True Tales of False Memories

Melody Gavigan runs a newsletter to free her readers from the
effects of something that never existed. It's called The Retractor, and
it traffics in manufactured memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Awareness of actual childhood sexual abuse has brought with it an
avalanche of allegations by adult women that they were violated decades
ago. And a whole new breed of helper--the "traumatist"--has invented
itself just in time to dredge "hidden" memories by hypnosis and
"narcoanalysis."

In professional publications, symposia, and of course the
courtroom, bona fide psychologists battle over the beginnings of memory,
particularly autobiographical memory, and its nature. "As behavioral
scientists, we have great appreciation for the fact that memories can be
distorted," declared 17 noted psychologists, all university affiliated,
in a letter to the APS Observer (Vol. 6, No. 2).

However, "few cases of childhood sexual abuse remembered in
adulthood are verifiable. In the vast majority of cases, we will never
know."

Untouched by professional skepticism and undeterred by the damage
to families caused by manufactured memories, the traumatists dig on.
Melody Gavigan's story is standard fare.

At 35, reeling from a childhood in an alcoholic family, two
divorces, the birth of a daughter, difficulty adjusting to a new (happy)
marriage, hating the Los Angeles smog, unemployed, and thoroughly
depressed, she checked herself into a treatment center. There she was put
on a regimen of psychotropic drugs that "clouded my mind."

"We started these intensive therapy sessions, but I was always left
feeling abandoned because the therapist never asked me about my husbands,
my job difficulties, or about when I started to get depressed."

Instead, he insisted one of her parents had sexually abused her. "I
knew this was not true," Gavigan admits, but she yielded to pressure and
made up stories about her father abusing her. "Above all, I wanted to get
well. I thought this was the way." Eventually, dissatisfaction got the
best of her. She quit the treatment center, had a brief brush with
hypnotherapy, and wound up with a credentialed clinical psychologist who
specialized in inducing trances with prolonged eye contact. He insisted
that Melody--and her brother--had been sodomized by their father.

"All the therapists I consulted only wanted to work on my
childhood," she said. "None of the things bothering me had anything to do
with my childhood."

She discarded the therapist, the drugs, and the trances. "When my
mind cleared, I was able to see what had happened. I had been duped! I
felt so stupid. It took a lot of guts to admit this to myself-and even
more to restore dignity to my parents for past accusations."

She started The Retractor with four other women soon after and
found an audience through the False Memory Syndrome (FMS) Foundation a
young organization composed largely of parents stung by what they believe
are false allegations of abuse.

Gavigan, a computer specialist now living in Nevada, is only too
happy to help others who might be in the same boat. In addition to The
Retractor (P.O. Box 5012, Reno, NV 89513), she can be reached via
computer bulletin boards dedicated to psychological support, under
FMS.

Gleanings from The Retractor.

"The people who get false memory syndrome are usually highly
intelligent and sensitive women" with "vulnerabilities such as
dependency, low tolerance of ambiguity, and naive idealism."

"We became stuck in our childhood... because of our belief that we
missed out on our childhood."

"I read books that told me if I had trouble sleeping, depression,
vague aches and pains, that I was probably abused and hadn't remembered
it yet. I was told that the memories would come when I was ready."

"What happened to us? Were we brainwashed? How did we fall so
easily to the temptation of one global 'answer' to all our symptoms?
Where did all that anger and rage really come from if we weren't really
abused like we were led to believe?"