News Media Home | Hopkins Medicine Home
November 22, 1994
Media Contact:Gary Stephenson
Phone: (410) 955-5384
E-mail:
Gstephen@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu
The scenario has become familiar to viewers of TV talk shows or readers of
popular magazines. During psychotherapy, an individual is stunned to find that
dark, long-buried memories push their way to the surface, leading to the
revelation of painful scenes of childhood sexual abuse, torture at the hands of
satanic cults, or even abduction by alien beings. Suddenly, years of vague
psychosomatic ailments fall into a dreadful focus. Lawsuits are filed, families
are split, friends and relatives are shocked.
But how much basis in fact or scientific theory do these tales of "recovered
memories," many times associated with the diagnosis of multiple personality
disorder, really have?
Little or none, say the organizers of an upcoming conference co-sponsored by
The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and the FMS (False Memory Syndrome)
Foundation. Rather, they say, such "recovered memories" most often are beliefs
produced in suggestible patients by the therapists who claim to discover and
treat them. Equally important are the questions of how to put the charges and
counter-charges on a course that will help people without destroying
families.
These issues will be described December 9-11, 1994, in a meeting at the
Stouffer Harborplace Hotel entitled "Memory and Reality: Reconciliation."
Nearly 600 persons have already registered for the conference, which has been
advertised through national mailings to psychiatrists, psychologists and social
workers, and which carries continuing medical education credits recognized by
the American Medical Association as well as prescribed hours required by the
American Academy of Family Physicians. About half of the registrants are health
professionals; the remainder are persons who have been affected in some way by
the syndrome.
False memory syndrome, says the conference program, "is a condition in which a
person's identity and relationships are centered around the memory of a
traumatic experience which is objectively false but [which] the person strongly
believes to be true. It has a devastating effect on the victim and typically
produces a continuing dependency on the therapeutic program that created the
syndrome. FMS proceeds to destroy the psychological well-being of the primary
victim, the integrity of the family and the creation of secondary victims
falsely accused of vile acts of incest and abuse."
Speakers at the conference include lawyers, mental health professionals and
faculty
members from institutions throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Harvard,
Wayne State University, Loyola University of Chicago, the University of Western
Ontario, Simon Fraser University, and the University of California, San
Diego.
The program's directors, Paul R. McHugh, M.D., Henry Phipps professor and
director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns
Hopkins, and Pamela P. Freyd, Ph.D., executive director of the FMS Foundation
in Philadelphia, will hold a media briefing at noon on Friday, December 9.
Members of the media who are interested in attending the briefing or other
parts of the conference should call me in advance at (410) 955-6680.
Paid registration for health professionals or other interested persons is also
still open. For information, call the Johns Hopkins Office of Continuing
Medical Education at (410) 955-2959.