What Psychologists Better Know About Recovered Memories, Research, Lawsuits, and the Pivotal Experiment

What Psychologists Better Know About Recovered Memories, Research, Lawsuits, and the Pivotal Experiment 
By Kenneth S. Pope 
Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice Fall, 1995 vol. 2, #3, pp. 304-315.

Book Review:  The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse. By Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham.

"I study memory, and I am a skeptic," writes Loftus in The Myth of Repressed Memory (p. 7). A distinguished faculty member of the University of Washington's Department of Psychology and School of Law, she co-authored Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial with Katherine Ketcham in 1991. Like their previous work, The Myth of Repressed Memory is told from Loftus's first-person perspective. Their new book advances the theme of Witness for the Defense: Here the expert puts recovered memory of abuse on trial. In my opinion, The Myth of Repressed Memory will be her most influential work. It goes beyond numerous anecdotes, vividly told. It presents Loftus's critical false-memory experiment, which seized wide-spread attention and seemed to prove the skeptics' central assertion: that therapists could implant false autobiographical memories in their patients. This review will focus on the pivotal experiment and then on six broad issues for the field.

THE HISTORIC EXPERIMENT

Loftus dedicates the book "to the principles of science, which demand that any claim to 'truth' be accompanied by proof" (p. v). That demand for proof posed a problem. Loftus and those whom she calls her fellow skeptics believed that therapists were implanting false memories of trauma, creating a "false memory syndrome" (Loftus, 1994). The skeptics could identify therapists' potential mechanisms of suggestion, persuasion, or coercion to develop the syndrome. The problem was: Where was the experimental proof that false memory could be created?

The obvious experimental design--researchers assigning a specific autobiographical lie for therapists to implant in patients--could never be implemented. In my opinion, no human subjects committee (HSC) could approve subjecting even the first pilot subject to such deceptive manipulation of autobiographical memory in actual psychotherapy.

Finding a convincing analogue seemed hopeless. The "Chris experiment" showed that it wasn't. A child or adolescent would be used as the patient analogue and a trusted older relative as the therapist analogue. Loftus's student, "Jim Coan, created a false memory in the mind of his 14-year-old brother, Chris" (Loftus, 1993, p. 533). According to Loftus, the implanted pseudoevent was greatly feared and mildly traumatic. The research team "developed a paradigm for instilling a specific childhood memory for being lost on a particular occasion at the age of five. They chose getting lost because it is clearly a great fear of both parents and children.... The technique involved a subject and a trusted family member who played a variation of 'Remember the time that . . . ?"' (Loftus, 1993, p. 532).

A widely publicized experiment, the story of "Chris" has appeared in American Psychologist, the New Yorker, newsmagazines, newspapers, books, scholarly articles, television shows, courtroom testimony, lectures, work-shops, and countless informal discussions. As textbooks begin incorporating his story, he will likely become as well known as Anna 0. How could one experiment seize such attention and profoundly shift our view of memory? The research design and striking findings reflect five essential criteria:

• 1. The bogus event was traumatic. Just as false memory syndrome involves apparent recovery of traumatic memories, the experiment had to induce recovery of a traumatic autobiographical memory. As Loftus (1993) emphasized, "the lost-in-a-shopping-mall example shows that memory of an entire mildly traumatic event can be created" (p. 532).


• 2. Chris, the experimental subject, was not an adult. Had Chris been an adult, it is unlikely that anyone would have viewed this experiment as remarkable, meaningful, or persuasive. There would be no way to ensure that adults took such an experiment seriously and would be any less prone to be truthful with the experimenters than the experimenters were truthful with them. Media coverage of decades of deception research eroded the assumption that adult subjects are naive. Adults can appreciate the opportunity to have a little fun with experimenters, those so-called experts of the mind who recount in print and television shows how easily they fool their subjects. They may give whatever answers they think the experimenter wants. They may give whatever answers will get them out of there as soon as possible, wondering why experimenters expect much work or commitment for such a relatively low hourly wage. But a trusted older relative experimenting on the mind and memory of a minor still living at home was to many a convincing analogue. This design echoed the therapeutic relationship, a relationship of sometimes great importance to the patient, a relationship often reflecting trust, dependence, and the expectation of honesty. Someone only 8 or 14 years old and an older relative, like therapist and patient, have a relationship that is not solely that of researcher and experimental subject. A young child or teen may have great trust in older family members, looking to them for the safe reliability and honesty that cannot always be expected from strangers (e.g., those who conduct psychology experiments), but may be similar to the trust that patients may place in therapists. Certainly the brief, limited relation-ship between experimenters and adult volunteers (some of them college students who are even more aware of deception research) signing up for a university experi-ment does not reflect much at all the deeper seriousness, investment, and involvement that a patient has in therapy and the trust that a patient invests in a therapist. Those less than 15 years old are less likely to be aware that experimenters sometimes do not tell research subjects the truth, and are more likely to be truly naive subjects.


• 3. The manipulation of autobiographical memory seemed convincing. When debriefing led Chris to consider that the relative who had referred to a narrative as true was now saying it was false, he was not quite able to believe it (p. 98). The media have emphasized that the mildly trau-matic memory seemed more real to Chris than memory of actual events. "Chris . . . refused to relinquish his false memory even after he was told it never happened. His implanted recollection ... had become realer than his memory of some actual events. Chris had become, to borrow a term, an honest liar" (Boss, 1994).


• 4. The false memory still seemed real a year later. The experiment showed how persistent a false memory implanted by a trusted figure can be and the difficulty or perhaps impossibility of convincing a minor that what he or she clearly remembers as part of the authentic history of the self is complete fiction. In a videotaped interview conducted a year after debriefing, Chris says that the false memory "still seems like it really happened" (Loftus, 1994). The presentation of data spanning more than a year tends to be much more convincing than what are often called "quick and dirty" experiments.


• 5. The experiment relied on apparent realism. Loftus identified a validity problem in memory research. This prob-lem arises when experimental subjects are aware that the materials they try to remember are stimuli of a memory study (Loftus & Loftus, 1976, p. 110). When subjects sign up for a "memory experiment" and know that the materials to be remembered are stimuli in a memory experiment, the findings may lack validity beyond an atypical, laboratory setting. When an older, trusted family mem-ber, supposedly present when the pseudoevent occurred, presents the bogus event in the form of "Do you remember when . . . ?", the experiment avoids artificiality that can undermine both validity and generalizability.

A similar experiment was piloted on 8-year-old Brittany, whose mother implanted a memory that 3 years previously Brittany and her friend had gotten lost in a condominium complex (p. 9g). A little over 2 weeks later, Brittany encountered another lack of truthfulness when "a friend of the family interviewed Brittany under the pretext of getting information for a school newspaper article on childhood memories" (p 9g).

 

Here was apparent experimental proof demanded by the principles of science and meeting five crucial criteria, that memory--the memory that allows us to know our own past, gives shape to our reality, and maintains continuity of the self over time--can be manipulated with precision. That the highly publicized "Chris experiment" found quick access to courts, the media, and professional discourse increases the importance of independent attempts at replication. Such work should be undertaken by a wide range of graduate students in search of dissertation topics, psychologists, psychiatrists, researchers, and other scien-tists in diverse settings.

Those responsible for reviewing, approving, and monitoring this research--it is unclear whether the Department of Psychology, School of Law, and University of Washington (UW) review research proposals independently or share responsibility through a single HSC--might, in a joint effort with the research team, make available the HSC documents necessary for replicating the Chris experiment. Publishing the documents--making them readily available in libraries--would make it easier for a wide range of people to gain HSC approval in their own settings and save those at UW the trouble and expense of responding to so many individual requests for such information from researchers, institutes, and other interested people.

The relevant UW investigators, departments, and committees should provide information about three major issues. First, what information convinced them that the experimental procedures piloted on Chris (and Brittany) would be safe and appropriate? A human subject experiment involving a minor or deception (let alone both) requires advance review and authorization before the first pilot subject is run. Loftus (1994) has rightfully condemned those who have perpetrated experiments on subjects who did not give any informed consent, subjects who were subjected to protocols that have not been through any human subjects procedures; by working with others at UW to provide the HSC documents for the Chris experiment, she can help others take account of the full array of risks and relevant information in submitting and reviewing replication proposals. Psychologists have a reminder of such requirements in addition to their ethics code: authors of articles published in APA journals such as American Psychologist are required to sign an affidavit that the research presented was conducted in accordance with the ethics code. Before allowing false memories to be implanted in Chris, what evidence did the HSC, the Department of Psychology, and the university more generally consider sufficient to address such questions as: (a) could convincing a minor that something imaginary actually happened affect the subjects trust in the family member who deceives him? (b) what effect does being used as a subject in a deception experiment have on a minor subject? (c) does a trusted relative telling a minor something that is not true affect the way the minor views the importance of truth in family and other communications? (d) what are the implications and side-effects of a frightening, mildly traumatic, and false autobiographical memory continuing to seem real a year after debriefing? (e) does a minor adequately understand the nature of a psychology experiment in which subjects are deceived--or, to use Loftus vivid phrase in describing another deception experiment, double crossed (Loftus & Loftus, 1976, p. 94)--and the rationales for telling someone who trusts you that he or she experienced something that never happened? (f) what are the possible clinical and developmental effects of such an experiment? (g) if possible clinical effects were not ignored, what procedures were used to assess them, who implemented them, and what were the results?

