Satanic Temple - Grey Faction Pseudoscience

 

Satanic Temple – Grey Faction (Doug Mesner/Lucien Greaves - both aliases)

Pseudoscience: Denial that memories can be repressed.

 
“The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for ‘recovered memory therapy’ — the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era.” Prof. Richard McNally” “ the scourge of repressed memory pseudoscience in mental health care” https://greyfaction.org/

Actual science:
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories

https://www.theravive.com/therapedia/dissociative-amnesia-dsm–5-300.12-(f44.0)
“Dissociative amnesia (DA) is one of three dissociative disorders listed under DSM-V. The disorder involves the temporary loss of recall memory caused by disassociation, which may last for a period of seconds or years. The interruption in memory may be voluntary or involuntary and is most often a result of psychological trauma. DA involves episodic autobiographical memory loss inconsistent with normal forgetfulness. Episodic autobiographical information is associated with contextual information, such as what happened in the minutes leading up to a traumatic event. The individual may, however, remember semantic autobiographical information such as the date, time and weather conditions of the accident. Dissociative amnesia often arises from traumatic childhood events.”

 

Recovered Memories and Dissociative Amnesia – Scientific Evidence and Accuracy Rates

Recovered memories have been defined as the phenomenon of partially or fully losing parts of memories of traumatic events, and then later recovering part or all of the memories into conscious awareness. There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist.This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma.

There is scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. https://ritualabuse.us/research/recovered-memories-and-dissociative-amnesia-scientific-evidence-and-accuracy-rates/

 

Recovered Memories and Dissociative Amnesia – Scientific Evidence and Accuracy Rates  https://ritualabuse.us/research/recovered-memories-and-dissociative-amnesia-scientific-evidence-and-accuracy-rates/ 

110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory: http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/

 

Pseudoscience:  

Denial that DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) is caused by trauma.

 
Pope Interview
You’ve treated some thousand-odd patients, many of whom experienced extreme trauma, from what I understand –
Yes.

And you didn’t see evidence of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, otherwise known as Multiple Personality Disorder) in any of them?
I have seen a number of people who were diagnosed with DID, or where the patients themselves felt that they had DID, so it depends on what you mean by the question. In other words, there are certainly people that I’ve seen that were quite convinced that they did have different personalities that had amnesia for one another. But, even though it was “real” in the sense that the patients believed that they had it, I’m not convinced that it was real in the sense that it was a naturally occurring phenomenon, as opposed to something that had occurred through the power of suggestion. https://greyfaction.org/resources/grey-faction-reports/pope-interview/

Actual science:
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Dissociative_Identity_Disorder

“Dissociative identity disorder. Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder is characterized by alternating between multiple identities. A person may feel like one or more voices are trying to take control in their head. Often these identities may have unique names, characteristics, mannerisms and voices. People with DID will experience gaps in memory of every day events, personal information and trauma…

Causes
Dissociative disorders usually develop as a way of dealing with trauma. Dissociative disorders most often form in children exposed to long-term physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Natural disasters and combat can also cause dissociative disorders.”
https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-conditions/dissociative-disorders

Scientific Evidence that Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD) is caused by Childhood Trauma
https://eassurvey.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/evidence-that-dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder-or-mpd-is-caused-by-childhood-trauma/

Physiological Evidence

Physiological evidence has provided additional evidence to back the existence of DID. One review of the literature found “physiologic and ocular differences across alter personalities.” Additional studies have been found showing optical differences in DID cases. One study found that “eight of the nine MPD subjects consistently manifested physiologically distinct alter personality states.” Other reviews have found additional physiological differences. Brain mapping has also found physiological differences in alternate personalities. A variety of psychiatric rating scales found that multiple personality is strongly related to childhood trauma rather than to an underlying electrophysiological dysfunction. Dissociative identity disorder patients have been found to have smaller hippocampal and amygdalar volumes than healthy subjects.  The involvement of the orbitalfrontal cortex has been proposed in the development of DID, suggesting a possible neurodevelopmental mechanism that would be responsible for the development of “multiple representations of self.” More recent research presents psychobiological evidence indicating actual physical alter states not found in controls.
with permission from http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Dissociative_Identity_Disorder

Research Evidence showing a connection between Dissociative Identity Disorder and Trauma

Objective Documentation of Child Abuse and Dissociation in 12 Murderers With Dissociative Identity Disorder
“Signs and symptoms of dissociative identity disorder in childhood and adulthood were corroborated independently and from several sources in all 12 cases; objective evidence of severe abuse was obtained in 11 cases. The subjects had amnesia for most of the abuse and underreported it. Marked changes in writing style and/or signatures were documented in 10 cases. CONCLUSIONS: This study establishes, once and for all, the linkage between early severe abuse and dissociative identity disorder.”
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.154.12.1703

Multiple personality disorder in The Netherlands: a clinical investigation of 71 patients.
The presenting characteristics of the patients showed a striking resemblance to those in several large North American series. Patients had spent an average of 8.2 years in the mental health system prior to correct diagnosis. Patients presented with many different symptoms and frequently received other psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. A history of childhood physical and/or sexual abuse was reported by 94.4% of the subjects, and 80.6% met criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder.
Patients with multiple personality disorder have a stable set of core symptoms throughout North America as well as in Europe.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8434668?dopt=Abstract

