Strong suggestion techniques as used in research studies are obviously not used during therapy or police investigations, suggestion in the form of using mental imagery or one’s own imagination, quite often does (Loftus, 2007). The act of imagining a future event increases confidence that that event has actually occurred, thus forming a false memory. This is known as imagination inflation (Garry, 1996). There is sufficient psychological literature to support this notion. For example, Garry’s (1996) study into imagination and memory of childhood events, instructed participants to imagine events happening to them during childhood that were deemed unlikely and then rate them on a probability scale and answer some questions about the imagined events. Participants were misinformed that the original test questions had been misplaced and that they had to complete another copy. Participants who “initially reported that an event did not happen, but then imagined that it had, were more likely to increase their confidence that it had occurred when asked about it later than were subjects who did not imagine the event”(Garry, 1996, p. 5). In real life forensic interrogations, witnesses are sometimes pressed to describe things that they cannot remember or may not have even seen. Lane (2007) demonstrates the role of generating a description in eyewitness suggestibility, through experiments that aimed to ascertain whether the effects of imagination on creation of false memories is due to the act of generation or from the simple exposure to perceptual details. His results showed that generating a description for an event that did not occur increased false memory and also increased accurate memory for the described items actual source. “Why might pressing witnesses to promote descriptions of suggested items promote the development of false memories?” Lane’s (2007) answer to this question is this: “…evidence from a variety of domains has shown that memories of suggested events will be confusable for memories of “real” events to the extent that memories of suggested events contain features (e.g., sensory and perceptual details) that are similar to characteristics of memories of “real” events” (p. 1255). There is also neural evidence that imagining can lead to the creation of false memories. Gonsalves, Reber, Gitelman, Parish, Mesulam, and Paller (2004) investigated the memory processes at a neural level using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). “Functional MRI works by exposing the brain to pulses of a phenomenally strong magnet (strong enough to lift a truck) and measuring the response of chemicals in blood cells going to and from various regions, which become momentarily ‘lined up’ in the direction of the magnet” (Westen, Burton & Kowalski, 2006). Participants produced spoken words for names of common objects and were instructed to create a visual image corresponding to that object. Half of the object names were followed by presentation of a photograph of that object. FMRI scans were being acquired simultaneously. Outside the scanner, subjects heard a randomly ordered sequence of words, 175 of which had been presented visually in the study phase with a photo, 175 which had been presented without a photo, and 175 which had not been presented at all. For each spoken word participants had to indicate whether or not they viewed a photo of the named object during the study phase. Rate of recognition for word-plus-photo items was 74%, 27% for word only items (false memories) and 6% for new items (false alarms). The neuroimaging results show greater activity to words that were later falsely remembered as having been presented with photos than to words that were not later misremembered as having been presented with photos. Gonsalves et al. (2004) concludes from the results that “object representations produced when an exceptionally vivid visual image of an object is generated are similar to those produced when that object is actually seen” (p. 659). Such results give a comprehensible demonstration that neural events at encoding are able to predict the formation of later false memories (Gonsalves et al., 2004).
The ability to be able to create false memories has its relevance outside the laboratory with regard to memories of previously unreported and unrecognised CSA. And the answer for many to this psychological phenomenon lies in the area of the psychodynamic theory of repressed memories. According to theorists of repression “…some people repress their memories of abuse because these experiences have been so emotionally traumatic, and they become capable of recalling the CSA only when it is psychologically safe to do so many years later” (McNally & Geraerts, 2009, p. 126). Memories that have been repressed are said to only become available to the conscious mind under certain circumstances. These circumstances are usually altered states of consciousness in themselves such as sleep and hypnosis. There are some studies that provide data in support of the claim that trauma victims are often unable to remember horrific experiences. In a study conducted by Chu, Frey, Ganzel, and Matthews (1999), the relationship between self reported childhood abuse and dissociative symptoms and amnesia was examined, along with the presence or absence of corroboration of recovered memories of childhood abuse. The results from a structured interview that asked about amnesia for traumatic experiences, the role of suggestion in recovered memories and independent corroboration of recovered memories supported their claims. The majority of participants in this study reporting recovered memories of abuse generally recalled