Second, how was informed consent obtained? What procedures and documents for informing and obtaining consent met the criteria of the HSC and UW? One cannot, of course, begin piloting an experiment using deception on a minor without obtaining prior informed consent from the relevant parents, guardians, or other legal agents. What information was given to the parents about the purpose, nature, intended consequences, and possible risks or unintended side-effects of the Chris Experiment? How, if at all, did they understand that they would be compensated?

Third, how did the investigators, HSC, and UW address subject assent? Minors generally lack legal standing to provide informed consent, but HSCs address the issue of a minors assent. Assent becomes an extremely difficult issue when proposing to implant a false autobiographical memory that will still seem real a year after debriefing. Implanting false memories into research subjects raises other potential dilemmas for HSCs. For example, could false memories of having given informed assent or consent be implanted in research subjects? 

In its description of experiments as well as other tales of recovered memories, the Loftus and Ketcham book touches on many of the ethical, professional, and legal issues of this field. Six major questions can be noted: choosing sides, telling stories, requiring proof, remaining silent, bringing suit, and guiding practice and policy. 

CHOOSING SIDES

The first issue involves the choosing of sides. Loftus characterizes it this way:

On one side are the "True Believers," who insist that the mind is capable of repressing memories and who accept without reservation or question the authenticity of recovered memories. On the other side are the "Skeptics," who argue that the notion of repression is purely hypothetical and essentially untestable, based as it is on unsubstantiated speculation and anecdotes that are impossible to confirm or deny." (p. 31)

What are the data supporting and what are the likely consequences of labeling those with whom one disagrees "True Believers"? Loftus makes clear her source by quoting from Hoffer's well-known text The True Believer (1965/1989). If the skeptic demands proof, how does the True Believer decide what to believe in? Hoffer observed that True Believers shut themselves off from facts, ignoring a doctrine's validity while valuing its ability to insulate them from reality (Hoffer, 1965/1989, p. 80). Hoffer described the True Believer's passionate hatred and fanaticism, noting "the acrid secretion of the frustrated mind, though composed chiefly of fear and ill will, acts yet as a marvelous slime to cement the embittered and disaffected into one compact whole" (p. 124).

Similarly, a number of False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) board members, including Loftus, compare those who are on the other side to the hunters and murderers of "witches." The book returns repeatedly to the central metaphor of the "hysteria" characterizing "an earlier time when God-fearing citizens, gripped by fear, superstition, and religious fervor, cried witch, and a forest of stakes was pounded into the very heart of the community" (p. 228). Quotations from Arthur Miller's The Crucible precede the first page of the book and chapters 2-4. Historically, hysteria typically has been used to label women, in this case the allegedly large proportion of female therapists who seem to implant or otherwise elicit false memories and the allegedly large proportion of women who assert false memories. FMSF claims that at least 90% of those whom they described as "accusing adult children" who are afflicted with the syndrome and about 75% of their therapists were female (Wakefield & Underwager, 1992, p. 486; see also Freyd, Roth, Wakefield, & Underwager, 1993; it is unclear what FMSF means by the oxymoronic term "adult children" and how FMSF scientifically distinguishes adult children from other adults). Wakefield and Underwager (1994) emphasize that psychiatrist Richard Gardner "sees the women who make false allegations based on recovered memories as very angry, hostile, and sometimes paranoid. He believes that all will have demonstrated some type of psychopathology in earlier parts of their lives" (p. 332).

Aside from attributing group characteristics (e.g., True Believers, hysterical murderers of those falsely accused as "witches") to those who disagree with their beliefs about recovered memories, some who have served on the FMSF advisory board have also made attributions about individuals with whom they disagree. Wakefield and Underwager (1994), for example, discuss professor of cognitive psychology Jennifer Freyd "hiding" behind a "dishonest facade," which they describe as "the contemptible last refuge of fools and the beginning of conscious knavery" (p. 289).

Loftus is right to remind us of the demand that proof accompany assertions; many are making assertions about various people who work in this area. Some assertions are quite broad; they characterize all who are on "the other side." Some are extremely personal; for example, in addition to remarks about Freyd cited above are published allegations from other FMSF sources about her sexual relationship with her husband, how she nurses her infant, her mental health, etc. (Doe, 1991); one document containing many such propositions was distributed to her university colleagues while she was being considered for promotion to full professor. Those who make the assertions bear a heavy responsibility to ensure that the published evidence accompanying the assertions meets the highest standards of scientific proof, to state clearly how making allegations about sexual relationships or nursing are valid and relevant forms of professional discourse (as opposed to being a form of ad feminam rather than logical argument), and what limits of civility, respect, or basic human decency are to be recognized in characterizing those with whom one disagrees on an issue.

TELLING STORIES

Concerns about incompetent or malicious therapists remain abstractions until embodied in a specific person. This book uses many anecdotes to illustrate its view of the horrors perpetrated by therapists whose patients experience recovered memories. Loftus tells the story of her friend "Barbara" (a pseudonym), describing her as a crusading, sometimes strident colleague, whose toxic friendship taught Loftus much about how the therapeutic process can be abusive (p. 223). Loftus alleges that a specific individual had sexually molested her when she was g and that she had kept it a secret rather than telling her parents. When Loftus tells the story to her friend Barbara, Barbara does not put this decades-old product of malleable memory on trial or even ask Loftus for external evidence that the event really happened. To the contrary, Barbara apparently begins the True Believer's bizarre, frightening, and almost psychotic activities. Barbara is clearly, in Loftus's word, "abusive." In Loftus's memory, Barbara apparently lacks boundaries and the ability to differentiate other people's feelings from her own; she sends Loftus a horrifying rendering of genital mutilation. Finally, Loftus understands how Barbara had mistreated and victimized her: "I knew what Barbara had done--she had stolen my memory, stuck pins in it, and made it bleed" (p. 226). Loftus's dramatization of her victimization by Barbara and of her own pierced and bleeding memory raises complex questions about psychologists' telling stories about their "friends" to illustrate abusive events or other phenomena.

The path this book uses to dramatic immediacy may exact a high price. The book states, "Certain scenes and dialogue have been dramatically re-created in order to convey important ideas or to simplify the story" (p. xi). Perhaps there is another meaning to this statement, but in context it seems to mean that when the authors did not know what had happened, they made up words and actions based on what they thought the people might have said, and shaped this imaginative exercise to communicate certain ideas or reduce complexity so that a certain story would emerge clearly. How readers can figure out when the book is dramatically re-creating scenes and dialogue involving people and events intended to be real and when it uses other methods of description (e.g., based solely on authenticated documents or solely on the memory of the authors) is unclear. Although the dramati-zation of supposedly actual events by those who were not present has become widespread in books (e.g., McGinniss, 1993), what are the likely results? Loftus herself asserts, "Cognitive psychologists know that when people engage in exercises in imagination, they begin to have problems differentiating what is real and what is imagined" (p. 158).

While the portrayal of Barbara has the persuasive power of narrative, readers have a responsibility, in my opinion, to consider carefully such questions as these: Aside from the distortions of memory, were Barbara's words and behaviors re-created to dramatize a specific point and was a much more complex and ambiguous story simplified so that it would more neatly support Loftus's view of the True Believer? If there were a videotape of what was supposedly an extremely private expression of self-disclosure and friendship, would it differ signifi-cantly from Loftus's account? What are the strengths and weaknesses of using an exchange between friends as a basis for assessing "a great deal about the inherent and potentially abusive power of the therapeutic process" (p. 223)? What responsibilities, if any, does a psychologist have when intending to publicize a friend's attempts to help as a negative example? An additional issue in dramatically recreating scenes and dialogue of actual people is that pseudonyms may be relatively transparent, especially (as in this case) when surrounding information seems to point to a readily identifiable person.

The book's dramatic re-creations and more factual descriptions make it fairly easy to tell the skeptics from the True Believers. If therapists travel in "swarms" (p. 251), have faces "red with anger" (p. 34), or start "swatting" Loftus over the head with a newspaper (p. 211), they are likely True Believers. But if the professionals are noticeable by their "dark, soulful eyes" (p. 252), the description characterizes a skeptic (in this case fellow FMSF advisory board member Richard Ofshe). Readers might ask themselves if such characterizations are relevant and valid, and if so, how they increase our understanding of this area. For example, were Loftus as staunch an advo-cate for True Believers as she currently is for skeptics, would the skeptics in this book be flushed, swarming, and swatting? Would skeptical challenges to her positions be dismissed as unscientific and based on "the prejudices and fears that lie behind the resistance to my life's work" (p. 4)?