Abuse histories in 102 cases of multiple personality disorder.
The authors interviewed 102 individuals with clinical diagnoses of multiple personality disorder at four centres using the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule. The patients reported high rates of childhood trauma: 90.2% had been sexually abused, 82.4% physically abused, and 95.1% subjected to one or both forms of child abuse. Over 50% of subjects reported initial physical and sexual abuse before age five. The average duration of both types of abuse was ten years, and numerous different perpetrators were identified. Subjects were equally likely to be physically abused by their mothers or fathers. Sexual abusers were more often male than female, but a substantial amount of sexual abuse was perpetrated by mothers, female relatives, and other females. Multiple personality disorder appears to be a response to chronic trauma originating during a vulnerable period in childhood.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2044042?dopt=Abstract

 

Recovered Memories and Dissociative Amnesia - Scientific Evidence and Accuracy Rates

Recovered Memories

Recovered memories have been defined as the phenomenon of partially or fully losing parts of memories of traumatic events, and then later recovering part or all of the memories into conscious awareness. They have also been defined as the recollections of memories that are believed to have been unavailable for a certain period of time. There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist.This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

Scientific evidence

There are many studies that have proven that the recovered memories of traumatic events exist. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond found 43 studies that showed recovered memories for traumatic events. The Recovered Memory Project has collected 101 corroborated cases of recovered memories. Hopper's research shows that amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is "beyond dispute." He states that "at least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall" In one study of women with previously documented histories of sexual abuse, 38% of the women did not remember the abuse that had happened 17 years before. Most recovered memories either precede therapy or the use of memory recovery techniques. One studied showed that five out of 19 women with histories of familial sexual abuse either forgot specific details or had "blank periods" for these memories. Another study showed that "40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse". Herman and Harvey's study showed that 16% of abuse survivors had "complete amnesia followed by delayed recall". Corwin's individual case study provides evidence of the existence of recovered memories on videotape.

Other researchers state:

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma.

There is scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors.

Corroboration rates

Many studies show high corroboration rates for recovered memories of traumatic events. These rates vary from 50 - 75%, 64%, 77%, 50%, 75%, 68%,47%, and 70% . One study showed amnesia in 12 murderers, with "objective evidence of severe abuse...obtained in 11 cases". There are also additional studies showing the corroboration of recovered memories.

https://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories

Brown, Scheflin, & Whitfield. (1999). Recovered Memories: The Current Weight of the Evidence in Science and in the Courts Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 27, 5-156. "Brown, Scheflin and Hammond reviewed 43 studies relevant to the subject of traumatic memory and found that every study that examined the question of dissociative amnesia in traumatized populations demonstrated that a substantial minority partially or completely forget the traumatic event experienced, and later recover memories of the event. By 1999, over 68 studies had been published that document dissociative amnesia after childhood sexual abuse. In fact, no study that has looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse has failed to find it."

http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/prev.html 

 

110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory:  http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/ 

Research discussing corroboration and accuracy of recovered memories  https://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/suggestedrefs.html 

Recall of childhood trauma: a prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse.

One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question "Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?" A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Long periods with no memory of abuse should not be regarded as evidence that the abuse did not occur. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7860814 

 

Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia .  Others use terms such as repression , dissociative state , traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting .  Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences. http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html 

 

Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors

The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.  http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/ 

 

Dissociation & the Fragmentary Nature of Traumatic Memories: Overview & Exploratory Study 

"a systematic exploratory study of 46 subjects with PTSD which indicates that traumatic memories are retrieved, at least initially, in the form of dissociated mental imprints of sensory and affective elements of the traumatic experience: as visual, olfactory, affective, auditory and kinesthetic experiences. Over time, subjects reported the gradual emergence of a personal narrative that some believe can be properly referred to as “explicit memory”....Of the 35 subjects with childhood trauma, 15 (43%) had suffered significant, or total amnesia for their trauma at some time of their lives. Twenty seven of the 35 subjects with childhood trauma (77%) reported confirmation of their childhood trauma."http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk2.php 

 

Kluft, RP (1995). The confirmation and disconfirmation of memories of abuse in Dissociative Identity Disorder patients: A naturalistic study. Dissociation 8: 253-8. "Nineteen, or 56%, had instances of the confirmation of recalled abuses. Ten of the 19, or 53%, had always recalled the abuses that were confirmed. However, 13 of the 19, or 68%, obtained documentation of events that were recovered in the course of therapy, usually with the use of hypnosis. Three patients, or 9%, had instances in which the inaccuracy of their recollection could be demonstrated." 

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1155/Diss_8_4_9_OCR_rev.pdf 

 

Leadership Council Amicus Brief Appellant on Appeal from a Judgment of the Superior Court Brief of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court SJC No. 10382 AC No. 2007-p-0886 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Appellee V. Paul Shanley, Leadership Council as Amicus Curiae 

http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/docs/ShanleyBrief.pdf 

It's easy to implant false childhood memories, right? Wrong, says a new review

It's easy to implant false childhood memories, right? Wrong, says a new review

During the 1990s, groundbreaking work by psychologists demonstrated that human memory is flexible and vulnerable and that it’s very easy for people to experience “false memories” that feel real, but which are actually a fiction. One major implication of this was in the evaluation of adults’ accounts of how they’d been abused in childhood. In a recent journal editorial, for instance, one of the pioneers of false memory research argued that the same techniques used by therapists to recover repressed memories of abuse have been shown in the lab to “produce false memories in substantial numbers of research participants”.

