It's all in the mind, you know
Sep. 2nd, 2006 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyI've been reading some of The Science of False Memory by C.J. Brainerd and V.F. Reyna. Their review of research into the implanting of false memories is pretty convincing - it is possible to convince people to remember things that didn't happen to them, to the point where they can tell you details about non-existent events. What isn't clear, from their review, is whether you can actually traumatise a patient by implanting false memories of severe trauma, such as childhood sexual abuse; or whether you can attach incorrect memories to the symptoms (such as PTSD) or a trauma that did happen (eg, the wrong perpetrator). As the authors point out, you can hardly experiment on people to find out; the research they review involves mildly distressing "memories", such as getting lost.
The discussion of self-hypnosis, imagination, etc, brought into focus an unrelated issue for me: what if my spirituality is only a symptom of my mental illness? I'm trying to think this through, even as I type this entry. I don't confuse what I know through spiritual experience with what I know through everyday experience - I can be certain about the latter, but never about the former. To put it more simply, if I see the winning lottery numbers in a dream I'm still not buying a ticket. :-) To put it another way, my thoughts about the Divine are changeable in a way that the speed of light isn't. But what if my entire way of making sense of the world comes from a kind of brain static?
The discussion of self-hypnosis, imagination, etc, brought into focus an unrelated issue for me: what if my spirituality is only a symptom of my mental illness? I'm trying to think this through, even as I type this entry. I don't confuse what I know through spiritual experience with what I know through everyday experience - I can be certain about the latter, but never about the former. To put it more simply, if I see the winning lottery numbers in a dream I'm still not buying a ticket. :-) To put it another way, my thoughts about the Divine are changeable in a way that the speed of light isn't. But what if my entire way of making sense of the world comes from a kind of brain static?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 10:47 am (UTC)Not sure if you know, but my PhD is on memory and memory processes. I am not an expert in false memory, but it's an area I am extremely interested in.
I would suggest it is pretty traumatic to have a false memory - if you suddenly "retrieve" a memory of chilhood sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, and accuse them, it's going to strain your relationship with them.
It's also traumatising because we think our memories are so, so secure, and yet they aren't. If you tell someone that they experienced a false memory, that you implanted it, their first reaction will often be denial. They will insist it did happen, that they remembered it.
If you're interested, I suggest reading some of Elizabeth Loftus's work. She's one of the experts in the field. I also went to some interesting seminars on false memory at a recent conference on Memory I attended. The researchers there had some cool stuff to say about recovered/repressed memory.
I do think your second point, remembering things incorrectly, is also possible. Difficult to test it empirically with traumatic memories, but there is lab research and anecdotal to suggest that we aren't always correct in our attribution of the source of a memory.
Classic case, a woman was assaulted, and was able to produce a sketch of the man she insisted she was attacked. The man - a local cognitive psychologist - was arrested. However, he had an airtight alibi. He had been live on television during the attack. His face was familiar to the woman, but for the wrong reasons.
I wish I could remember where I read that. I wish I had a source for it.
Hope that helps/is interesting/hasn't put you to sleep.
If you're interested, drop me an e-mail (google me!), and I can look for some academic papers on the subject.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 12:54 pm (UTC)While the book convinces me that false memories of abuse can indeed be implanted, I believe the controversy is being used as a smokescreen by genuine abusers, and that Loftus has essentially taken their side. In an interview, she stated that her first assumption is that anyone who reports sexual abuse has a false memory. (I think it was in New Scientist, presumably her September 2003 interview - I can track down the exact quote if you're interested.)
The man in the "classic case" you mention, Donald Thomson, is a member of the Australian False Memory Association's Professional Advisory Board - the anecdote about his false accusation is much repeated around the net, but I'm sceptical about it.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 01:16 pm (UTC)I do believe in the Thomson anecdote.
I did a lecture on false memories last semester for my Cog Psych subject, and found some interesting case studies on the Innocence Project, including the story of Robert Clark (http://www.innocenceproject.org/case/display_profile.php?id=167)
He was arrested for rape, convicted, and sentenced to death on the strength of the victim's eyewitness identification.