PROOF

The nature of and responses to child abuse have attracted vigorous examination. For example, FMSF executive director Pamela Freyd once wrote as Jane Doe that to oppose child abuse constitutes conformity with the widely ridiculed "pc" movement: "To be against child sexual abuse is a 'politically correct' position" (p. 163; see also Freyd, 1994).

According to Loftus, the scientific proof is supposedly adequate to support the truth of the claim: recalling abuse is inevitably followed by a variety of specific, harmful consequences that seem to constitute a checklist. Loftus and Rosenwald (1993), for example, discuss "the psychological upheaval, the ruined reputations and careers, and the breakup of families that inevitably follow the supposed recall of abuse in childhood" (p. 70). Loftus's conclusion that upheaval, ruin, and family breakup are universal regardless of the specific family, the nature of abuse supposedly recalled, whether the individual discloses the sup-posed recollection to anyone else, and other factors, may powerfully influence the damages phase of legal actions against those who recall memories of abuse and/or their therapists. But where is the proof of this assertion?

Obviously, anyone is free to make an absolute statement about all recall of abuse and may rely upon clinical experience, a collection of anecdotes, an appeal to authority, or countless other justifications. But a scientific approach, according to Loftus, demands that the assertion of truth be accompanied by proof Moreover, readers must have the proof presented in sufficient statistical detail to address questions about whether the sweeping conclusions were warranted in terms of the base rates of psychological upheaval, ruined reputations and careers, and family breakup for the general population on which this research was based.

A careful examination of proof with regard to diverse conspiracy allegations would be extremely useful. Repeatedly, claims of powerful groups cooperating in illegal, destructive behaviors seem to arise in this area. For example, those who recover memories may describe conspiracies of Satanists, who perform secret ceremonies involving child abuse and murder. Those who testify for the defense in child abuse cases may describe what seems like a conspiracy of those who seek to protect children. In their recent book, Wakefield and Underwager (1994), for example, claimed: "This child protection system is allied with a law enforcement system that commits illegal acts such as murder and fabrication of evidence" (p. 36).

Ofshe and Singer, two of Loftus's FMSF advisory board colleagues, have raised the issue of a conspiracy directed against them. They filed a federal suit against the American Psychological Association (APA), American Sociological Association (ASA), and various individuals, alleging racketeering activity connected with an effort to destroy Ofshe and Singer's ability to function as professionals and to testify as expert witnesses in certain trials (Singer & Ofshe v. APA et al., 1992, p. 3). One question this suit raises is: Can those who sue an organization be regarded as unbiased experts in other legal actions whose principals are members of the organization?

These plaintiffs also filed a suit in state court alleging that APA, ASA, and others conspired in a number of acts, including attempts to obstruct justice, deceiving federal judges, mail fraud, and defamation (Singer & Ofshe v. APA et al., 1994a, p. 7). The complaint noted that both Singer and Ofshe derived a substantial portion of income from consultations and work as expert witnesses, and discussed how Ofshe was greatly emotionally distressed in light of how his potentially jeopardized credibility could affect his clients. (For additional information, see Singer & Of she v. APA et al., 1993; Singer & Of she v. APA et al., 1994b).

Assessing conspiracy claims and other assertions requires not only requesting proof but also analyzing the methods by which that proof is obtained. Judge Yule, for example, held that Ofshe's methods seemed in some regard to be those of which he is critical when discussing therapists working with recovered memories. "Just as [Ofshe] accuses [therapists] of resolving at the outset [to find] repressed memories of abuse and then constructing them, he has resolved at the outset to find a macabre scheme of memories progressing toward satanic cult ritual and then creates them" (Crook v. Murphy, 1994a, p. 27).

REMAINING SILENT

Loftus remains silent on some important issues. She states flatly, "I have stopped arguing statistics" (p. 34). Her reluctance, however, makes it difficult to understand the assumptions underlying descriptive and inferential statistics that she cites. For example, she supports an assertion about therapists that "fully a quarter of them are engaging in beliefs and practices that are risky if not dangerous" (Loftus, 1994) by citing a study in which survey forms were sent to a total of 1,600 U.S. psychologists and 300 British psychologists (Poole, Lindsay, Memon, & Bull, 1995). Findings were presented in terms of country, age, gender, theoretical orientations, experiences, beliefs, and behaviors using 145 forms from the 1,600 U.S. psychologists and 57 forms from 300 British psychologists. Psychologists need to scrutinize the assumptions underlying research in which percentages are reported to the second decimal when bases are less than 100 (see Table 2, p. 429), a number of t tests and chi-squares are conducted without a plan for controlling Type I error, and an inadequate sample size is used for characterizing the large population of therapists in two countries across numerous variables.

Following Loftus's lead in terming those on the other side "True Believers," Pendergrast (1995) has examined the 25% figure and other findings reported by Poole and her colleagues. Pendergrast believes that social workers or master's-level counselors contain a larger percentage of True Believers, but uses the more conservative 25% figure.

Taking that 25 percent figure as accurate, however--and ignor-ing the substantial number of "recovered memories" that arise outside that core group--we arrive at 62,500 True Believer therapists. Poole and Lindsay found that each therapist saw approximately 50 female clients per year, of whom 34 percent recovered memories. The hunt for repressed memories blossomed to full flowering 1988, with the publication of The Courage to Heal. Thus, assuming that these same True Believers have practiced their memory-retrieval arts from 1989 to 1993 (ignoring the first year and 1994), we arrive at an astonishing figure by simple multiplication: 62,500 True Believers x 50 clients/year x 5 years x 34 percent who recover memories = 5.3 million cases of "recovered memories"! And that doesn't include men who have recovered memories. (p. 491)

Skeptical of the result, Pendergrast observes that 5.3 million constitutes slightly over 2% of the U.S. population and would mean that about 1 in 12 American families had already experienced a recovered memory accusation.

Similarly, Loftus might have discussed portions of her own work spanning 3 decades that seem relevant to the book's attack on the myth of repression. Early in 1994, for example, her own data led her to observe: "There is a reason to believe that the 19% figure we obtained in the current study may actually be an overestimate of the extent to which repression occurs" (Loftus, Polonsky, & Fullilove, 1994, p. 81) and "One could argue that this means that robust repression was not especially prevalent in our sample" (p. 80). In the prior decade she discussed "motivated forgetting" and presented a documented study of a college professor who became unable to remember a series of traumas but after a long period of time was able to recover memories of the traumas. "Eventually, R. J. was able to remember all of her trau-matic experiences. . . . Even though the return of her memories made her wiser, she was also much sadder. More than most of us ever will, R. J. understood the true meaning in Christina Rosetti's words in Remember: "Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad" (Loftus, 1980/l988, p.73). Discussing an example of response to a single trauma (i.e., unlike R. J.'s response to a series of traumas), Loftus asserted: "After such an enormously stressful experience, many individuals wish to forget . . . and often their wish is granted" (p. 73). And in the 1970s, Loftus wrote:

Memories that may cause us great unhappiness if they were brought to mind often appear to be 'forgotten." However, are they really lost from memory or are they simply temporarily repressed as originally suggested by Freud (1922)? Repression is the phenomenon that prevents someone from remembering an event that can cause him pain and suffering. One way that we know that these memories are repressed and not completely lost is that the methods of free association and hypnosis and other special techniques used by psychotherapists can be used to bring repressed material to mind and can help a person remember things that he has failed to remember earlier. (Loftus & Loftus, 1976, p. 82).

Discussing the experimental evidence of repression, she reviews an analog experiment by Zeller (1950) and explains: "This experiment indicates that when the reason for the repression is removed, when material to be remembered is no longer associated with negative effects, a person no longer experiences retrieval failure" (p. 83).

SUING PROFESSIONALS AND LITIGATING SCIENCE

As an expert witness, Loftus has testified extensively for the defense. She testified that all of her courtroom testimony in criminal cases was on behalf of defendants and that she had testified only for defendants alleged to have engaged in abuse in civil cases focusing on repression and child abuse (Smith v. Smith, 1993, pp. 4, 6-7).

Her recounting of courtroom experiences encourages us to consider how the methods of science and the meth-ods of litigation differ, their influence on each other, and, in the words of one court, the need for "more papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models" (Underwager and Wakefield v. Salter, 1994, p. 11). Those who work in the area seem compelled to keep an eye on the courts and their power. FMSF, for example, informed accused parents that they could seek guardianship proceedings by making legal claims that the child who has recovered memories is incompetent ("Legal Aspects of False Memory Syndrome," 1992, p. 3). No action, however, was deemed as desirable as filing a malpractice action against the therapist. "The best course of action is by the child who realized the error of the accusations made, and recants and brings an action for malpractice, against the therapist. It would seem that there is a very real possibility that the parent could join in this action.... Therapists, medical institutions and insurance companies will be seriously threatened by such actions" ("Legal Aspects of False Memory Syndrome," 1992, p.3).

Novel suits in two California cities blamed a popular book for leading people to believe false memories of sex abuse and satanic ceremonies ("Author Target of False-Memories Lawsuit," 1994, p. B3; Butler, 1994).