But there are some experts who believe the false memory researchers have gone too far. Chris Brewin and Bernice Andrews are two British psychologists with these concerns. In their new systematic review in Applied Cognitive Psychology they have taken a hard look at all the evidence, and they argue that we need to rethink the idea that false memories are so easily induced....

Consider one key experimental technique known as “imagination inflation”, which aims to provoke false memories in participants simply by asking them to write about fictitious events as if they had really happened.

As a first step participants are surveyed about a range of things that might happen in a typical childhood, and then they are asked to use their imagination to write about one of these events that they believe didn’t actually happen in their own childhood. After this writing task, participants are asked again to rate how likely it is that they actually experienced this event in their own childhood.

Overall, after completing the imaginative writing task, most people tend to shift their beliefs, to think that it’s more plausible that they may actually have experienced the event they wrote about. But in 13 of 14 the published datasets that Brewin and Andrews reviewed where this technique was used, belief only changed by one point or less on an eight-point scale (from strongly believing it didn’t happen on one end of the scale, to strongly believing it did on the other). As these shifts in belief often weren’t enough to tip participants over the scale’s half-way point, this supposed induction of "false memories" involved the sowing of doubt but not the creation of a new memory – most participants still considered that the events they’d written about hadn’t happen to them, it’s just that they were less confident in that belief....

The most powerful technique used to induce false memories is memory implantation. This approach involves parents and authority figures conniving over multiple sessions to persuade a participant that an event really happened in their childhood, going as far in some cases as doctoring photographs to produce incontrovertible proof. These studies often produce new recollections of some kind – up to 78 per cent of participants report new, false memories when doctored photographs are used – but Brewin and Andrews show that when an even more stringent definition of a false memory is used – that it must involve mental images – then this rate of new recollection drops to 25 per cent, and regarding memories that the participant is actually confident in, to only 15 per cent.

Overwhelmingly, most participants in these studies disbelieve the childhood event ever happened, and they doubt any apparently new memories that arise, despite the pressure to think otherwise. Tellingly, when studies have collected ratings of the strength of any new memories from both the participants and the researchers, the researchers’ ratings are routinely higher. After hearing their parents’ stories, the participants typically become better able to narrate a plausible and even elaborate account that persuades the researcher a memory has been created. But often the participants themselves aren't buying it, and they can draw the distinction between memory-like content and a true memory.

It’s clear that false memory paradigms can shift how we evaluate past events, and can for a minority of participants provoke memory-like experiences. But the rates are very low and the effects variable, and the one that produces the strongest effect – memory implantation – is also the most invasive, and least likely to match the experiences of people in normal life or within a therapy session. Brewin and Andrews suggest their review “indicates that the majority of participants are resistant to the suggestions they are given” and that the rhetoric that false beliefs are easy to instil should be re-examined.
http://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/05/its-easy-to-implant-false-childhood.html


Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review
Brewin, C., & Andrews, B. (2016). Creating Memories for False Autobiographical Events in Childhood: A Systematic Review Applied Cognitive Psychology DOI: 10.1002/acp.3220

Summary

Using a framework that distinguishes autobiographical belief, recollective experience, and confidence in memory, we review three major paradigms used to suggest false childhood events to adults: imagination inflation, false feedback and memory implantation. Imagination inflation and false feedback studies increase the belief that a suggested event occurred by a small amount such that events are still thought unlikely to have happened. In memory implantation studies, some recollective experience for the suggested events is induced on average in 47% of participants, but only in 15% are these experiences likely to be rated as full memories.

We conclude that susceptibility to false memories of childhood events appears more limited than has been suggested. The data emphasise the complex judgements involved in distinguishing real from imaginary recollections and caution against accepting investigator-based ratings as necessarily corresponding to participants' self-reports.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3220/abstract;jsessionid=5B1FB120F62930B9BB57453F86A0F172.f01t03

Recovered Memories of Child Abuse: Accuracy and Veracity, 110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory

110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory:

53 Cases from Legal Proceedings
25 Clinical Cases and other Academic/Scientific Case Studies
33 Other Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/ 


Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse  Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources

Amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is a condition.
The existence of this condition is beyond dispute.
Repression is merely one explanation
– often a confusing and misleading one –
for what causes the condition of amnesia.
Some people sexually abused in childhood
will have periods of amnesia for their abuse,
followed by experiences of delayed recall.
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/

Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory
Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia .  Others use terms such as repression , dissociative state , traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting .  Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html 


What about Recovered Memories?
Jennifer J. Freyd, University of Oregon
http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/whatabout.html 


The Recovered Memory Project
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory 

Research discussing corroboration and accuracy of recovered memories
http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/suggestedrefs.html 


Recovered memory corroboration rates
"Between 31 and 64 percent of abuse survivors in six major studies reported that they forgot “some of the abuse.” Numbers reporting severe amnesia ranged from under 12% to 59%….Studies report 50-75% of abuse survivors corroborating the facts of their abuse through an outside source."
https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-corroboration-rates/


Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/  
The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors.  

