Ferguson Case: Forgetting and Remembering

Here are three of the interesting, and overlapping, issues raised in the case I wrote about yesterday:

· False memories: deliberately implanted, negligently implanted, or self-implanted

· “Repressed” memories, subsequently “recovered”

· Motivated forgetting

Elizabeth Loftus convincingly demonstrated, in a laboratory setting, that it was possible to deliberately implant a false memory in a research subject. This is generally done by using a family member or trusted other person as a confederate; the confederate uses suggestion and persuasion to induce the subject to become convinced that a non-existent event occurred. Following the procedure, the subject will have the strong subjective sense that s/he remembers an event that actually occurred, even though no such thing ever happened. The prototype situation involves a parent or older sibling “reminding” the subject about a time when s/he was “lost in the mall,” and was helped back to family members by a friendly stranger. The “reminding” is done by telling the story, with ample fabricated details, along with the repeated suggestion: “Don’t you remember when this happened?” When this procedure is followed, the subject will (at least sometimes) gradually begin to say, and believe, "Oh yes, I do remember that!"

Here’s a link to more information about this: http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

The issue of implanted false memories became very significant back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, when there was a near-epidemic of reports by psychotherapy patients that they had suddenly remembered that they had been subjected to horrific abuse during their childhoods, usually by their fathers. It was not always true that these abusive acts had actually taken place, and family members (especially the fathers) were horrified. It became clear that some psychotherapists were unwittingly providing suggestions to their clients that certain symptoms (relationship problems, anxiety, etc.) could be attributed to childhood abuse (especially incest), and that memories of such abuse were frequently “repressed.” The suggestion was also made that the best way to alleviate the presenting symptoms was to “recover” the “repressed” memories of the trauma, and talk about, or "work through" the memories.

During that period of time, I spent a few years working on inpatient psychiatric facilities, where I routinely observed what appeared clearly to be the production of false memories. I worked on units that specialized in the treatment of persons who reported that they had been subjected to sexual traumas. This was the heyday of the “Satanic Ritual Abuse” scare, about which much has been written. What I observed was that patients who heard each other’s stories of “recovered memories” of horrific abuse within satanic cults (and the chief satanists were usually their own parents) very often, and very quickly, recovered similar “memories” of similar events. This process was going on all over the United States, especially in group therapy settings (outpatient and inpatient). The atmosphere on these hospital units was highly suggestive, and the social milieu created by staff and patients obviously contributed to the creation of these “memories.” I have written about his in an earlier blog post:

http://crimlawdoc.blogspot.com/2008/01/some-links-i-posted-yesterday-under-del.html

All of these issues became prominent in the Ferguson trial. Mr. Erickson, the co-defendant who said that he suddenly remembered participating, two years earlier, in a homicide with Mr. Ferguson, entered a plea of guilty and testified against Mr. Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson was convicted, largely (if not entirely) because of Mr. Erickson’s testimony. The question becomes: was Mr. Erickson’s testimony reliable? How could a person “forget” and then, two years later, “remember” participating in a murder? One theory that was mentioned was that Mr. Erickson read a newspaper account about the murder, then had a dream in which he and Mr. Ferguson committed the murder; and then, when he woke up, Mr. Erickson failed to realize that his dream was just a dream. And, in effect, he created a false memory within himself (this is what I am calling a self-induced false memory). Here is a newspaper article outlining the theory that Mr. Ferguson’s lawyers are now using to attack Erickson’s testimony:

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jan/20080122News001.asp

I don’t know of any research that would indicate that people can self-induce false memories, absent some kind of suggestive or coercive atmosphere. It would be difficult to understand why a person would engage in a mental process within which he would convince himself that he had done something terrible (again, unless some kind of motivation is supplied, such as strong coercion or suggestion). [I note that Ferguson’s lawyers, according the article linked above, mention the possibility of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); I don’t know of any evidence that the presence of symptoms of OCD would make a significant difference in this type of scenario.]

“Repression” and “Motivated Forgetting”: A competing theory as to how this scenario might come about would be the much more frequent phenomenon of motivated forgetting. This concept is related to the term “repression,” popularized by Freud and his followers. The difference would be that “repression” was usually though to be an automatic mental operation caused by an overwhelmingly traumatic event; an event of motivated forgetting, on the other hand, would imply that some degree of consciousness and effort are involved, either a failure, or refusal to think about the event. One person who described engaging in this process expressed it this way: “I just didn’t want to go there.” Or, as Scarlet O’Hara famously said at the end of Gone With the Wind: “I’m just not going to think about that. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.”

Memory distortions are, of course, notoriously common, and factors such as motivation and suggestion play a huge role in the way we remember, and the way we forget. Here is a link that provides some of the basics of the psychology of memory and memory failure:

http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/memory/section3.rhtml