Two members (actually, one is a former member) of the FMSF advisory board filed an interesting suit. After psychologist Anna Salter wrote a case study exploring the relationship of claims made by psychologists Ralph Underwager (credited with coining the term "false memory syndrome") and Hollida Wakefield to the primary research and original sources, Drs. Underwager and Wakefield sued Salter, claiming defamation. The appellate court noted: "Underwager served on the board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation until resigning t after being quoted as telling a Dutch journal that sex with children is a 'responsible choice for the individual"' (Underwager and Wakefield v. Salter, 1994, p. g).

The appellate court summarized some salient aspects of Underwager and Wakefield's career:

Psychologists Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield have written two books.... They conclude that most accusations of child sexual abuse stem from memories implanted by faulty clinical techniques rather there from sexual contact between children and adults. The books have not been well received in the medical and scientific press. A review of the first in the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that the authors took a one-sided approach: " . . . When a given reference fails to support their viewpoint they simply misstate the conclusion. When they cannot use a quotation out of context from an article, they make unsupported statements, some of which are palpably untrue and others simply unprovable." . . .

Underwager's approach has failed to carry the medical profession, but it has endeared him to defense lawyers. He has testified for the defendant in more than 200 child abuse prosecutions and consulted in many others. (pp.1-2)

The court described Underwager's testimony "that children are incapable of correctly remembering or accurately describing sexual contacts" and cited other cases in which courts (e.g., Washington state's Supreme Court) had concluded that Underwager's work was not embraced by the scientific community. In addressing the belief "that Underwager is a hired gun who makes a living by deceiving judges about the state of medical knowledge and thus assisting child molesters to evade punishment,' the court held that

Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation.... More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models--not larger awards of damages--mark the path toward superior understanding of the world around us. (pp. 10-11)

PRACTICE AND POLICY

The Myth of Repression documents how court involvement has raised complex practice and policy questions about memory disturbance, acceptable interventions, and personal responsibility. The highly publicized case of American University President Richard Berendzen illustrates many of these questions. The same day President Berendzen resigned, he entered Johns Hopkins (Spevacek & Gonzales, 1990). The police had caught him making what were described as "terroristic," obscene phone calls (Vatz & Weinberg, 1993, B4).

When staff at Johns Hopkins injected sodium amytal, Berendzen began talking about childhood abuse (Brown & Sanchez, 1990, A1).

He was sweaty and woozy and groggy.... And the psychiatrists who surrounded his bed kept bombarding him with questions.... He slept for a few hours, and then ... it was time for group therapy. Still groggy, he staggered down the hallway and slumped into a seat among the child molesters and the rapists and the exhibitionists who were his fellow patients. "And this doctor suddenly riveted me to the wall--wham!--with these questions and everybody's staring at me and he's going back to all these things when I was a kid. And the first thing that jolted me was: How the hell does he know that?" (Carlson, 1990, W12).

During this time, according to a reporter, Berendzen "told them about events that he'd totally forgotten" (Carlson, 1990, p. W12). He himself noted that when he engaged in sex with his parents, "Once it was over, it was erased" (Berendzen & Palmer, 1993, p. xi). In treating Berendzen, the Johns Hopkins staff also used age regression (Berendzen & Palmer, 1993, p.123), guided imagery (pp. 154-155), focus on a famous case of alleged child abuse (p. 122), imaginary letters to his mother (pp. 131-132), and bibliotherapy that included symptom checklists (p .157) . In light of staff assurances that Berendzen would always be treated just like any other patient (p. 152), it may surprise readers to learn of patients' constant access to staff: "McHugh said that even though Berlin was my attending physician, he wanted me to have his home number and told me to call if I ever needed him" (p. 153).

The Johns Hopkins evaluation allowed Dr. Paul McHugh, chief psychiatrist and FMSF board member, to reach a number of specific conclusions. Appearing with Berendzen on television the same day of the court hearing, McHugh compared the phone calls to "a kind of foreign body imprinted in him earlier in his life" ("Berendzen pleads guilty to obscene calls," 1990, p. 2). McHugh concluded that the phone calls were symptoms: "We concluded that Dr. Berendzen is a patient, and this behavior that he has had, of these telephone calls, are symptoms of that patienthood, that he is suffering from--in a kind of post-traumatic disorder, provoked by serious--the most serious kind of sexual abuse to him when he was a child" (p. 2). McHugh's report to the court asserted that the calls were not obscene (Berendzen & Palmer, 1993, p. 187). A woman who had taped some of the calls noted that one involved the graphic description of "a four-year-old Filipino sex slave locked up . . . in a dog cage.... And the only thing that she was fed was human waste" ("Berendzen pleads guilty to obscene calls," 1990, p. 1). McHugh's report to the court emphasized that these nonobscene calls had nothing to do with Dr. Berendzen's prurient interests but were an attempt to bring resolution to his own abuse-caused patienthood (Cohen, 1990, A21). The report submitted to the court emphasized that the patient was now sound psychologically and physically (Spevacek & Gonzales, 1990, A1). Finally, "Dr. McHugh said after the weeks of treatment that Mr. Berendzen will 'never indulge in that behavior again" (Vatz & Weinberg, 1993, B4). The history of child abuse was highlighted in the court hearing less than a month after he had entered the hospital, and he received a suspended sentence.

As reported by McHugh, Berendzen, and the media, these events highlight some intensely discussed questions about working with adults who claim to have been abused as children after a long period during which, in Dr. Berendzen's words, they "somehow don't remember it any more" ("Berendzen pleads guilty," 1990, p. 4). When child abuse is reported 40 years later, can clinicians or forensic specialists decide with certainty that it did or did not occur? Are sodium amytal, age regression, guided imagery, probing memories of famous cases of alleged child abuse, assigning reading materials containing symptom checklists, and similar techniques useful in assessment and intervention? Can interrogations conducted in a darkened hospital room or an intensive therapy group distort findings? Can the possibility that a forensic expert may appear on national television with the patient affect the process and outcome of a forensic assessment? What, if any, are the implications of forensic expert and patient appearing on television shows together? Can a clinician determine whether a patient experienced prurient inter-est during phone calls, and what are the assumptions underlying making this distinction? Have sufficient con-trolled research studies been published in peer-reviewed journals to provide an empirical basis for assuring courts, after less than a month, that someone who has made non-obscene but illegal phone calls in the past will "never indulge in that behavior again"? Can childhood abuse suddenly cause the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder 40 years later, and if so, can a course of assessment and treatment of less than one month bring about such a complete recovery that the patient is now sound?

Two profound policy questions are: (a) should a person who only after arrest claims a history of child abuse be exempt from jail and fines for seemingly abusive and illegal behavior? and (b) are the forensic uses of mental health syndromes scientifically based and consistently applied? For example, McHugh's colleague at Johns Hopkins, John Money, criticized the FBI's handling of the complaint against Sol Wachtler, chief justice of New York State's highest court, arguing that no one should hold Wachtler responsible for his actions because he suffered from advanced symptoms of an erotomanic delusional disorder, which is a devastating illness (Derscho-witz, 1994, pp. 323-324).

Leo (1994) comments that the illness afflicting a prominent judge arrested for such symptoms as extortion and threats to kidnap a 14-year-old girl (the daughter of a woman with whom Wachtler, unknown to his wife, had been sexually active) is one that apparently can be diagnosed from 300 miles away, that telephoning the patient or even knowing much about him is unnecessary, and that all the clinician needs to know is that the patient is blameless. Leo has described how Money compared Berendzen's condition, as he did Wachtler's, to epilepsy (i.e., an illness that rendered the individual not responsible for his own acts).

When a 17-year-old patient claimed that a dentist had assaulted her, more than 20 people told the police that he had also fondled them (Gordon & Ordine, 1992, Bl). At the trial, Graboyes, the dentist, admitted that he had begun fondling patients at least 19 years earlier (Gordon, 1991). When Graboyes pled guilty to indecent assault and corruption of a minor, the district attorney's office asked for jail time. Harold Lief, a member of the FMSF advisory board, testified that jail would not be useful because Graboyes was mentally ill and suffered from a sexual disorder. The judge sentenced him to probation and ordered that he obtain treatment for his illness. Afterward, Graboyes observed that his mental illness had rendered him totally disabled and sued to ensure that he would receive $5,000 a month disability payments for life.

Leo (1994) raises a vital issue of policy and practice:

People at the top of society are far more likely to get away with psychologized and neurologized excuses than people in rough neighborhoods. John Money offered his epilepsy analogies, not after drive-by shootings, but in defense of a college president and a chief judge.... The psychologized vocabulary of moral evasion afflicts the whole society, but it is most corrosive when it lets the powerful off the hook.... [I]t is crucial to our sense of justice that high-pla ced perpetrators be held accountable, and not disap-pear into the mists of psychology" (pp. 24-25, 28; for discussion of this issue in the case of the dentist, see Gordon, 1991).

CONCLUSION

I believe The Myth of Repressed Memory is one of the few books that are must reading among the array that vigor-ously attack those whom Loftus terms True Believers. In only 290 pages, it covers a diversity of anecdotes, ideas, data, and assertions. It addresses crucial issues confronting the profession and the public.