Recovered Memory Data
https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/ 


Recovered Memories - Child Abuse Wiki

Recovered memories have been defined as the phenomenon of partially or fully losing parts of memories of traumatic events, and then later recovering part or all of the memories into conscious awareness. They have also been defined as the recollections of memories that are believed to have been unavailable for a certain period of time[1]. There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist.[2] This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

Scientific evidence
There are many studies that have proven that the recovered memories of traumatic events exist. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond found 43 studies that showed recovered memories for traumatic events[3]. The Recovered Memory Project has collected 101 corroborated cases of recovered memories[4]. Hopper's research shows that amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is "beyond dispute." He states that "at least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall" [5] In one study of women with previously documented histories of sexual abuse, 38% of the women did not remember the abuse that had happened 17 years before.[6] Most recovered memories either precede therapy or the use of memory recovery techniques[7]. One studied showed that five out of 19 women with histories of familial sexual abuse either forgot specific details or had "blank periods" for these memories[8]. Another study showed that "40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse"[9]. Herman and Harvey's study showed that 16% of abuse survivors had "complete amnesia followed by delayed recall"[10]. Corwin's individual case study provides evidence of the existence of recovered memories on videotape[11].

Other researchers state:

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.[12]

A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma[13]

There is scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors.[14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36]

Corroboration rates
Many studies show high corroboration rates for recovered memories of traumatic events. These rates vary from 50 - 75%[37], 64%[13], 77%[38], 50%[39], 75%[40] 68%[41] 47%[9], and 70% [42]. One study showed amnesia in 12 murderers, with "objective evidence of severe abuse...obtained in 11 cases"[43]. There are also additional studies showing the corroboration of recovered memories[44][45][46][47].

excerpt used with permission from http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories 

Lawyer doesn't remember stealing paintings - Dissociative Amnesia

Lawyer doesn't remember stealing paintings Thu Aug 16, 2012

Michael Gerard Sullivan, 54, has pleaded guilty to stealing two paintings from the Katoomba Fine Art Gallery in December 2008....CCTV vision clearly shows Mr Sullivan stealing two James Willebrant paintings between courses.

During his court case Mr Sullivan's lawyers tendered two psychiatric reports which concluded he had dissociative amnesia and his actions were totally out of character.

The court heard the disorder caused him to take on the identity of an art thief and not remember his actions

Judge Jennifer English accepted the diagnosis, saying Mr Sullivan had previously lived an exemplary life.

She did not record a conviction.
  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-16/lawyer-does-not-remember-stealing-paintings/4202708


The Lawyer Who Forgot He Was a Thief
August 16, 2012 By Joe Palazzolo

Michael Gerard Sullivan, a lawyer in Sydney, Australia, was dining one night in 2008 at an art gallery restaurant when, according to the security cameras that recorded him, he excused himself between courses and stole two paintings worth $14,500.

Mr. Sullivan, who previously worked at some of the country’s top firms – including Freehills, Gadens and Mallesons (now King & Wood Mallesons after a big merger earlier this year) – pleaded guilty, with one caveat: He said he didn’t remember committing the crime....

The psychiatrists said Mr. Sullivan, who faced up to seven years in jail, was playing the character of an art thief. Australia’s ABC News reported Thursday that Judge English accepted Mr. Sullivan’s defense.

Judge English dismissed the charges but placed Mr. Sullivan on a two-year good behavior bond, saying he had lived an otherwise exemplary life, according to the ABC report.

The Cleveland Clinic, by the way, describes dissociative amnesia thus:

Dissociative amnesia occurs when a person blocks out certain information, usually associated with a stressful or traumatic event, leaving him or her unable to remember important personal information. With this disorder, the degree of memory loss goes beyond normal forgetfulness and includes gaps in memory for long periods of time or of memories involving the traumatic event.
  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/16/the-lawyer-who-forgot-he-was-a-thief/



Dissociative Amnesia
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/dissociative_disorders/hic_dissociative_amnesia.aspx

Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors

The excerpts below are from this website.
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/

The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.

DeWind, E. (1968). The confrontation with death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 302-305. Excerpt: “Most former inmates of Nazi concentration camps could not remember anything of the first days of imprisonment because perception of reality was so overwhelming that it would lead to a mental chaos which implies a certain death.”

Durlacher, G. L. (1991). De zoektocht [The search]. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.
Dutch sociologist Durlacher, a survivor of Birkenau, describes his search for and meetings with another 20 child survivors from this camp. Excerpt: “Misha…looks helplessly at me and admits hesitantly that the period in the camps is wiped out from his brain….With each question regarding the period between December 12, 1942 till May 7, 1945, he admits while feeling embarrassed that he cannot remember anything."

Jaffe, R. (1968). Dissociative phenomena in former concentration camp inmates. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49(2), 310-312.
Case descriptions include amnesia for traumatic events and subsequent twilight states in which events would be relived without conscious awareness. Excerpt: “The dissociative phenomena described here turn out not to be rare, once one is on the look out for them.”

Keilson, H. (1992). Sequential traumatization in children. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Amnesia in Jewish Dutch child survivors for the traumatic separation from their parents.

Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38, 384-389.
Excerpt: “The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little."

Krystal, H., & Danieli, Y. (1994, Fall). Holocaust survivor studies in the context of PTSD. PTSD Research Quarterly, 5(4), 1-5.

Kuch, K., & Cox, B. J. (1992). Symptoms of PTSD in 124 survivors of the Holocaust. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 337-340.
Psychogenic amnesia was found in 3.2% of the totals sample, in 3.8 of the general concentration camp survivors, and in 10% of tattooed survivors of Auschwitz. 17.7% (N=22) of the total sample had received psychotherapy. The tattooed survivors had a higher number of PTSD symptoms overall.

