Tuesday, September 25, 2018

The False "Recovered Memory" of Dr Christine Blasey Ford

Christine Blasey Ford is tentatively set to testify before the Senate Judicial Committee this coming Thursday, regarding her accusations against Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  However, many are now predicting that she will not testify.  I agree.

Ford's dubious and ambiguous accusations are the result of "recovered memory" at the hands of a psychologist.  Recovered memory was used a couple of decades back to falsely convict fathers and child care personnel of sexual assaults and rapes of their accusers.  It has since been learned that "recovered memory" is largely a farce.  The psychology patient's "recovered memories" are often the product of suggestion and imagination, not actual events.  Here is what the British Psychological Society says about it:
In 1995 the recovered memory debate was near its most vociferous height. Hundreds of people were recovering memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), sometimes in therapies where it was believed that repressed or dissociated memories had to be recovered in order for the person to ‘heal’. Many of the people who recovered these memories confronted the person whom they remembered abusing them, and some cases ended up in the criminal courts with successful prosecutions. However, there were those who questioned whether all such memories should be accepted as accurate reflections of real events (e.g. Loftus, 1993). It was argued that some, perhaps even most, of such recovered memories might in fact be false memories produced, at least in part, by the therapists themselves. In response to such concerns, bodies such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association issued guidance to their members regarding the potential dangers of unintentionally implanting false memories in patients.
 So we have another great reason to disbelieve Ford: Her "memory" is highly dubious at best.

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