In an area in which so much is at stake, it can be almost irresistible to stake out an extreme position and defend it by attacking those who disagree as True Believers, as comparable to murdering and superstitious witch hunters, as dishonest knaves and fools, and similar characterizations. But the fact that so much is at stake is a compelling reason to avoid such attacks, to rethink the FMSF claim that filing a lawsuit is "the best course of action," to consider the unintended consequences of imaginatively dramatizing supposedly nonfiction accounts, to ensure that no relevant data--one's own or others'--are excluded from evaluations of evidence, to assume responsibility for replicating pivotal experiments, and to assess the degree to which assertions of truth are accompanied by proof.

What I view as flaws in this book (e.g., dismissing those who disagree as True Believers) distract and detract from the value of Loftus's contributions and the serious questions she raises. In my opinion, they do her and the field an injustice. Not only the two sides that Loftus describes but all sides have important ideas, data, questions, creativity, experience, wisdom, and concerns to contribute. The current state of research and the complexity of issues would seem to make blanket claims of "truth" or "myth" at best premature and at worst destructive. Even if I or anyone else were convinced of an extreme and absolute positionthat all recovered memories are true or that all represent a false memory syndromea rethinking of the position, respectful discussion with those who disagree, and another look at the evidence can only be healthy. Both scientifically and clinically, avoiding reflexive acceptance or rejection of an idea or allegation is crucial. Each client, claim, and hypothesis deserves careful, unbiased evaluation in light of the full range of available evidence and context. Even once we have conducted such an evaluation and feel absolutely certain of our conclusions, we can always be wrong and must never overlook that possibility. It is hard to overstate the need for "more papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models."

Case of Irwin Silverman

Case of Irwin Silverman

Chief Counsel to U.S. Secretary of Interior 1933 - 1953

Irwin Silverman was chief counsel to the U.S. secretary of interior from 1933-53.  His daughter Sue, accused him of molesting her as a child.  She states that her father, Irwin Silverman first molested her in the bathtub at age 4 and it continued with his regular visits to her room at night until she went to college.  In the end of 1996 she wrote her first book, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You,"that describes her life and experiences.

If you have a photograph of Irwin Silverman please forward it to The Awareness Center, Inc.

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Disclaimer: Inclusion in this website does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement. Individuals must decide for themselves if the resources meet their own personal needs.

Table of Contents:  

1996

1. Books: Reviews and Opinion - University Presses (08/25/1996)
2. Memoir of incest is powerful and brave (10/13/1996)

1997

1. Survivor reveals childhood in graphic memoir Series: Books (01/12/1997)
2. Horror of Abuse Will Not Go Away (04/19/1997)
3. Home Entertainment; THE LATEST IN MUSIC, VIDEOS AND BOOKS; ON BOOKS  (05/01/1997)

1999

1. Memoir Hard To Forget (11/15/1999)

2001

1. Story of sex addict starts with abuse, ends in recovery (05/29/2001)

2002

1. A daily progression - Author shares her fight against sexual addiction in new book (05/23/2001)
2. Praying for Protection  (Winter 2002-2003) 
3. Sex Addictions Real and Ruinous

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Books: Reviews and Opinion - University Presses
Rich Harvest For Fall and Winter - Topics Frange from Jimmy Carter to Film to religion
By Carolyn Nizzi Warmbold, Staff Writer
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - August 25, 1996

"Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You" by Sue William Silverman  ($ 20). The winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction writes about her sexual abuse from age 4 to 18 by her father. (November)

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Memoir of incest is powerful and brave
By Mary Ann Lindley
Tallahassee Democrat
Tribune News Service (Knight Ridder/) - October 29, 1996


"Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You," is not the most inviting book title you'll find in bookstores when it is released this November. When a galley proof was handed to me last week and I glanced at the blurbs _ "harrowing, literary memoir of incest and survival," "the cry that shatters the curse" _ my instinct was to hand the book right back. Sometimes in the news business it doesn't seem possible to allow one more element of tragedy into the mind _ no more jolts of empathy to pass through the heart.

Even the book's own editor, Malcolm Call at the University of Georgia Press in Athens, said that midway through Sue William Silverman's story he threw the manuscript across the room and wept.

In fact, Silverman's book is powerfully written and ends if not quite happily, then with a sigh of relief. She eventually confronted the misery and confusion that grew in her like a tumor from ages 4 to 18 when she was raped with numbing regularity by her prominent in Washington and otherwise well-respected father.

Silverman, who now lives in Michigan and whose memoir will be featured as part of public television's "The Diaries Project," clawed her way to a kind of reckoning with her family history and takes almost drunken delight in normalcy she can now identify for what it is.

Knowing this book wouldn't be in their hands at all if Silverman had stayed locked in her abnormal world is what enables readers to pick it up off the floor where it landed and read on.

Silverman's father was Irwin Silverman, chief counsel to the U.S. secretary of interior from 1933-53, his daughter reports. Revealing him with utter courage, she describes her father as an architect of the move to establish statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, as a wealthy international banker and as one of Washington's social and political progressives.

"My father was also a child molester," she writes. "I know. Because he sexually molested me."

As with countless children who are molested, Silverman reports that her mother, Fay, stood by aware but mute. She died, as did Silverman's father, having been patiently confronted by their daughter at last with the evil they allowed. But years of denial and attachment to their own explanations, excuses and definitions were insurmountable and finally Silverman's ragged victory is her own.

Though countless articles have been written about child molestation, Silverman's beautiful, rocketing prose offers the finest descriptions of how a child interprets what is happening and, maybe, why. She learns the family legacy: As a boy her father was sexually abused and tortured by his own mother and two aunts; as a father, he abuses and tortures, too.

Silverman's "cry that shatters the curse" of her family explains how confusing and blinding it is for a child to have two sharply inconsistent lives.

"I see our pretty houses and our pretty clothes, see our Fleetwood Cadillac, see all the people who admire my parents, see all the smiling family photographs," she writes. But all this has no connection with the images of night in the pretty house, when nightly her father walks into her bedroom and rapes her with himself, furiously with bottles and _ the ultimate flourish _ with a knife to bloodily mark the most intimate parts of her body as his own.

"I love you," he says all the while. "You are my favorite. I love you most."

For a small child without any context or awareness of sex or healthy intimate behavior, such contradictions simply dominate and divide the self, which wants the love and "deserves" the torture.

"I've known no words, no symbols, no definitions, to explicate the images of what happened with my father," she tells her therapist many years later trying to reckon with concepts such as rape, pedophilia, seduction.

"Growing up, I didn't want to know those words, because if words for acts didn't exist, the acts themselves didn't exist. So I had no context in which to view the images: I never understood what I saw; I didn't want to understand what I saw."

We know that Silverman's story is replayed over and over in the dark night of children's bedrooms in neighborhoods both pretty and poor. As a young woman, Silverman sought the help of 10 therapists before their efforts finally synchronized with her ability to confront the demons. It came at a time, mercifully, when society has at last become willing to confront and discuss child molestation.

Which is why her memoir is important. It's a powerful reminder of the necessity of society to notice and to throw lifelines to these children of terror. They may be sending out signals of their distress. We all need to know enough to notice.
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Praying for Protection
Lilith Magazine - Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter 2002-03
http://www.lilithmag.com/current.htmSpurred by Catholic boys' charges, Sue William Silverman remembers sexual abuse by her powerful political father and what it meant to her identity as a Jew

Even though I'm Jewish, I attended an Anglican elementary school when my family first moved from Washington, D.C. to the West Indies. I loved the church that was next to the school, the sunstruck stained-glass windows, the whisper of silken robes, the holy Fathers chanting. I was transfixed by the serene eyes of a plaster Jesus who returned my gaze as if in benediction. One day I was given a ruby-colored rosary. For hours, I'd trail the beads through my fingers, each bead a miniature sun radiating warmth up my arms to my heart. I believed my rosary was blessed with special powers, that it would protect me from nights when my Jewish father shattered the peace of my bedroom and raped me. With the magical thinking of an abused child, I believed that bad things only happened to little Jewish girls. I avoided synagogues and believed that churches offered me safety. I prayed to be resurrected as a Christian girl with blond, blond hair. . .

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Survivor reveals childhood in graphic memoir Series: Books
By Janet Wilson
Austin American Statesman - January 12, 1997

`BECAUSE I REMEMBER TERROR, FATHER, I REMEMBER YOU'

By Sue William Silverman

University of Georgia Press, $19.95 

Sue Silverman's memoir of growing up as daddy's favorite girl is the most disturbing book I've ever read. For some reason, my brain is able to process the idea that strangers commit murder and mayhem on other strangers. I can imagine a time when, in the heat of passion, adults who love one another lose control and cause harm. 

But, I have never been able to fathom how parents who give life to children commit unspeakable acts on them, stealing their childhoods, their sanity and, in some cases, their lives. 