their experiences while at home and not in a therapy environment. External suggestion was mostly denied as a factor involved in memory recovery and the majority of participants were able to find strong corroboration of their recovered memories of childhood abuse. There is however a problem of self-report bias in this type of research: people may not be reporting honestly or accurately. Overall, there are, several difficulties with the concept of repression as an explanation for repression. Firstly there is the paucity of empirical support to demonstrate its existence. Another problem with the concept of repression is that there are an enormous number of people who have experienced severely traumatic experiences and yet their memories were never repressed. For example, children who have witnessed their entire families being murdered, rather than have their memories repressed, have been unable to escape them (Pynoos & Nader, 1989). Similarly, survivors of concentration camps are able to describe in intricate detail the horrific injustices done to them (Loftus, 1993). The process of repression is based on the premise that memories to be quarantined from consciousness are traumatic and thus harmful to the individual. However, it is highly probable that some incidences of childhood abuse may not have been experienced as traumatic at the time (McNally & Geraerts, 2009). This was revealed in a study involving interviews with 27 adults, selected from the community, who had allegedly experienced recovered memories of CSA (Clancy & McNally, 2005/2006). Only 7.4% of participants (2 out of 27) remembered the experience as terrifying or traumatic. The remaining 92% of participants indicated that they remembered the experience as confusing, weird and uncomfortable. Only 2 of the subjects reported understanding the experience as being sexual at the time, this is understandable considering the average age at the time of abuse was only 7.7 years old. Even if we believe that there are some people who were abused as a child and at some point unable to recall it, this finding alone does not validate the theory of repressed memories (Martin & Thomson, 1994).
It is highly possible that false memories for events that never really occurred can be created in a person’s mind. As the research has shown, external suggestion is a plausible and also powerful means of instilling a false memory in someone’s mind. There is also significant research to suggest that imagination and mental imagery can cause a person to create false memories of events that never really occurred. While some suggestive techniques and imagination are heavily used in therapy and psychoanalysis, these findings alone are not enough to discredit the authenticity of reports of recovered memories of CSA. There is a small amount of research that empirically supports the repression theory. However, as it is not possible to conduct experiments in the laboratory on people’s memory of highly traumatic childhood events, there is no way that repression can be discounted in favour of false memories. The research clearly supports the notion that creation of false memories of events that have never occurred is a very real possibility, however it is not something that happens naturally or easily. It is possible that people who experience so called recovered memories of sexual abuse are experiencing an emergence of memories that have long been repressed since childhood, however it is probable that such memories are false memories, instilled by the therapist/hypnotist who has externally suggested that these events occurred while conjuring vivid imaginations.
References
Chu, J.A., Frey, L.M., Ganzel, B.L., & Matthews, J.A. (1999). Memories of Childhood Abuse: Dissociation, Amnesia, and Corroboration. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 156 (5), 749-755.
Clancy, S.A., & McNally, R.J. (2005/2006). Who needs repression? Normal memory processes can explain “forgetting” of childhood sexual abuse. The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 4, 66-73.
Garry, M., Manning, C.G., Loftus, E.F., & Sherman, S.J. (1996). Imagination Inflation: Imagining a Childhood Event Inflates Confidence that it Occurred. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3 (2), 208-214.
Gonsalves, B., Reber, P.J., Gitelman, D.R., Parrish, T.B., Mesulam, M.M, & Paller, K.A. (2004). Neural Evidence That Vivid Imagining Can Lead to False Remembering. Psychological Science, 15 (10), 655-660.
Lane, S.M., & Zaragoza, M.S. (2007). A little elaboration goes a long way: The role of generation in eyewitness suggestibility. Memory & Cognition, 35 (6), 1255-1266.
Loftus, E.F. (1997). Creating False Memories. Scientific American, 277 (3), 170-175
Loftus, E.F., & Coan, D. (1996). The construction of childhood memories. In D. Feters (Ed.) The Child Witness in context: Cognitive, social and legal perspectives. New York: Klumer.
Martin, S.E., & Thomson, D.M. (1994). Videotapes and multiple interviews: The effects on the child witness. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 1, 119-128.
McNally, R.J., & Geraerts, E. (2009). A New Solution to the Recovered Memory Debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4 (2), 126-134.
Pynoos, R.S. & Nader, K. (1989). Children’s Memory and proximity to violence. Journal of the American Academic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 236-241.
Strange, D., Hayne, H., & Garry, M. (2007). A photo, a suggestion, a false memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22 (5), 587-603.
Westen, D., Burton, L., & Kowalski, R. (2006). Psychology (Australia and New Zealand Edition). New York: John Wiley & Sons.