Lagnado, L. M., & Dekel, S. C. (1991). Children of the flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the untold story of the twins of Auschwitz. New York: William and Morrow & Co.
Excerpt: “A few of the twins insisted that they had no memories of Auschwitz whatsoever.”

Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. C. (1989). Failed empathy—A central theme in the survivor’s Holocaust experience. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 6(4), 377-400.
Excerpt: “Holocaust survivors remember their experiences through a prism of fragmentation and usually recount them only in fragments.”

Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. C. (1993). Knowing and not knowing massive psychic trauma: Forms of traumatic memory. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74, 287-302.
Excerpt: “Erecting barriers against knowing is often the first response to such trauma. Women in Nazi concentration camps dealt with difficult interrogation by the Gestapo by derealization, by asserting ‘I did not go through it. Somebody else went through the experience.’....Unintegrable memories endure as a split-off part, a cleavage in the ego...When the balance is such that the ego cannot deal with the experience, fragmentation occurs....Simply put, therapy with those impacted by trauma involves, in part, the reinstatement of the relationship between event, memory and personality.”

Marks, J. (1995). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. Toronto: Bantam Books.
Excerpt: “So much of my childhood between the ages of four and nine is blank….It’s almost as if my life was smashed into little pieces….The trouble is, when I try to remember, I come up with so little. This ability to forget was probably my way of surviving emotionally as a child.”

Mazor, A., Ganpel, Y., Enright, R. D., & Ornstein, R. (1990, January). Holocaust survivors: Coping with posttraumatic memories in childhood and 40 years later. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3(1), 11-14.

Modai, I. (1994). Forgetting childhood: A defense mechanism against psychosis in a Holocaust survivor. In T. L. Brink (Ed.), Holocaust survivors’ mental health. New York: Haworth Press.
In a debate about uncovering painful memories of the Holocaust, Modai’s case is of a 58 year old woman who is unable to remember her childhood.

Moskovitz, S., & Krell, R. (1990). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Psychological adaptations to survival. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Services, 27(2), 81-91.
Excerpt: “Whatever the memories, much is repressed as too fearful for recall, or suppressed by well-meaning caretakers wishing the child to forget.”

Musaph, H. (1993). Het post-concentratiekampsyndroom [The post-concentration camp syndrome]. Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid [Dutch Journal of Mental Health], 28(5), 207-217.
Amnesia exists for certain Holocaust experiences, while other experiences are extremely well remembered.

Niederland, W. G. (1968). Clinical observations on the “survivor syndrome.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 313-315.
Discusses memory disturbances such as amnesia and hypermnesia.

Stein, A. (1994). Hidden children: Forgotten survivors of the Holocaust. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Excerpt: “Over the years I have been trying to re-experience those feelings, but they kept eluding me. I was cut off from most of my memories, and from relieving the anxiety of that time….I remember nothing about the time I spent with those people…not a face, not a voice, not a piece of furniture.”

van Ravesteijn, L. (1976). Gelaagdheid van herinneringen [Layering of memories]. Tijdschrift boor Psychotherapie, 5(1), 195-205.

Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77-87.

Abstract: This study is concerned with the question whether extremely emotional experiences, such as being the victim of Nazi concentration camps, leave traces in memory that cannot be extinguished. Relevant data were obtained from testimony by 78 witnesses in a case against Marinus De Rijke, who was accused of Nazi crimes in Camp Erika in The Netherlands. The testimonies were collected in the periods 1943–1947 and 1984–1987. A comparison between these two periods reveals the amount of forgetting that occurred in 40 years. Results show that camp experiences were generally well-remembered, although specific but essential details were forgotten. Among these were forgetting being maltreated, forgetting names and appearance of the torturers, and forgetting being a witness to murder. Apparently intensity of experiences is not a sufficient safeguard against forgetting."

Wilson, J., Harel, Z., & Kahana, B. (1988). Human adaptation to extreme stress: From the Holocaust to Vietnam. New York: Plenum Press.

Yehuda, R., Elkin, A., Binder-Brynes, K., Kahana, B., Southwick, S. M., Schmeidler, J., & Giller, E. R., Jr. (1996, July). Dissociation in aging Holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153(7), 935-940.

Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Siever, L. J., Binder-Brynes, K., & Elkin, A. (1997). Individual differences in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom profiles in Holocaust survivors in concentration camps or in hiding. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 453-465.
46% of 100 survivors report amnesia on PTSD measures.

http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/

Questions and Answers Regarding Dissociative Amnesia

" Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma.

Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture. The more severe the trauma, the more likely it is to be forgotten.

Overall, a recovered memory is just as likely to be accurate as a continuously remembered one."

The sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder: a reexamination of the evidence.
" No reason exists to doubt the connection between DID and childhood trauma."


Questions and Answers Regarding Dissociative Amnesia
by Stephanie Dallam RN, MS, FNP

....there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.

....Is dissociation a rare phenomenon?
No. Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture. Evidence of this process can be found in the early literature on World War I and World War II.

....Carlson, E., & Rosser-Hogan, R. (April, 1993). Mental health status of Cambodian refugees ten years after leaving their homes. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 63 (2), 223-231.

