British study casts further doubt on recovered-memory therapy

Hidden memories of childhood sexual abuse recalled years later are likely to be false, concludes a literature review by British researchers. The memories are particularly prone to inaccuracy when mental health professionals use coercive tactics to recover them, the researchers say.

The study, which appears in the April issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry (Vol. 172, p. 296?307), follows on the heels of guidelines for responsible psychotherapy practice, endorsed last year by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The guidelines warn British practitioners not to use the memory-recovery techniques of dream interpretation, regression therapy and hypnosis, and they ban the use of forceful and persuasive patient-interviewing techniques.

The researchers found no evidence suggesting that the mind represses traumatic memories. However, they did find that autobiographical memory is unreliable and that many of the memory-recovery techniques therapists use, such as hypnosis and drugs like sodium amytal, involve powerful suggestion, thus giving therapists the ability to trigger false memories.

'Hypnosis or drug-mediated interviews can convert a vague idea or fleeting suspicion into a detailed ?memory? held with utter conviction, whether or not the original idea represented any reality,' says psychiatrist Sydney Brandon, MD, the lead researcher on the study.

In their report, Brandon and his colleagues call for more research on the reported association between childhood sexual abuse and adult psychopathology. They also offer recommendations for working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

?B. Murray