From the time she was 4 until she turned 18, Silverman's father repeatedly sexually abused her. She was raped, sodomized and physically assaulted by a man the world knew as a high-ranking government official and successful banker, but who spent his nights locked behind a closed door molesting his young daughter. 

Silverman thought what her father did to her was normal. That's all she had known. There was one brief moment at a pajama party when she encountered her friend's father in the hallway and was surprised when he said good night and went to his wife's bedroom. Was it possible that what she did every night was not repeated in girls' bedrooms across the city?

In her memoir, Silverman describes in graphic detail what it was like growing up with a pedophile. It is heart-wrenching and excruciating to read. That her plight went unnoticed outside her home was a travesty. That her mother knew about it and did nothing was a crime. 

As an adult trying to make sense of her life, Silverman went to 10 therapists before finally finding one who helped her climb out of her abyss. She eventually confronted her aging parents. Her father sought sympathy, saying he had been sexually abused as a child by his mother and two aunts, as if that somehow excused his behavior as an adult. 

But her mother's response was even more chilling. 

``Oh well, I had a terrible childhood, too,'' her mother said, when Silverman told her she had been sexually molested. ``People talk about things like this now, but back then, no one knew.'' 

``You knew,'' Silverman told her mother. 

``But I didn't understand. No one knew what it meant back then,'' her mother replied. ``How could I have left? How could I have supported two small girls?'' 

So instead, her mother listened to a radio at night to drown out the sounds of her husband raping her daughter, taking solace in the appearance of a normal family rather than creating one. It took years of therapy before Silverman could accept that the shame she felt belonged to her father, not her. The healing process continues. 

Silverman's story, while beautifully crafted, is not for a casual reader. It will be featured as part of a public television documentary.

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Horror of Abuse Will Not Go Away
By Elenor Mallet
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) - April 19, 1997
Growing up means, at least in part, separating ourselves from the family story we grew up with and learning to live and tell our own.

For many, the different stories have at least some resemblance. For others, like Sue William Silverman, they are radically different.

Silverman's book, "Because I Remember Terror Father, I Remember You," chronicles her continuous sexual abuse over 14 years by her father. I found her story so disturbing that I put the book aside for several months.

Silverman's father was a powerful man at home and in the world. He was counsel to the U.S. secretary of the interior for 20 years and was an international banker. "My father was also a child molester. I know. Because he sexually molested me," she writes.

Her father first molested her in the bathtub at age 4 and it continued with his regular visits to her room at night until she went to college.

Published at the end of 1996 by the University of Georgia Press, the book won a prestigious national award for nonfiction in 1995. It is beautifully written: The evocative detail makes it all the more disconcerting.

In recent years, we have learned to approach child sexual abuse with caution. The subject has become embroiled in controversy about repressed, recovered and even false memory.

Silverman avoids those issues: Hers are not repressed memories. In unrelenting detail, she reveals this damaged childhood in a closed and outwardly respectable family.

Family life revolved around her father's rages, which were often assuaged by his young daughter. Her mother was in complicity; most of the time in the next room listening to the radio. Her older sister never seemed to be home.

To survive, Silverman created two personalities; Dina, who passively endured the experiences, and later an angry, masochistic Celeste.

In ninth grade, she goes to a sleepover at a girlfriend's where she sees her friend's father definitively shut the door to the room he shares with his wife. Silverman catches a glimmer of understanding that "what I do every night is not repeated in every other girl's bedroom." Yet it will take her another 30 years to fully grasp that.

In her 20s, she recalled that when she heard the word incest in the movie "Phaedra," it "stopped me like a slap." She looked the word up in the dictionary and then had to look up each word of the definition. She could not seem to comprehend any of the meanings.

As an adult, she starved herself and became promiscuous. In her early 40s, she found a therapist, her 11th, who could help her.

It is not surprising that Silverman, now 51 and living in Grand Haven, Mich., became a writer. Her therapy was a process of learning the meaning of the words incest, rape, child molester, pedophile. She learned to tell her own story, where terror once meant father, and love meant abuse.

In 1992, her parents died within six days of each other. A few weeks later, she began writing the book. She said writing has been part of gaining control over the experience and letting go of it.

This book is a powerful reminder that while controversy may surround child sexual abuse, that does not mean the problem has gone away or that its horrific damage has been lessened.


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Home Entertainment - The Latest in Music, Videos and Books
By Don O'Briant
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - May 1, 1997, Thursday, ALL EDITIONS


BOOK NOTES

BAD MEMORIES: For years, Sue William Silverman knew she had a story to tell, but it was simply too painful to write. The daughter of a high- ranking government official, Silverman, 50, had grown up in what appeared to be a normal, upper-middle class Jewish family. In reality, Silverman was subjected to sexual abuse and torture by her father from the time she was 4 until she left for college.

"My therapist encouraged me to tell my own story, but I kept putting it off," Silverman says from her home in Grand Haven, Mich. "Then my parents died, and I started writing. It just all fell out."

Silverman's book, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You" (University of Georgia Press, $ 20), won the UGA Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction and evoked a flood of sympathetic responses from readers who had been abused.

"Reported cases of child abuse have doubled in the last seven years," says Silverman, who lived for several years in Rome, Ga., "but a lot of people don't want to know how much of an epidemic incest is. They just want to close their eyes."

Which is what Silverman's mother did.

"I consider her a co-conspirator. She could have taken me and my sister out of the house. My mother should have had the courage to protect me."

Silverman will sign her book at 7 tonight at Charis Books & More.

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Author Silverman tackles memories of childhood abuse
By Kristina Hughes, The State News (East Lansing, Mich.)

University Wire  (Michigan State University) - October 22, 1999


A child's smiling portrait stares at you from the cover of the book, "Because I Remember Terror Father, I Remember You," but behind the picture is a harrowing story of incest.

Sue William Silverman shares her family's dark secrets in a disturbing memoir.

Tonight, she will share excerpts from her book part of the Michigan Writers Series at 7:30 p.m. in W449 Main Library.

The book's hard-copy edition came out in November 1996, and its paperback was released September of 1999.

Silverman grew up in a typical middle class family, but behind the house, cars and nice clothes were secrets. Silverman was sexually abused by her father from ages 4 to 18. She hid behind a false identity. Her father was a successful banker, influential government figure and a rapist.

"I was raised to believe that when you were in the public, you had a public persona -- a mask that separated the truth," Silverman said. "Part of me knew the truth, but it is so hard to know how much your parents betrayed you."

After years of lies, Silverman started discovering who she was in her kindergarten picture. Writing the book provided a way for her to soul search.

"My therapist taught me how to find myself, I didn't have a sense of myself," Silverman said. "Therapy was a process of finding who that little girl was."

Through her book, she reveals the secrets of incest.

"I grew up with no sense of myself," she said. "The writing process provided me with the language to speak -- it saved my life."

Silverman said that writing the book proved to be a cathartic exercise of discovery.

"I've been writing the book my entire life," Silverman said. "Writing is like following a whisper, deeper and deeper into myself. It's a process of discovery one word to the next."

Along with writing, therapy and self-help groups helped Silverman reclaim her life.

"When something bad happens, you can give into it and give up your life and stay in the same emotional place or you can make something positive come out of it," she said. "I tried to deal with it in a way that it would be empowering for me and help others."

Silverman still deals with the scars of incest, but she won't let her trauma dominate her life.

"My parents ruined my childhood. I didn't want them to ruin my adulthood. This is my way to have the last word and come out smiling by making a better life for myself," she said.

Silverman's memoir depicts the confusing reality of incest.

As a child, she didn't question the abuse.

"It really seemed normal," she said. "Whatever a child's family life is, it is your reality. I didn't know anything else (and) it became normal, but there's also a sense of unreality where nobody talks about it. You don't have any language to speak about it."

Because the abuse affected the way Silverman related to men, intimacy was a struggle for her.

"College was disorienting," she said. "I sort of recreated the same situation. I was scared of emotional intimacy, so I repeated the pattern of not getting close," she said.

Silverman presents her book to colleges and women's support groups around the country. Through her book and speeches, she's making people aware of incest.

"Incest is a very painful and dark subject that people don't talk about," she said. "I want other survivors to know they're not alone."
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Memoir Hard To Forget
By John Keenan
 Omaha World-Herald - November 15, 1999


On the cover of Sue William Silverman's searing memoir "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You," the words "terror" and "father" are juxtaposed, "terror" white on a black background, "father" black on a gray one.

It's a disconcerting pairing; the words terror and father don't go together, at least not in what is a normal world or a normal childhood.

Silverman, who will give a reading in Omaha Thursday night, had neither. "Because I Remember Terror" is a riveting, disturbing account of her sexual molestation by her father, a predatory relationship that began when she was 4, she says, and continued until she was 18.

The book opens with a brief prologue; Silverman, in a therapist's office, tries to decide how many of her secrets she is able to share in the name of helping herself.

After that glimpse of an older woman trying to reclaim control of her life, the book plunges into the memories of a 4-year-old whose sense of self and definition of love are distorted by a father who allows his own twisted desires to infect what should be a loving, protecting relationship.

