As we were going to press, Contributing Editor Jill Neimark sent
thisimportant note: I've been covering the subject of memory for this
magazine since 1994. when I profiled. John Mack, M. D., the Harvard
psychiatrist who has "helped" hundreds of individuals recover buried
memories of alien abduction. You'd think that memory would be the stuff
of dry academia but it turns out to be one of the most illuminating and
terrifying stories of our time.
The most recent burst of gunfire was sent in my direction, though
its real target was Elizabeth Loftus, the eminent University of
Washington psychologist whom I profiled in the January/February 1996
issue. Her work is dedicated to demonstrating the inherent malleability
of memory, its distortions, its suggestibility. She has testified on just
that point as an expert witness in some infamous trials of the 80s and
90s. It turns out that's a dangerous line of work, for it flies in the
face of the recovered memory movement, which has allied itself with
feminism and child abuse.
If anyone should be revered by feminists and therapists, it is
Loftus, a brilliant woman who has put herself on the firing line with
decades of ingenious and sound research. But instead she is violently
hated by some women and psychotherapists.
Lately they've began trying to destroy her reputation, actually
filing ethics complaints alleging scientific misconduct, threatening to
sue an organization that is bringing her to speak, and using a few
sentences from my article to try and censure her publicly. An astounding
recent posting on the Internet gives a feel for the vitriol behind this.
It came from a self-proclaimed "insider" at the University of Maryland
who claimed he had copies of 11 confidential letters within the American
Psychological Association, alerted readers to two current ethics
complaints against Loftus, and blasted a rallying call. "If you or anyone
you know has been on the wrong end of Loftus' testimony, you or your
friend should pin their courage to the sticking place and file an ethics
complaint against Loftus. . . . This window of opportunity won't last
forever. . . . Let's go gang!"
Here's what happened: On January 16, Loftus resigned from the APA,
noting that it had moved "disturbingly far from scientific thinking." Her
resignation came after completing a report for a special task force on
recovered memory. Its six psychologists had become so polarized--along
exactly the same fault lines as the culture at large--that they produced
two separate reports.
By a most bizarre coincidence, two women at opposite ends of the
country filed formal complaints against Loftus within weeks of each
other, just before she resigned. Both had won civil suits after
recovering long-buried memories of sexual abuse. Jennifer Hoult, a
harpist in New York, said she sent a 30-page complaint with 100 pages of
backup to the APA on November 20. Lynn Crook, of Washington state, filed
on December 8. Both claimed Loftus had publicly misrepresented their
cases. Rumors flew that the two Women had been in cahoots, and were egged
on by a network of incest survivors and pyschotherapists. Meanwhile,
rumors flew that Loftus had been tipped off and resigned before the APA
could investigate the complaints, leaving them moot. An article in the
Toronto Star suggested just that.
But the complaints, when studied, are baseless. Nobody would resign
over them. What they seem to poignantly reveal is the sound and fury of
women so enmeshed in pain and anger that, though both claim to have
wonderful lives, they cannot turn swords into plowshares and walk away
from a battle that gave their lives tremendous, if tormented,
meaning.
Lynn Crook filed her complaint about three sentences in my January/
February 1995 article on memory. She actually referred to my stated
opinion as Loftus' "claim". She also cited a brief summary Loftus made of
an anonymous case. Crook recognized herself in one detail: In her
testimony, she stated that her father "made me put my fist into the
horse." Loftus' "misrepresentation" reads "Daddy made me stick my fist up
the anus of a horse."
Why, nearly a year later, would Crook take a few dozen words about
an anonymous case in a long article on memory and draw attention to it?
Especially since that case was dissected in a 1994 book, Making Monsters,
by Pulitzer prizewinner Richard Ofshe, Ph.D., and Ethan Watters. The book
states: "The defense even called in a veterinarian to tell the court what
a horse's reaction might be if one were to stand directly behind the
animal and force an arm into its large intestines."
I asked Crook why she never complained about Ofshe. "Because he's
not a member of the APA." (He is.) And "Because he's a tenured
professor." (So is Loftus). Crook, along with Hoult, has requested that
Loftus' APA resignation be rescinded and a formal investigation begun.
Crook insists that in filing her complaint, she wasn't influenced by
Hoult, even though they are friendly. Recently, Hoult called Southwestern
Psychological Association officers about a possible lawsuit if they
allowed Loftus to discuss her case at an April conference.
Tags:
alien abduction,
american psychological association,
brilliant woman,
burst of gunfire,
confidential letters,
dangerous line,
Elizabeth Loftus,
ethics,
expert witness,
firing line,
harvard psychiatrist,
infamous trials,
jill neimark,
malleability,
Memory,
misconduct,
psychotherapists,
scientific misconduct,
suggestibility,
target,
terrifying stories,
vitriol
