Remembrance of traumas past

More than 20 years have passed since I wrote a letter to this newspaper and appeared at the Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service to warn the public of harm done in the name of care — namely, the “care” provided by psychiatrists, psychologists and other counsellors who help people recover repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. It seems things have become only worse.

Warwick Middleton, Martin Dorahy and Michael Salter disingenuously argued on this page that the controversy over repressed memory was settled and long-forgotten memories of sexual abuse recovered during psychotherapy were as reliable as those always remembered (“Reporting revives bad memories of contentious amnesia theories”, October 14-15). Paradoxically, they also admit “the evidence base is incomplete”. The authors appear to have suffered selective amnesia, so perhaps a few bad memories need to be revived.

Middleton and Dorahy are senior figures in the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, formerly the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, an organisation linked to dangerous and scientifically unsupported ideas about memory. The ISSTD and its Australian offshoots helped create the now-discredited “satanic ritual abuse” panic of the 1980s and 90s, when scores of therapy patients recovered childhood memories of being abused and tortured by murderous occult pedophile rings. Such “memories” were clearly disproved by the absence of scars and bodies, and the failure of police investigations.

Many of these people had been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder — now called dissociative identity disorder — an illness the ISSTD insists, without scientific support, is caused by repeated childhood trauma. Individuals with this horrific diagnosis are claimed to be possessed by tens or even hundreds of personalities, each with its own character and “memory” of trauma. Therapy can take a long time and much money.

The experience of Cathy Kezelman, the Australian child abuse campaigner whose government-funded therapy guidelines have been endorsed by Middleton and quoted approvingly by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, is a textbook case: Kezelman developed multiple personalities during nine years of psychotherapy, and recovered traumatic repressed memories of being raped and tortured by a cult led by her grandmother.

Middleton, Dorahy and Salter argue that questioning the accuracy of such accounts is tantamount to “blaming the victim”. Yet studies of those who have endured prolonged extreme trauma consistently show their distress stems from being unable to forget, not being unable to remember.

This is not to deny horrific and hidden crimes against children are committed; nor is it to deny that trauma can be forgotten and later remembered. But the prosecution of such crimes should be based on sound investigative practices and counselling grounded in science.

The term recovered memory therapy, which the authors claim is not used by health professionals, is a general descriptor for a wide variety of counselling methods and processes. Many of these techniques were detailed at the ISSTD conference held in Sydney in November 2015, during which Kezelman introduced Peter McClellan, chairman of the royal commission, as a keynote speaker. Had the judge arrived a day earlier he might have heard Richard Kluft, a past president of the ISSTD, advise on the use of hypnosis. Kluft recommends hypnosis as a technique by which the dissociative identity disorder patient’s multiple personalities can be “asked to emerge”, a feat that requires the therapist to recognise the patient’s covert signals such as discordant facial expressions or the appearance of being “spacey, perplexed, or surprised by what is coming out of his or her mouth”.

Dissociative identity disorder is thus akin to a possession state, the modern secular equivalent of the Dark Ages notion of demonic possession.

American psychiatrist Allen Frances, who chaired the expert panel that introduced dissociative identity disorder into the official psychiatric diagnostic manual in 1994, has said he regrets that decision and regards the illness as “complete bunk”. Dorahy and Middleton, on the other hand, argue in a paper that 1 per cent of the population suffers from it, a figure that would run to a quarter of a million Australians.

Presumably some of these cases might result in mandatory reporting to police, a turn of events that should focus the legal mind towards various court rulings about the dangers of hypnosis and other memory-recovery techniques as a threat to the integrity of evidence.

This assumes, of course, that the accused can prove such techniques were used, a difficult hurdle given that the professional confidentiality of counselling notes is protected by the courts.

Have people been jailed in Australia for decades in cases where such memories are entered in sworn evidence? Yes, they have. Have they been sued and lost their families and homes? Yes, they have.

A clear scientific understanding of these assumptions of memory and methods would assist the protection of our children and future generations, and would protect the integrity of those adults who bravely speak the truth of their undeniable suffering. They deserve better.

Andrew Gibbs is a clinical neuropsychologist based in Melbourne.