Silverman's father was a successful man. In the memoir's preface, she lists his accomplishments: architect of the preliminary papers establishing statehood for Alaska and Hawaii; president of the West Indies Bank and Trust Co.; acquaintance of the likes of President Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson; and a slew of other accomplishments.

Silverman is not coy. She details her father's abuses with a forlorn detachment and a growing rage. She writes of feeling as if she were apart from herself, of creating other girls - Dina and Celeste - who inhabit the body that her father so cruelly uses. She tells of a mother who pretended ignorance, sometimes in spite of such obvious evidence that the reader will be torn between heartbreak and fury.

It is impossible to read the book, compelling as it is, without putting it down from time to time to escape the horrors within its pages.

That begs the question: What if there were no escape? And that drives the terror of Silverman's experience home with even greater force.

Now a professional speaker on incest and child abuse as well as an award-winning author, Silverman spoke briefly about her book from her home in Grand Rapids, Mich., where she is about to resume her teaching career.

"I'm really only a 'professional speaker' because of the book," she said. "Right after I moved from Georgia to Michigan is when the book won the (Associated Writing Programs' creative nonfiction) award. I was planning to start looking for other teaching jobs, and I was just giving literary readings at bookstores, but then it took on a life of its own.

"That seemed to be where my energy was going to be, and it seemed for now a really important thing. I really am still teaching in a way, but different kind of students. The experience has been so empowering."

Silverman currently is working on another memoir and is the associate editor of a nonfiction journal.

It was her therapist, Randy, who suggested Silverman write an autobiography.

"I kept saying that I didn't have anything to say," she said.

Following her parents' deaths - they died within six days of each other - Silverman sat down to write what she thought would be "a page, a little essay."

"The book fell out of me in three months," she said. "I didn't write it as therapy, but in many ways it was cathartic, and it helped me understand the experience in a way that talking in therapy didn't. It was emotionally tough to write, but I also had reached the point where it was harder not to write it."

The book also details Silverman's adult relationship with her father. Despite her understandable feelings of anger and betrayal, she remained in contact with him until his death, something she said can "mystify" people.

"Incest is a very complicated issue, and I do feel a lot of anger toward both my parents, hate them for what they did to me," she said. "I can't even say I love them as adults. But what I am able to do, and as my father was dying this particularly became real to me, is love who they were as children. Because they were hurt as children, and they certainly didn't want to grow up to become child molesters.

"The other part is, the young part of me - the part I call my 'inner child' - was with them also, because that young part of me still hoped that somehow, even on their deathbed they would apologize and recognize me. That part of me kept wanting parents. I didn't get it, but that doesn't take away from the want."

Silverman will speak at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Dodge Room, on the third floor of the UNO Milo Bail Student Center, 6001 Dodge St. The reading is free and open to the public; an open discussion period with Silverman follows.

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Story of sex addict starts with abuse, ends in recovery
By Terri Finch Hamilton
Grand Rapids Press - May 29, 2001

ABSTRACT:

Silverman's new book "Love Sick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction," was published this month by W.W. Norton and Co. In it, she tells of the dark, dangerous life of a woman addicted to sex. When her father abused her, she says, he told her that he loved her, setting up a confusion between love and sex that fueled years of dangerous sexual behavior. 

"There's so much shame about it," Silverman says. "All other addictions -- alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders -- are much more out in the open. Sex addiction is the least talked about and the most misunderstood. 

Silverman entered a residential treatment program for sexual addiction in 1990 at the request of a therapist who finally diagnosed her illness. For years, a string of therapists had treated her for depression, not clueing in to her real problem, she says. She takes part of the blame. She kept that part of her life a dark secret.

  



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A daily progression - Author shares her fight against sexual addiction in new book
By Kathleen Lavey
Lansing State Journal May 23, 2001


Sue William Silverman has a keepsake, a decades-old photo of herself, taken in Atlantic City, N.J.

Wearing leather, she stands next to graffiti scrawled on a concrete column: "Love is here every day."

But back then, "love'' meant "sex'' - sex with married men, sex with strangers. It meant thinking, scheming and dreaming about sex to the exclusion of other things.

Silverman details that period of her life in her new memoir "Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction'' (Norton, $24.95). Her previous memoir, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You,'' (University of Georgia Press) deals with the incest she endured as a child and teenager. Silverman will read from her new book and answer questions at 7:30 p.m. today at Schuler Books in Okemos.

"I would use sex like a drug to numb pain,'' said Silverman, who now lives in the Lake Michigan community of Grand Haven. "I was using sex to numb out, or cutting myself with a razor blade or starving myself. By obsessing about these other things, that was a numbing out of the real pain, which was the pain of my childhood."

Research shows that sexual addiction affects an estimated 6 to 10 percent of people, said Elizabeth Griffin, chief operating officer of the American Foundation for Addiction Research in Minneapolis. The vast majority of those suffered emotional, sexual and/or physical abuse as children.

Sexual addiction is characterized by a compulsion to have sex, continuing the behavior despite its consequences and obsessively thinking about or planning for sex.

So far, it is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a widely used psychology reference for professionals. Griffin's organization is paying for a five-year, 75,000-participant study to document the disorder in hopes that it will be included in the next version of that book, which comes out in 2008.

Silverman spent a month in an in-patient program to deal with her addiction in the late 1980s. She details her experiences, thoughts and feelings during those days in treatment in "Love Sick."

"Once I'd kind of gotten the incest and my family written about, I was ready to move on to this more adult issue,'' she said. "I feel much more shame about being a sex addict in a way. I had to overcome a lot of fear to write the second book."

One of Silverman's top concerns in sharing her story was that it be more than mere confession. The book's point of view shifts from Silverman's thoughts and feelings during the treatment to her sober perspective.

"I had to have the very sober voice as a guide for the reader, helping the reader understand why these behaviors aren't healthy and what these behaviors mean,'' she said. "It took me a while to discover that sober voice."

Silverman succeeded at that in her first memoir, which won the prestigious Associated Writing Programs award for creative nonfiction.

"To craft a good book is different than just telling your story,'' said Michael Steinberg, an MSU professor emeritus and editor of The Fourth Genre literary journal.

"She's trying to treat a real difficult subject,'' he said. "It's not a confessional book in the sense that that's all it is. There are so many deeper levels and layers of humanity to it."

After leaving treatment, Silverman attended 12-step meetings and avoided turning on the TV or going to movies.

'It's really hard to be sober in a world that uses sex to sell everything,'' she said. "We use sex to sell love, movies, cars, children's clothing, art."

Griffin said it often takes more than one approach to overcome a sexual addiction.

"For most people, it also takes some therapy to deal with underlying issues, support from a 12-step group. It often takes using a psychiatrist, because depression and anxiety are earmarks of this disorder as well."

"Love Sick'' is getting attention from national magazines such as Oprah Winfrey's O and Elle.

Writing in Elle, reviewer Francine Prose said: " 'Love Sick' provides an honest and deeply chilling account of what it's like to suffer from a compulsion to look for love in what are most definitely all the wrong places."

Since "I Remember Terror'' came out, Silverman has done more than 100 speaking engagements to help people understand and cope with incest.

"It has been very empowering for me and hopefully helpful to other people too,'' she said. "What's important is to be able to speak about it in the open as we might talk about anything else, to take some of that shame away."

These days, Silverman is involved in a stable relationship and working successfully to stay in touch with her real feelings.

"I honestly feel blessed, because when I think of where I could have been and the things that have happened to other incest survivors who kill themselves or turn their rage outward . . .

"As bad as that is, I would rather hurt myself than somebody else. The good news is that I've learned not to hurt anybody."

Contact Kathleen Lavey at 377-1251 or e-mail klavey@lsj.com.

Sue William Silverman writes: "So who am I really in the photo? Am I young, shy, as the smile suggests? Or am I ... seductive ... like the pose and jacket suggest? Both. The photograph is of me and of my addict, competing for space in one body."
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Sex Addiction - Real and Ruinous
By Susan Kushner Resnick, Journal Health & Fitness Writer
Providence Journal-Bulletin (Rhode Island) - February 23, 2003

It's easy to be a sex addict in Rhode Island.

People who can't stop having sex, even when they want to, have countless businesses to cater to their needs. In fact, Providence has so many palaces of prurience that the city even lures out-of-staters with sex addictions looking for a fix.

"Rhode Island gets a lot of transient people from Massachusetts and New York coming to sex clubs," says William Hochstrasser-Walsh, a Cranston therapist who treats people with sexual addictions.

A person with a sex addiction is commonly defined as someone who anesthetizes his psychological pain with sex or can't control his or her compulsive sexual activities. Most people with addictions live double lives full of shame.

Robert, a recovering addict from Massachusetts who will not give his real name because of the stigma attached to the disease, regularly drove to Rhode Island to feed his addiction at massage parlors and with prostitutes.

What's not easy in Rhode Island is getting help for sex addiction.

Hundreds of sex-addiction support groups meet weekly in the United States, but only between one and three gather in Rhode Island, depending on who's counting.