Twenty years later, DNA evidence conclusively excluded him as the attacker.
So, yes, I do believe in false identification.
You probably would have been interested in one of the talks at the Memory conference. The authors interviewed people who had recovered memories of abuse either spontaneously, or in therapy.
They found marked and statistically significant differences between these two types of recovered memory. What was especially notable was that (I think) approximately 30% of memories recovered outside therapy could be independently corroborated, compared to only about 5% of memories recovered in therapy.
I might be getting these percentages very wrong, but there was quite a magnitude of difference between them.
"Corroboration" included the alleged abuser admitting it, someone else admitting they had been abused by the alleged abuser, or someone reporting that they had been told about this before the memory was repressed.
The authors' conclusion from this is that it is possible for memories to be repressed and recovered, although it is questionable if this is what occurs during therapy. They suggested - much like Loftus, I think - that it is possible to implant or induce 'memories' of abuse during therapy.
I do think an implanted memory could cause PTSD. In my view, "memory" often involved reinstating a prior emotional state; I don't think the prior emotional state needs to have been generated by real events for it to cause trauma afterwards.
Loftus herself has suffered a false memory, which is interesting.
And I do share some of her skepticism about false memories. She quotes one therapist who says "if you can't remember being abused, then you were most likely abused". Assuming that is a true quote, it a gross misunderstanding of the way memory works.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 01:28 pm (UTC)I'm not sure I follow you - wouldn't the "prior emotional state", already experienced by the patient, itself have caused PTSD?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 09:25 pm (UTC)A false memory would not cause PTSD. You could have an inaccurate memory of a real event, in which the real event did cause PTSD. And there are plenty of situations where people have had inaccurate memories of real events and then had someone like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (http://precisegirl.livejournal.com/82974.html) descend, wings flapping, cawing "False memory! False memory! Nothing ever happened! This proves it!"
I'll try to explain why:
The research I've seen suggests that it's very difficult to make a false memory stick, and that even when they can get them to stick at first, they disintegrate over a very short period of time. Most importantly, though, making it stick at all (as in Loftus' original shopping mall study, which has since been discredited for extensive ethical and other problems (http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/)) requires that the subject have similar memories to draw on. (As in Freyd and Gleaves' 1996 study, "'Remembering' Words Not Presented in Lists: Relevance to the Current Recovered/False Memory Controversy.")
And if you can't have a false memory without similar real memories to build it from, then that means that even when people want to argue that particular memories of sexual abuse or ritual abuse are false, the person in question had real experiences similar to what they are remembering. Just as Loftus' mother did drown, and the rape victim who mistakenly accused Robert Clark was raped.
I also would like to point out the the Recovered Memory Project at Brown University, which collects corroborated recovered memories using very strict standards for corroboration.
Corroboration is a tricky thing; I'm sure any police officer or judge would agree that it's always hard to find evidence for a crime that occurred twenty or fifty years ago. I would be interested in hearing what the presenters at the conference used as a standard for corroboration. It seems to me that there could be many reasons for the discrepancy in what could be independently corroborated. For example, if they were using sexual abuse memories and considered that it was sufficient to have another sibling who said they had been sexually abused by the same person (as many researchers do), it could be that the people in therapy were in the position of being the "designated patient" in a family that entirely denied all abuse whereas the other folks were able to recover the memories on their own because they were supported by a family that acknowledged the abuse. Or, perhaps the group in therapy was earlier in the process of dealing with their memories, and thus had a harder time coming up with something that was even corroboratable - as opposed to simply having body memories of the abuse or something. It would also be good to know whether there was a difference in the two groups in terms of how extensive the memories were, what the therapeutic process was like for the group in therapy, what the effects of the abuse were for each group, and so on.