Dissociation is also a frequent finding in survivors extreme terror. Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated one to three million of a population of seven million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation. Carlson, E., & Rosser-Hogan selected 50 subjects at random from a list of all refugees (~500) resettled by nonprofit organization between 1983 and 1985. None had any formal education and had lived in the US for a mean of 5 years. 86% met the criteria for PTSD. The mean number of traumatic experiences the refugees endorsed was 14 and "90% reported amnesia for upsetting events."

....Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38 , 384-389.

Krell reported on 22 Holocaust survivors who, as children, hid from the Nazis.
"As children they were encouraged not to tell, but to lead normal lives and forget the past . . ."
"The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little . . ."
"For a child survivor today, an even more vexing problem is the intrusion of fragments of memory - most are emotionally powerful and painful but make no sense. They seem to become more frequent with time and are triggered by thousands of subtle or not so subtle events . . ."

Marks, J. (1995). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. Toronto : Bantam Books.

One holocaust survivor, Ava Landy, describes her amnesia:
"So much of my childhood between the ages of four and nine is blank....It's almost as if my life was smashed into little pieces . . .
The trouble is, when I try to remember, I come up with so little. This ability to forget was probably my way of surviving emotionally as a child. Even now, whenever anything unpleasant happens to me, I have a mental garbage can in which I can put all the bad stuff and forget it . . . .
I'm still afraid of being hungry. . . . I never leave my house without some food....Again, I don't remember being hungry. I asked my sister and she said that we were hungry. So I must have been! I just don't remember." (p. 188).

What types of traumas result in dissociative amnesia?
A review of 50 studies revealed that amnesia rates tend to increase with severity of trauma and is particularly high in victims of sex crimes....

What is the relation of memory recovery to psychotherapy?
Albach et al. studied 97 adult victims of extreme sexual abuse and a control group of 65 women, matched for age and education who reported on their memories of "ordinary unpleasant childhood experiences." The abuse survivors were broken into two groups. One group had participated in psychotherapy while the other group had not. There was no significant differences in amnesia, memory recovery, or other memory phenomena between the survivors who participated in psychotherapy and those who did not.

...How accurate are recovered memories?
Dalenberg, C. J. (1996). Accuracy, timing and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse. Journal of Psychiatry & Law,24 (2), 229-75.

Accuracy for Continuous Versus Recovered Memories
Percent with evidence supporting memory
Continuous 75%
Recovered 75%

Conclusion
Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture.
The more severe the trauma, the more likely it is to be forgotten.
Overall, a recovered memory is just as likely to be accurate as a continuously remembered one. However, recovered memories have a prominence of emotional and sensory-perceptual elements vs. declarative (verbal) elements. They are often fragmentary and incomplete and thus hard to make into coherent story.
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/amnesia.html


The sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder: a reexamination of the evidence.
Gleaves DH.

According to the sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder (DID; formerly, multiple personality disorder), DID is not a valid psychiatric disorder of posttraumatic origin; rather, it is a creation of psychotherapy and the media. Support for the model was recently presented by N.P. Spanos (1994).

In this article, the author reexamines the evidence for the model and concludes that it is based on numerous false assumptions about the psychopathology, assessment, and treatment of DID. Most recent research on the dissociative disorders does not support (and in fact disconfirms) the sociocognitive model, and many inferences drawn from previous research appear unwarranted.

No reason exists to doubt the connection between DID and childhood trauma. Treatment recommendations that follow from the sociocognitive model may be harmful because they involve ignoring the posttraumatic symptomatology of persons with DID.

Psychol Bull. 1994 Jul;116(1):143-65.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8711016

Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors

The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.

DeWind, E. (1968). The confrontation with death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 302-305.
Excerpt: “Most former inmates of Nazi concentration camps could not remember anything of the first days of imprisonment because perception of reality was so overwhelming that it would lead to a mental chaos which implies a certain death.”....

Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Siever, L. J., Binder-Brynes, K., & Elkin, A. (1997). Individual differences in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom profiles in Holocaust survivors in concentration camps or in hiding. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 453-465.
46% of 100 survivors report amnesia on PTSD measures.....

Jaffe, R. (1968). Dissociative phenomena in former concentration camp inmates. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49(2), 310-312.
Case descriptions include amnesia for traumatic events and subsequent twilight states in which events would be relived without conscious awareness. Excerpt: “The dissociative phenomena described here turn out not to be rare, once one is on the look out for them.”
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/

Shanley recovered memory case Mass. Court Denies Ex-Priest's Bid for New Trial

Shanley recovered memory case

Mass. Court Denies Ex-Priest's Bid for New Trial 1/15/10 BOSTON (AP) The victim, now in his 30s, claimed Shanley raped him repeatedly when he was a child attending catechism classes at a church in Newton. He said he repressed memory of the abuse for two decades until he saw media coverage of the clergy scandal in 2002.

The Supreme Judicial Court agreed with a Superior Court judge who ruled earlier that repressed memory theory, or ''dissociative amnesia,'' is controversial, but generally accepted in the relevant scientific community. The high court said the theory is supported by ''a wide collection of clinical observations and a survey of academic literature.''....

''Repressed memories of abuse is a legitimate phenomenon and provided a valid basis for the jury to find that the victim, a child at the time of the assaults, repressed memories of the years of abuse he suffered at the hands of Paul Shanley, someone who was in a significant position of authority and trust,'' Leone said in a statement....During Shanley's trial, the victim tearfully described how the popular priest used to pull him out of classes and rape him, beginning when he was just 6 years old and continuing until he was 12.

