Identifying My Own Bias

As I begin to explore the meaning of the survey results, it's important to identify my own bias.

First, I'm a therapist myself working for many years with trauma survivors some with recovered memories, others with vague body and emotional sensations which have haunted them and their lives since childhood.

Second, I'm also trauma survivor myself with complex memories of abuse, some forgotten, others confusing, all disturbing and life altering. Like many others, I have been working hard to connect the dots of my own memory circuits to better understand and find meaning in my history.

Third, I have a special research and writing interest about the history of sexual abuse by catholic clergy and the influential role the church has played in perpetuating the myth that recovered memories have no scientific validity.

Fourth, I am not by training a researcher, so this is simply an informal survey, not more, not less.he questions were constructed to merely explore therapist's beliefs and understanding and are not meant to be considered to be a scientific effort, reliable and valid and able to be generalized.

Fifth, I have been studying this complex issue for many years, and have concluded it is possible for individuals to experience trauma, forget and then remember later. 

Sixth, I have found the intense conflict surrounding the debate about recovered memories to have underlying political undertones for those who continue to say things like, "there is no such thing as (repressed) memories", despite the extensive and rigorous scientific research in this area.

As a quick example,  Richard McNulty, PhD a renowned Harvard University psychology professor and researcher writes:

"As I and others have shown, there is no convincing evidence for the claim that victims repress and recover memories of traumatic events."

Professor Mc Nulty published or allowed his full statement to be published on a website called Religious Tolerance.org: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Read his full statement here.

Exploring the Beliefs and Knowledge of Therapists

After noticing the wide range of opinions about the validity of the condition known as recovered memories of abuse, I decided to do an online survey of other therapists on special therapist listserv groups on linkedIn.

Currently, 184 of my colleagues have completed the survey.

This survey was initially meant to be a quick, informal exploration of therapist’s beliefs and knowledge about the complex issue of recovered memories.

I was surprised by the interest and enthusiasm for the survey and its results. I have been inspired by the open sharing of colleagues about the meaning of this issue for them personally and professionally.

So, this project has taken on more meaning for me, as I hope it does for you as well.

Trauma Memories: Is it possible to experience, forget, then remember?

Is it possible for people to experience trauma, forget it, and then remember it later, even decades later?

Although clinicians have long known and witnessed psychotherapy clients spontaneously or over the course of therapy remembering being abused, it wasn’t until researchers began to study this issue that the science explaining recovered memories was uncovered.

An early researcher and clinician in the trauma field, Judith Herman, MD, offers a sensitive description of the struggle of trauma survivors to know their history and reconcile intense physical and emotional distress and their fragile memories:

"The conflict between knowing and not knowing, speech and silence, remembering and forgetting, is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. This conflict is manifest in the individual disturbances of memory, the amnesias and hypermnesias [inabilities to forget], of traumatized people.” (Herman, 1995) (Hopper, 2011 (revised))

Trauma survivors not only forget and remember, they often are in conflict with their own memories, and are unable to stop their mind from racing and obsessing about their traumatic experiences. Their remembrances of trauma experience(s) repeat themselves often and with an intensity, at times, making life unbearable.

Like the ongoing debate in the world about whether recovered memories are real or not, the trauma survivor themselves ask the very same questions.

Did this really happen to me?

How could it happen to me?

It’s not possible, is it?

Why can’t I remember anything?

Could this really be true?

These were the questions researchers sought to answer over the last two decades.