NOTES

Chapter 2: A Strange Time

1. This metaphorical explanation obviously oversimplifies the complex neurological and biochemical processes involved in memory storage and retrieval. Neuroscientists are currently mapping out the brain and identifying the specific sites that are activated when we engage in different types of remembering. While this research will eventually give us a more detailed picture of the brain’s memory circuitry, it is already obvious that whole memories—for example, the memory of your wedding day or your tenth birthday party—are not stored in one particular place but distributed throughout the brain. For more information on the physiology of memory, see pages 73–75.

Chapter 3: Entranced

1. In fact, Lynn’s parents did not know about the abuse until many years after the fact. “My parents didn’t know what happened at the actual time—they found out later,” Lynn would subsequently recall.

Chapter 6: The Truth That Never Happened

1. According to Harry MacLean, author of Once Upon a Time, this is only one of five different versions Eileen offered to explain how the memory came back to her.

2. The detectives’ recollections differed as to whether Franklin said the word “daughter” or “daughters.” His daughter Janice had contacted the police five years earlier to discuss her suspicions that her father might have been involved in Susan Nason’s murder.

Chapter 7: Lost in a Shopping Mall

1. The hippocampus is probably essential only for “episodic” memory—memory for the events and experiences of our lives. “Procedural learning,” which includes skills such as riding a bike or tying a shoe, apparently takes place with the involvement of other structures.

2. Roseanne’s parents both deny ever having abused her.

3. The label “multiple personality disorder” is in the process of being changed to “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). Dr. David Spiegel, who chairs one of the American Psychiatric Association committees charged with revising psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III-R (revised) explains that the new label is used because patients suffering from what is now called MPD “really have less than one personality rather than more than one personality.” The committee hopes that the stigma and controversy associated with MPD will be reduced by the new label.

4. Such nonverbal communication by hand gestures is called idiomotor signalling. One finger on the right hand is used to signal “yes,” another finger on the right hand is used to signal “no,” and a finger on the left hand indicates “stop” (i.e., stop the questioning procedure). When Ann was hypnotized and in a trance state, her therapist used these gestures to communicate with her.

5. My conversation with Dr. Ganaway was recreated with his help.

Chapter 8: A Family Destroyed

1. This chapter is based on a true story, but to protect the family’s privacy, we have modified certain facts and used pseudonyms. (The only people identified by their real names are Doug Nagle’s attorney Steve Moen and expert witnesses John Yuille and Elizabeth Loftus.) The story is recreated from numerous legal documents including depositions, pre-trial interviews, therapists’ transcripts, and trial testimony. Interviews with Steve Moen confirmed the basic facts.

2. A year later this therapist admitted to Doug Nagle’s attorney that she pressured Doug to remember in an effort to “help” him. She believed that if Doug confessed, he would escape imprisonment and eventually be permitted to return home and be reunited with his family.

3. This is a common problem. Therapists’ notes are very often too brief to give a full picture of what happens during the sessions.

Chapter 9: Digging for Memories

1. Because the controversy over repression has become so heated and contentious, clinicians and child-protection advocates often use synonyms such as “lost,” “buried,” or “dissociated” to describe repressed memories. But, as psychologist David Holmes writes, “repression by any other name is still repression and the absence of evidence applies to all of the synonyms.”

2. Lindsay, S. and Read, D. (in press). Psychotherapy and memories of child hood sexual abuse, Applied Cognitive Psychology.

3. The report of the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association is entitled “Scientific status of refreshing recollection by the use of hypnosis.” It was published in full in the Journal of the American Medical Association, April 4, 1985, Vol 253, pages 1918–1923.

4. Indeed, survivors claiming repressed memories have been awarded settlements of $1 million and more.

Chapter 11: Sticks and Stones

1. An obvious question that arises with stories featuring ritual abuse, torture and murder is, Where are the bodies? In most cases the allegations arise in therapy and are never discussed outside the therapy setting; as a result, no attempt is made to investigate the claims. If the case is reported to the police or if court hearings result, the FBI or another law enforcement agency may become involved. But despite numerous investigations throughout the country, law enforcement officers haven’t found any evidence to support the idea of a conspiracy of devil-worshipping, baby-sacrificing cults. Kenneth Lanning, the FBI’s expert on ritual abuse, concludes that due to lack of evidence, it is now “up to mental health professionals, not law enforcement, to explain why victims are alleging things that don’t seem to be true.” See Notes section for further comment.

2. The conversations with Ellen Bass have been reconstructed from my notes and recollections.

3. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a support group for families involved in accusations of abuse based on “repressed” memories. The purpose and function of the foundation, according to its mission statement, is “to seek the reasons for the spread of False Memory Syndrome, to work for the prevention of new cases of False Memory Syndrome, and to aid the victims, both primary and secondary, of False Memory Syndrome.”

4. Traumatic amnesia is to be distinguished from total “blackouts” of memory due to disease, alcoholism, or massive brain injuries that actually prevent memories from being formed in the brain. With these memory blackouts, there’s nothing to retrieve, because there’s nothing there.