Shanley, now 78, was known in the 1960s and 1970s as a ''street priest'' who reached out to Boston's troubled youth. Internal records showed that church officials were aware of sexual abuse complaints against him as early as 1967. The clergy sex abuse crisis erupted in Boston in 2002 after church records were made public showing that church officials had reports of priests molesting children, but kept the complaints secret and shuffled some priests from parish to parish rather than remove them. The crisis, which led to the resignation of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, spread as similar sexual abuse complaints were uncovered in dioceses across the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/15/us/AP-US-Priest-Abuse-Memories.html


describes crimes
COMMONWEALTH vs. PAUL SHANLEY DOCKET SJC-10382 Dates: September 10, 2009 - January 15, 2010

CORDY, J. On February 7, 2005, Paul Shanley was convicted of sexual abuse of a child: two indictments charging rape, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 23; and two indictments charging indecent assault and battery on a person under the age of fourteen years, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 13B. The abuse occurred between 1983 and 1989 when the victim was attending Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes at the church where the defendant served as a Catholic priest. The victim testified that he did not remember being abused by the defendant until nearly twenty years later, when he learned that other individuals had publicly made allegations that the defendant had sexually abused them when they were children. The victim's testimony about what he remembered of that abuse constituted the core of the evidence against the defendant at trial....

Setting aside the victim's testimony regarding the alleged sexual abuse, and the testimony of the Commonwealth's expert, the jury could have found the following facts. The defendant was a priest at St. Jean's Church in Newton during the years when the victim was enrolled in CCD classes there. He would often check on the children while they were in their CCD classes on Sundays. Children ranging from the ages of six to fourteen, including the victim, attended these classes.

The victim was born on September 9, 1977, and grew up in Newton with two siblings. His parents separated when he was four years of age and, after a short stay with his mother, he lived primarily with his father in his paternal grandmother's house. The victim attended CCD classes with the same group of children at St. Jean's Church from first grade (in 1983) until he reached eighth grade. During the years the victim attended CCD classes, some of the children became quite boisterous and periodically were required to leave the classroom. The victim and two of his friends in particular were disciplined often, both in the lower grades and when they were in fourth or fifth grade. On occasion, the defendant admonished those who were required to leave the classroom for misbehavior, and the victim was observed leaving the classroom with the defendant on several occasions....

The defendant began sexually abusing him when he was approximately six years of age and first began attending CCD classes. The defendant would take the victim out of his CCD class, bring him to the bathroom in the basement, unzip the victim's pants watch him urinate, and then touch the victim's penis with his hand and mouth.

The defendant also sexually assaulted the victim in the pews of the church after the victim put pamphlets in the pews for the upcoming Mass. He would do so by sitting next to the victim, putting his right arm around the victim, touching the victim's penis through his clothes, and grabbing the victim's hand and putting it on his own penis over his clothing. The defendant would also bring the victim into the confessional room which was located "off the side of the pews," where the defendant would undress them both and place his finger in the victim's anus....

The abuse of the victim continued until the defendant left the Newton church in 1990 when the victim was approximately thirteen years of age. The defendant told the victim that no one would ever believe him if he disclosed the abuse....

In describing how dissociative amnesia works, Dr. Chu testified that it is possible for a person to forget something and remember it later. Dr. Chu observed the phenomenon in his own clinical practice with adults who had been traumatized as children and explained that while it was not common in that population, it was "not at all rare." He analogized dissociative amnesia to a type of forgetting, which "leads to people having really pervasive amnesia for not only [traumatic] events themselves, but [also] sometimes for neutral events or even good events." He explained that persons who have experienced repeated traumatization suffer from dissociative amnesia more often than those who experience a single traumatic event.

He went on to testify that when a person remembers "so- called forgotten memories," it is usually the result of a "trigger of some kind" which reminds that person of the traumatic experience.(10) While there was no typical pattern for the subsequent reaction of a traumatized person once there has been a trigger, the person may experience memory flashes or "body sensations." More specifically, a person might experience physical sensations that mirror the sensations he or she incurred from the trauma itself (for example, genital pain where a person had suffered sexual abuse); or have a subsequent reaction to a trigger, become overwhelmed by the sudden onset of traumatic memories and experience "people panic," that is, agitation, crying, and increased adrenaline....

Dr. Chu concluded by estimating that dissociative amnesia occurs in approximately twenty per cent of the seriously traumatized population....

Dr. Brown testified that based on his clinical experience, his review of thousands of studies regarding various aspects of memory, and his analysis of eighty-five studies focused on amnesia in childhood sexual abuse cases, many of which were subject to peer review, it was his opinion that dissociative amnesia exists for a clinically significant minority of traumatized individuals, including children subjected to sexual abuse. He also testified about the evolution of the use of dissociative amnesia as a diagnosis in the DSM, which has been revised several times. He opined that this diagnosis is generally accepted in the field and cited six surveys of psychology professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and clinicians working with war veterans to that effect. According to those surveys (taken collectively), eighty- nine per cent of those surveyed accepted the validity or possible validity of dissociative amnesia....

The judge denied the defendant's motion to exclude expert testimony on dissociative amnesia and recovered memory, concluding that the diagnosis and theories behind it were generally accepted in the relevant scientific community. In doing so, the judge recognized the significance of its listing as a diagnosis in DSM-IV, and credited the testimony of Dr. Brown that "clinically significant minorities of [victims of child sexual abuse] experience amnesia," testimony that was buttressed by the studies cited to and relied on by Dr. Brown which "reflect[ed] a broad-based acceptance of dissociative amnesia and recovery."....

