False memories

DEFINITION: Thoughts about episodes seemingly from the past that the perceiver interprets as valid memories of personal experiences but that actually originate from the perceiver’s own imagination or from the suggestions of others.

SIGNIFICANCE: When the concept of false memories gained attention in the 1990s, it provided an alternative explanation for the phenomenon of “recovered memories,” which usually involve themes of childhood sexual abuse. Whether memories of childhood abuse that emerge years later, and that are accepted by the perceivers as valid and factual, are indeed true has been the key issue in much civil and criminal litigation. Debates concerning the validity of the recovery of previously repressed memories continue.

The concept of false memories arose in the context of criticism of the alternative concept of repressed and recovered memories. Sigmund Freud originated the concept of repression around 1900, asserting that people react to disturbing thoughts, feelings, impulses, and experiences by removing them from conscious awareness, or repressing them. Such repressed materials continue to fester, however, and manifest themselves in anxiety and neurotic symptoms until the underlying conflicts are uncovered in psychotherapy.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, it became evident that instances of sexual abuse of children by parents and other caretakers are more common than earlier generations had believed. Whereas earlier psychoanalysts would have dismissed as fantasy patients’ expressed thoughts involving themes of sexual interactions between children and parents, some psychotherapists in the late twentieth century, especially those most sensitive to women’s issues, concluded that the expression of such thoughts reflected factual memories of abuse in childhood and that such abuse is a primary cause of emotional distress. Many psychotherapists worked with patients to “recover” memories of abuse that they believed the patients had repressed, as they believed this was important to relieve the patients’ distress. Those who accepted the memories of abuse recovered in therapy as valid memories often instigated civil lawsuits to seek damages against the parents or other caretakers they believed had perpetrated the abuse. In some cases, criminal indictments were sought. Because the recovery of such memories could occur many years after the alleged abuse, some states changed their laws to extend the statutes of limitations—the time limits placed on the instigation of legal action—for charges of child sexual abuse.

Contrasting Views

From the beginning, Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus and other cognitive psychologists were skeptical of the validity of “recovered” memories. Much experimental work had already demonstrated that memory is vulnerable to distortion by suggestion and that a person’s confidence in a memory and the vividness of a particular memory do not always correlate with its accuracy. Experimental work had documented how profoundly interviewers can alter the accounts of eyewitnesses through suggestions introduced unintentionally during questioning. The influence of new erroneous information slipped into interrogations by suggestive questioning had become widely known as the “misinformation effect.”

Loftus and her colleagues attacked the concept of repressed and recovered memories with several types of arguments. First, they sought to produce that would establish that such “memories” could be created through suggestion. Second, they sought to establish that such suggestions are often made in psychotherapy settings. Third, they showed that some so-called recovered memories contain themes that are wildly improbable. Finally, they attacked the basis of these memories in the concept of repression, which Loftus called a “myth.”

Evidence for False Memories

Loftus and her colleagues first sought to gather evidence that fictitious events can be implanted as “memories” through suggestion. Beginning in 1994, these researchers successfully instilled such false memories in laboratory subjects. In a series of experiments, false memories were implanted by the subjects’ cooperating family members. Each designated family member was given a written description of a plausible event that supposedly happened to the subject in childhood; the family member verified that the event had never occurred. The fictitious events included being lost in a shopping mall, being the victim of a vicious animal attack, almost drowning at the beach, and spilling punch on the parents of the bride at a wedding reception. In a session in which the subject and the family member “reminisced about childhood experiences,” the fictional story and some true personal stories were discussed.

In these experiments, a significant minority of subjects, usually about a third, came to accept the fictitious stories as memories of “real” episodes from their own experience. In the most successful cases, the subjects embellished the false memories with descriptive details. In some cases, the “memories” were accompanied by appropriate emotional reactions; for example, subjects who accepted as memories contrived reports of bad childhood digestive upset caused by hard-boiled eggs later refused hard-boiled eggs when they were offered at a luncheon.

Loftus and her colleagues noted that the environment of psychotherapy is one in which suggestion can be influential. Techniques such as dream analysis, hypnosis, and free association encourage patients to mingle imaginative fantasies with reality. Therapy patients who are in distress tend to grasp at almost any explanatory certainty. Loftus and her colleagues found evidence that the suggestions made by some therapists are quite heavy-handed; disillusioned patients reported such strong suggestions from their therapists as “problems like yours generally originate from repressed sexual abuse in childhood.” Some therapists advised patients to read The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (1988), by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis; this book argues that the entire range of emotional problems experienced by women can be caused by repressed memories of childhood sexual victimization.

Loftus and her colleagues also pointed out that some so-called recovered memories seem so wildly improbable that they appear to be obvious products of imagination. The researchers found that some “victims” reported such memories as being kidnapped and impregnated by aliens, taking part in satanic rituals, and being stuck in the birth canal during the process of being born.

Repression, Forgetting, and Memory

The final contention made by Loftus and her colleagues is that the concept of repression behind the theory of “repressed trauma” is flawed. The thrust of modern research findings is that although certain implications of the concept of repression are valid, others are seriously misleading.