Given Loftus' strong bias - and the fact that her bias is in some places at odds with the actual findings of her research, and in other cases clearly affects her logic - I would bet a whole dollar that even if that therapists' quote is accurate she's taking it out of context to the point of meaninglessness. (http://recoveredmemory.org)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 09:21 pm (UTC)Basically, my problem with MOST memory research that claims to have any relevance to the stupid false memory debate is that source confusion has no damn relevance, and they all want to rely on it! Loftus' own "false memory" is a perfect example. Somebody told her that she had been the one to find her mother's body, then she had a memory of seeing her mother's body in the pool, police cars everywhere and so on, and then a few days later the rest of her relatives told her it was actually Aunt Pearl who discovered the body.
If you apply the rest of Lotfus' logic to this, it should mean that her mother didn't even die. She had an apparently false memory of finding her mother's body - she must not have experienced ANY of this trauma. That's the argument that people use around false memories of *abuse*. Why not here?
I think it's very interesting that she automatically (from what I've read) writes off the memory entirely as a result. Why on earth does her not having been the first one to find her mother's body mean that she couldn't have been at the scene and seen the body in the pool and the police cars? There isn't actually anything in what I've read that even claims her memory was of discovering it, just of seeing it. Anyway, it pisses me the fuck off.
And I wrote far too much about it, so now I have to post it in several comments. Sigh!
no subject
Date: 2006-09-13 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-13 07:26 am (UTC)[begin quote]
Interviewer: Do you have a passion for innocence?
Loftus: Yes. I don't know the source, but I've had it a long time. I was on the disciplinary committee at University of California at Los Angeles when I was a student, and I was known as "second-chance Fishman", which was my unmarried name. I just can't stand the idea of someone who's innocent being railroaded, let alone locked up. There are all those people who, when somebody cries abuse, want to embrace it, and my first thought is to wonder if this is a false accusation.
[end quote]
{on the off chance this is more than 10% of the article, my defense is fair dealings for the purpose of research and commentary.}
I think the context makes the quote clearer.
And here's another quote:
[begin quote]
Interviewer: Some researchers argue that you can't compare such experiments to cases of repressed memories of child sexual abuse ...
Loftus: It challenges their cherished beliefs to say that some of these accusations might be false, so they find whatever ways they can to discredit the work. They say: "They're just college students", "They're just lost in a mall, not being sexually abused", or "It got implanted through imagination and not through psychotherapy". But when thousands of psychologists study the human mind, we don't think we're only studying college students sitting in a lab. We think we are studying principles that apply to a variety of human beings in a variety of settings. It's as if somebody said: "You've shown that if you shoot somebody in the head with a pistol they die, but you haven't shown that if you shoot them in the head with a pistol and in a bowling alley, they die."
[end quote]
I also agree with that.
From a researcher's perspective, it's damn hard to get ethical approval to give people false memories. To give them false memories of sexual abuse would be even more difficult.
I will post some more when I am home, and rested... I am really tired now, but wanted to get those quotes posted while I was at work, and had access to the databases.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-13 08:27 am (UTC)I have to say the context doesn't change the meaning of Loftus' statement. To be honest, the expression "to cry abuse" gives her away.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-13 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-13 09:17 am (UTC)Is the Australian False Memory Association connected to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation?
Date: 2006-09-07 09:24 pm (UTC)Re: Is the Australian False Memory Association connected to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation?
Date: 2006-09-12 12:45 pm (UTC)I wanna share academic papers too!
Date: 2006-09-07 09:31 pm (UTC)anyway, it was short but I found some really interesting papers to reference:
http://precisegirl.livejournal.com/73718.html
most if not all of which can be googled in one way or another.
and then i was sad because he didn't read the papers; all he did was check them for appropriate formatting. now there's an education! this AFTER he made me stop asking questions and bringing up issues about this in class, because he wanted to get through the material... presumably so that we would have enough time to watch whatever damn clip of some psych video from the 80s he had brought in this time. I drew the line when we had to watch bonobos having sex. I'm all for bonobos, but jesus.
Bonobos for Jesus
Date: 2006-09-08 01:42 pm (UTC)Re: Bonobos for Jesus
Date: 2006-09-11 05:16 pm (UTC)also: what the hell is your userpic about? i see rose. i see the doctor. i see the word idiots. but i do not understand.
*sigh* i think i would understand so much MORE if i didn't live in the united states.
overall.
t minus eighteen days until i get to see the tenth doctor. my, how time flies.