In her closing, the prosecutor stated:
"[The victim] is a twenty-seven year old man. He's recently married. He has a job that he loves . . . . He has half a million dollars in his pocket. So why, ladies and gentlemen, did he come in here and tell you what happened to him? Why? What does your common sense tell you?

"You saw him on that stand for almost 14 hours day after day, hour after hour, he willed himself through that testimony. You saw it. What does your common sense tell you?
"He came in here and he told you what happened because that man, that defendant, that priest, raped him and molested him when he was a little boy over and over again. The defendant would have you believe it is all a lie. It's for the money; that people don't forget about things that happen to them and then later remember them. . . .

"Was it all a lie? Was it made up? Did [the victim] come in here and just lie about it? Was it for the money? He has the money. He got the money over nine months ago. No strings attached. What did he get from coming in here? The opportunity to be on the stand? He sustained long, painful questioning, and what did he get from it?
http://www.socialaw.com/slip.htm?cid=19624&sid=120


Cover up: Documents: Archdiocese knew priest was a rapist - by Tom Mashberg and Robin Washington - 4/9/02 Boston Herald
http://web.archive.org/web/20020602180710/http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/shan04092002.htm

Paul Shanley - Summary of Case
http://www.projecttruth2.com/Paul%20Richard%20Shanley.htm


Websites citing journal articles proving the veracity of recovered memory include :
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/
http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/suggestedrefs.html
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Taubman_Center/Recovmem/index.html
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html
http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/abuse/a/cooroborate.htm

Evidence of Dissociative Amnesia in Science and Literature

"Disturbances in memory for trauma are a common phenomenon."

Evidence of Dissociative Amnesia in Science and Literature: Culture-Bound Approaches to Trauma in Pope, Poliakoff, Parker, Boynes, and Hudson (2007) Rachel E. Goldsmith; Ross E. Cheit; Mary E. Wood Pages 237 - 253 Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, Volume 10 Issue 3 2009 ISSN: 1529-9740 (electronic) 1529-9732 (paper) Publisher: Routledge

Abstract
The current culture of traumatic stress studies includes research that identifies the ways in which stress and trauma impair learning and memory in both humans and animals. Yet it also contains health professionals who argue that individuals cannot forget traumatic events. Many accounts present differences among these positions as a legitimate debate despite the substantial forensic, survey, and neurological evidence that both demonstrates the capacity for people to exhibit impaired memory for trauma and highlights specific mechanisms. In a recent article, H. G. Pope, M. B. Poliakoff, M. P. Parker, M. Boynes, and J. I. Hudson (2007) hypothesized that if individuals could forget trauma, the phenomenon would appear in world literature prior to 1800. They conducted a contest to generate submissions of examples and determined that dissociative amnesia is a culture-bound syndrome.

Their report fails to provide a thorough account of all submissions and the process through which they were all rejected, offers highly questionable literary analyses, and includes several misrepresentations of the state of the science regarding memory for trauma. This response addresses methodological problems with the contest, explores examples of forgetting trauma from literature written before 1800, examines social and historical aspects of the issue, and summarizes the extensive cognitive and neurological data that Pope et al. did not consider. The present article conceptualizes the premise of the contest and the authors' conclusion as symptomatic of a culture affected by biases that include the denial of trauma and its effects....

Trauma is deeply rooted in culture. Culture impacts the type of trauma that individuals experience, the ways in which they process and understand trauma, the ways in which trauma is addressed in both science and literature, and the ways in which victims are perceived. The field of trauma studies itself has a history of denial and dissociation that mirrors individual responses to disturbing and overwhelming experiences (Herman, 1992; van der Kolk, Weisaeth, & van der Hart, 1996), portrays ambivalent reactions to trauma and victims (e.g., Olafson, Corwin, & Summit, 1993), and often reflects social and institutional biases rather than scientific processes (e.g., Campbell, 2003).

Disturbances in memory for trauma are a common phenomenon. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000) describes the "inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma" (p. 468) as a potential symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder, and many corroborated accounts exist of individuals with delayed accurate recall for trauma (Cheit, 1998; Chu, Frey, Ganzel, & Matthews, 1999; Elliott, 1997; Herman & Schatzow, 1987; Williams, 1994). A substantial literature explores the emotional, cognitive, and neurological mechanisms through which individuals may experience impaired awareness for trauma, and considerable data demonstrate the adverse effects of stress on learning and memory.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a912962184&fulltext=713240928

Brown Professor Continues Debate Over Recovered Memory July 7, 2009
In the current Journal of Trauma & Dissociation article, Cheit calls Pope's entire contest "a sham," accusing Pope's team of failing to provide a thorough account of all submissions and the process by which they were rejected, offering highly questionable literary analysis, and including several misrepresentations of the state of the science regarding memory for trauma. Cheit and his team offer additional literary examples and summarize some data that Pope and his team did not consider.

They conclude, "Literature can provide important information about human experience, but it cannot prove or disprove traumatic amnesia any more than it can prove or disprove the existence of bacteria or dragons. Literary passages and modern scientific data do reveal descriptions and data, respectively, that depict dissociative amnesia as a naturally occurring traumatic sequela."
http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2009/07/memory