeutic contexts, or using therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis. Most dramatically, these frequently produced ‘recovered memories’ of child sexual abuse, often by parents or relatives. When both client and therapist became convinced of the validity of these memories, serious consequences obviously began to ensue. Families broke up, people (usually, but not always, men) found themselves accused of child abuse and court cases sometimes ensued. In some cases, it became all too evident that, however intensely believed, the ‘memory’ was false. Therapists were in turn accused of colluding with clients or engaging in a folie à deux to create such memories. The status of both recovered memories and FMS continues to be a matter for heated debate. False Memory Syndrome Foundations were set up on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1990s as a lobby and resource for those claiming to be falsely accused on the basis of purported ‘recovered memories’, while others believe over-scepticism will discredit all accusations of child abuse in which ‘recovered memory’ is part of the evidence. What is at issue here is not whether ‘false memories’ can occur, or whether forgotten memories can be recovered – they obviously can in both cases. It is rather the status, character and credibility of a sub-category of memories recovered in psychotherapeutic contexts which pertain specifically to child (sometimes adolescent) sexual abuse. It must be patent folly to proceed on anything other than a careful case-by-case basis, but in a world of bandwagons and media panics, this has become exceptionally difficult. The literature on FMS is extensive and closely intertwined with that on child sexual abuse and multiple personality disorder. Brainerd and Reyna (2005) is the most recent academic overview of the topic.