Re: Bonobos for Jesus
Date: 2006-09-12 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 01:59 pm (UTC)Anyone can have an experience like that, and can interpret it as real or not-real. Brain static exists, in both spiritual and non-spiritual people. Everybody dreams, everybody has those little half-asleep moments where they get jolted awake by someone calling their name (don't they?), so it makes sense that some things that might be interpreted as spiritual beliefs could actually be a result of that stuff. Spiritual people are not exempt from the funny little hiccups of neurology. It's up to you and your beliefs whether you interpret a given experience as real or 'just a dream'.
When I was a teenager, my pony had to be euthanized, and a few nights later as I was falling asleep I thought she was talking to me from ... wherever dead ponies go. I was a pretty spiritual person at the time, but even then I wasn't sure if I believed what I was perceiving. When it was over, I recognized that it could very well have been a half-waking dream based on wishes. I'm even less inclined now to 'believe' in it than I was at the time.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 03:21 pm (UTC)Well, to think of it one way, of course it does--that's what consciousness is :)
There is some evidence (sorry, in too much of a rush to do a thorough search for it) that religious feelings/perceptions do have physical atttributes within the brain. That is, there are parts of the brain that light up when nuns are praying/monks meditating and some speculation that these are either "religious experience generators" or perhaps "religious antennae" allowing those who have these experiences to tune in on something not readily available to those in whom these areas are less developed. There's also been at least one study suggesting that a tendency toward religious belief is genetic. So yeah, it does look like there are brain influences on belief that might well include both structure and chemistry, and surely your illness colors your perceptions of the world around you and within you. But regardless of its provenance, this is your way of making sense of the world and while questioning that is always interesting, it doesn't mean that the world you're making sense of is in question.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 12:52 pm (UTC)Oooooh!
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 06:22 pm (UTC)*ponders, as this is a question i didn't even know i'd been asking myself until now*
1. what if it is? - well, it might not be such a bad thing...if it helps you make sense of things and be more at peace with the world (as research suggests), then i would definitely call it a Good Thing and a Useful Coping Mechanism. (and if it turns out not to be true in the end, well, i don't think you'll be too worried about it by then anyway). :)
2. what if it isn't? - maybe the divine wanted you to have access to certain insights, and the only way to do that was to tweak your brains a little? that might not be so bad either; except for the part where you feel like a complete and utter prat trying to describe a spiritual experience to someone else.
either way, i wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. :)
as long as, you know, little voices don't suddenly appear in your head and start telling you to assassinate any especially mendacious world leaders or anything. cause we all know how completely terrible it would be if that happened. oh my no. heavens forbid.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 10:20 pm (UTC)I think you've encountered a classic, yet unique, crisis of faith! But you might as well also ask "what if my spirituality is only a symptom of being conscious"?
If the comfort, strength and clarity that your spirituality provides you are valauble, then I suspect where it comes from doesn't matter.
Call me if yu want to discuss it :)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 01:55 am (UTC)Oooh...
Importantly, I'm not worried that I'm having religious delusions of some kind - I'm not a great believer in revelation. I'm just worried that my thinking may have gone a bit wonky. OTOH, I know my belief that the goddess is sickness is teaching me patience is a useful way of looking at things, rather than a concrete fact.
For a long time I've understood that spiritual experience is a sort of interaction between consciousness and the universe, rather than information coming in from somewhere - much as vision apparently is, for example. So the idea that spirituality arises from consciousness makes a lot of sense - especially if, as I think we've discussed, there are genes for it. (I think the simplest explanation of religion is that an intensely social species will try to theory-of-mind everything, including rocks, the weather etc. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 04:55 am (UTC)Then again, it could have been the antidepression medication, because I "undiscovered" god about the same time as I started medical treatment for depression...
But I'm not sure of the order of events, it's a dozen or more years ago...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-03 10:24 pm (UTC)So in that sense, is my spirituality actually bolsteredi by depression? Does depression cause one to seek out reasons for the feelings one has?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 12:03 pm (UTC)