An extensive search turned up only one local therapist, Hochstrasser-Walsh, who specializes in treating sex addictions.

John P. Wincze, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, also treats the problem, but bristles at calling it an addiction, preferring instead the more technical term paraphilia. Paraphilia, which he defines as "behavior that is repetitive and essential to sexual arousal and harmful," is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Sexual addiction is not.

When sex equals love Sue William Silverman thought she was simply looking for love when she slept with strangers.

"I never would have thought it was an addiction," says Silverman, the author of Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction.

Silverman says she learned to equate sex with love at age 4 when her father started creeping into her bedroom and molesting her. He didn't stop until she went to college.

"I was given the message that he loved me," she says, "and he was showing his love through sex. The message I got was the only way a man could love me is if I had sex with him."

As a college student, she once walked up to a car that was often parked outside her dorm, got inside and had sex with the driver. She met and bedded an obscene caller. As a young adult, she spent days living the life of a proper married lady and nights picking up men in bars. Before entering a treatment program for sex addicts, she says, she "lived in a fantasy world24/7" as she prepared for her weekly rendezvous with another addict in a motel room.

"The anticipation and fantasy of it is always more powerful than the act," she said in a phone interview. "When it's in your head, you can make it perfect."

And when it's perfect, it will cure what ails you, or so she thought. But every time she "acted out," she felt worse about herself. To mask that remorse, she'd find another man until it became a never-ending cycle.

"Regardless of the drug of choice, addicts act out to numb their pain and feelings," she says. Or, as she writes in her book, the managed pain of promiscuity relieved her larger, unmanaged pain.

Robert, the addict from Massachusetts, turned to Penthouse magazine at age 14 instead of facing the fear, shame and frustration that ruled his life. He had been a teased, overweight child who withdrew from people to avoid ridicule. When he lost the weight, he replaced excessive food with excessive sex.

"I began to perceive pornography and masturbation as a way to escape and get my power back," he says. "I can only imagine [that I turned to sex] because it was forbidden and it involves human touch and warmth and intimacy, which I was really starving for."

Steven, a research assistant for a Boston hospital, was a lonely child with an overly critical father. Like Robert, Steven, a member of a support group, also turned to magazines.

"Men and women in magazines and movies don't talk back," he says. "You can act out as much as you want and no one criticizes you."


E-porn at work

Pornography and promiscuity are certainly not the only ways the disease manifests itself. Robert moved on to sexual massage and prostitutes after magazines and cyber porn lost their power to soothe his pain. Steven became a peeping Tom. Other addicts often cruise in public places. Some addicts turn to rape or pedophilia if they are not treated, some experts say.

"I currently work with some women who are into hard sex, and I've also worked with a number of men who really like the romance and sensuality," says Jeff Seat, a psychologist and certified addiction specialist in Nashville, Tenn., who is on the board of the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity.

The Internet, called the "crack cocaine of sex addiction" by insiders, eats up hours of work time each day for many addicts. Seventy percent of e-porn traffic occurs between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

"People say they're working late, but they're really online 10 hours a day and arranging to meet people to have sex with," Steven says.

According to Seat, 3 percent to 6 percent of Americans have sexual addictions. Many are hooked on something else as well. Seat says that he's seen studies estimating that 80 percent of cocaine addicts are also sex addicts.

"We know that 48 percent of sex addicts who come to inpatient treatment centers are recovering alcoholics and drug addicts," he says.

Compulsive eating is another common cross-addiction.

"One of the ways people control sexual addiction is to morph their body so it's unattractive to other people," says Hochstrasser-Walsh, the Cranston therapist. "They think it will stop the sexual addiction. But it's a vicious cycle. The more they feel bad about themselves, the more they need to act out."

Feeling awful after a sexual act is one of the hallmarks of the disease. "I was always filled with disgust after," says Steven. "I pledged I was never going to do it again."

Of course, he couldn't stop without help, which he maintains is one of the ways to identify a person with an addiction.

"You can't automatically assume that someone doing these things is an addict," he says. "The test is: try to stop. See if you can."

'A highly functioning person'

As with other addictions, sex addicts come from all walks of life. The stereotype of the creepy guy in the dirty raincoat is woefully inaccurate.

Robert, a business consultant with a master's degree, would never have been suspected.

"I've been a pretty morally-upstanding guy in every other area of my life," he says, adding that the women he dated probably would have called him "a nice guy" because he was respectful to them. They never asked what he did with his free time.

"I was a highly functioning person, and I've always shown up for life," he says.

Silverman worked on Capitol Hill for a senator. Seat, also a recovering sex addict, was a minister. In Robert's support group, he's seen artists and construction workers tell their stories.

"There are good, smart, worthy, people in the rooms," he says.

The support groups, which are run by nonprofessionals, let criminals in the door, too.

"I've seen people confess to pedophilia," Steven says.

"We could choose not to let someone attend meetings if they're engaging in flagrant behavior," he says. "But it has to be their own conscience guiding them to go to the authorities. No one can boss anyone around."


Looking for a cause

Even when they understand it, professionals can't agree on what causes the problem or how to treat it. Marty Kafka is a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., a Harvard professor and a member of a Vanderbilt University team that's debating how to diagnose and define unhealthy sexual behavior.

He disagrees with the argument that many sex addicts were sexually abused as children.

However, Patrick Carnes, clinical director of sexual disorder services at the Meadows in Arizona who is one of the pioneers of sex-addiction treatment and the author of several books on the topic, surveyed 1,000 sex addicts and found that 80 percent had experienced sexual trauma as children. Not all were victims of child rape; the trauma can be as seemingly innocuous as a preschooler being shamed for playing doctor or a child having to hear about her parent's sexual exploits.

Kafka calls this link "a bunch of baloney." He says people with sex addictions may use sex to medicate their bad feelings, but most are suffering from mood disorders, such as depression, bipolar illness or attention deficit disorder (or ADD). Only a small percentage of his patients were sexually abused.

"If you treat the depression, you treat the whole thing," he says, claiming that he has successfully treated 800 patients with antidepressants and psychotherapy.

He encourages his patients to join 12-step programs, such as Sexaholics Anonymous, for support, but he doesn't think those groups can work unless people also take medication. Others agree that medication is helpful, especially when people stop acting out and must face a lifetime of buried pain. But they don't think sex addicts can recover without 12-step programs.

"It takes a community to hold a person through this process," says Belinda Berman, a Cambridge psychologist who treats sexual addiction. "This disease has a tremendous amount of secrecy and anonymity and isolation, and a group cuts through that."

"These groups teach people how to live day to day," says Hochstrasser-Walsh, adding that this is something a weekly therapy appointment cannot accomplish. Group members have sponsors and friends they can call whenever the urge to act out strikes.

And there are some experts who believe recovery can only come from finding the root cause of the problem. Dr. Lance Dodes, a psychiatrist at Harvard University's division of addictions, wrote The Heart of Addiction to explain his position.

"All addictions are psychologically the same," he says, "which is particularly important for sex addicts because there's so much shame. It's not about sex, just like compulsive gambling is not about money and alcoholism is not about alcohol. Addicts are always responding to an overwhelming sense of being helpless."

Find what causes the helplessness, he posits, and you can stop the behavior.

Seat, the Nashville psychologist, agrees that resolving past traumas is necessary for recovery from sex addiction, as is learning to be intimate in a healthy way. It can take three to five years to achieve complete recovery. Relapse is common, especially during the first year.


'A shame-based addiction'

Silverman, the author, fell off the wagon within a month of being released from an inpatient treatment program. But she's been sexually sober for 10 years. She defines sobriety as "no sex outside a loving, emotionally committed relationship."

Robert has been sober for a little more than a year, meaning in his case that he has not masturbated or had sex with another person in that time.

Each 12-step group defines sobriety differently, with some standards being particularly puritanical. Robert went to his first group after a visit to a prostitute left him feeling as if he were "coming apart on the inside."

"I could not stop and it's devastating to realize that this disease is moving you around at will," he says. "I can remember walking around my office and just feeling like I was about to cry."

The constant lying about his activities got to him, too. And he suspects he may have gotten arrested or committed suicide if he hadn't sought help.

"Your sense of integrity starts to break down," he says. "Your fear of being caught makes you a wreck. It's no way to live your life."

Steven got help eight years ago after a clergyman handed him the card of a sex-addiction therapist. Often sufferers aren't that lucky.

"Many therapists out there don't recognize sexually compulsive behavior as a problem," he says. "We were told it was understandable behavior. Many people enter recovery because they couldn't deal with a therapist continuing to tell them it was OK."

This is especially dangerous because left untreated, most sex addicts' behavior will escalate. That's why Hochstrasser-Walsh is so frustrated with the dearth of treatment options in Rhode Island. He'd like to see enough 12-step groups to allow patients to attend several meetings a week, more training for therapists on sex addiction and more awareness of the problem.But first, locals need to be able to discuss the problem without smirking.

"Particularly here in the Northeast, and specifically in Rhode Island, people just don't want to talk about sex," he says. "We're a very parochial state and it's a shame-based addiction."

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