The implication that forgetting is selective—for example, memories of happy and flattering experiences are retained in memory more easily, and unhappy and humiliating experiences are more easily dismissed from memory—is supported by much current research. Much forgetting seems to involve a sort of crowding of humiliating and painful experiences out of the focus of consciousness as people become involved in more reinforcing activities and roles. Most human beings like to interpret their pasts favorably; they dislike reminding themselves of painful experiences in the past, so they reinterpret those experiences to present themselves and their loved ones in more flattering ways. That such unpleasantness as sexual abuse can be dismissed from mind for periods of time is not, therefore, surprising.

For this reason, some recovered memories are likely to be valid memories of real episodes of abuse. In some documented cases, the original abuse has been confirmed by other evidence and the recovery of the memories occurred outside therapy. In many such cases, the confirmed abuse occurred for only a brief period of time or was ambiguous enough to permit a benign interpretation. In surveys of such cases, many subjects have reported that they “forgot” about the instances of abuse for a period of time; others reinterpreted the episodes benignly with such explanations as “playing tickling games.” The sort of mechanisms that Freudians term “denial” and “rationalization” rather than “repression” seem to be at work in these cases in adjusting the harshness of the reality.

The most misleading implication of the concept of repression lies in its connection to the concept of “recovery.” Although fragments of a memory may be accurate, no memory can ever return just as it was stored many years ago. Modern research suggests that memories are forever being reconstructed and modified by new information, insights, and values. Memory is more like a flowing stream, in which the composition of the water is constantly changing, than like a library, where fixed material is filed and cataloged. The notion that a childhood memory could return from repression unadulterated and with pristine clarity is based on the old card-catalog model. It is inconsistent with the view of memory implicit in modern cognitive psychology.

While the idea of false memories did not receive as much attention in the twenty-first century as in the 1990s, researchers continued to study the phenomenon. A 2019 study indicated that children were less likely to create false memories and were less vulnerable to false memories in general. In 2024, a study published by Cambridge University Press showed that exposure to fake news could influence people to form false memories.

Legal Issues

People who recover memories of abuse and betrayal by caretakers they once respected and trusted typically feel angry and betrayed, and many seek redress through legal action. Litigation based on recovered memories, whether accurate or false, presents special challenges for the legal system, first, because any actual damages were inflicted years and perhaps decades before they were exposed, and second, because the legal system increasingly acknowledges that some recovered memories reflect real abuse and others are the misleading products of suggestion. Whether a memory is “recovered” or “false” can be decided with certainty only in cases confirmed by other evidence. The delay in initiating litigation in such cases was the easiest problem to solve: approximately three-fourths of US states have adjusted their statutes of limitation on child sexual abuse charges to begin counting from the date of the memory recovery rather than from the date of the offense.

After 1990, when George Franklin was sentenced to prison on the basis of the hypnotically refreshed memory of his daughter, courts have become increasingly aware of the fallibility of recovered memories. Criminal cases are rarely initiated based on uncorroborated recovered memories because “reasonable doubt” can easily be established. Even in civil cases, which have looser standards of proof, judges may be required to warn juries about the unreliability of such uncorroborated testimony. A number of therapy patients who as a result of “recovered memories” became estranged from their families have gone on to win malpractice suits against their therapists for using blatantly suggestive procedures that are considered to reflect the therapists’ “failure to exercise the required standard of care.”

In the early twenty-first century, the law in the United States generally recognizes the reality of both recovered and false memories. A few false memories are probably still treated as true, and some valid recovered memories of abuse are probably dismissed. In an increasing number of cases, the courts are admitting expert by cognitive scientists to inform juries and judges about the science of memory.

Bibliography

Bass, Ellen, and Laura Davis. The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. 3rd ed., HarperPerennial, 1994.

Conway, Martin, editor. Recovered Memories and False Memories. Oxford UP, 1997.

Davies, Graham M., and Tim Dalgleish, editors. Recovered Memories: Seeking the Middle Ground. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

Kashyap, Neha. "What Is a False Memory?" VeryWell Health, 9 Dec. 2024, www.verywellhealth.com/false-memories-5225965. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

Leavitt, Frank. “Iatrogenic Recovered Memories: Examining the Empirical Evidence.” American Journal of Forensic Psychology, vol. 19, 2001, pp. 21–32.

Loftus, Elizabeth F. “Make-Believe Memories.” American Psychologist, vol. 58, 2003, pp. 864–73.

Loftus, Elizabeth F., and Katherine Ketcham. The Myth of Repressed Memory. St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Schincariol, Alexa, et al. "Fake Memories: A Meta-Analysis on the Effect of Fake News on the Creation of False Memories and False Beliefs." Cambridge University Press, 14 Aug. 2024, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/memory-mind-and-media/article/fake-memories-a-metaanalysis-on-the-effect-of-fake-news-on-the-creation-of-false-memories-and-false-beliefs/B6A66A305AFD6724E1C1C56A68BB5CF2. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

Wells, Gary L., and Elizabeth F. Loftus. “Eyewitness Memory for People and Events.” Forensic Psychology, edited by Alan M. Goldstein. John Wiley & Sons, 2003.