Debunking the Controversy Around Repressed Memories of Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Annotated Bibliography There are many controversial and sensitive topics within psychology and the law. One of those topics is child sexual abuse. The difficult part of a child making a statement of witnessing or being a victim of sexual abuse is determining if there were outside influences on the child in making their statement. Now what if the allegations of child sexual abuse didn’t come from a child but rather an adult claiming they remember they were sexually abused as a child? These claims come from the concept of recovered or repressed memories of abuse. The authenticity of recovered or repressed memories is very questionable and has led to a lot of controversy in the field of psychology and the law. Due to the problems with memory, creation of false memories, and little evidence for these concepts, these memories are not reliable and should not be used as a credible source of evidence in court. Davis, D. and Loftus, E. (2014). Repressed Memories. In The Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology (eds R.L. Cautin and S.O. Lilienfeld).  https://doi.org/10.1002/[phone]392.wbecp270 In the paper, Repressed Memories (Davis, D. and Loftus, E., 2014) from the, The Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology 1–3, goes into the history and concept of repressed memories and cases that have involved the concept. The paper is an overview and a history of how repressed memories have been looked at over history, what psychology has found about the phenomenon, and the experiments that have explored this part of the human brain. It’s meant to be informative and not biased in one way or another but only show how findings and the controversy behind the subject. Overall, the paper shows that while it can be a possibility, it is extremely rare and oftentimes false or imagined. Goodman, G. S., Goldfarb, D., Quas, J. A., & Lyon, A. (2017). Psychological counseling and accuracy of memory for child sexual abuse. American Psychologist, 72(9), 920-931. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000282 In the journal article, psychological counseling and accuracy of memory for child sexual abuse (Goodman, Goldfarb, Quas, & Lyon, 2017), it goes over whether psychological counseling during a child sexual abuse (CSA) prosecution predicts accuracy or inaccuracy of memory for CSA. The study done used participants who were CSA victims and questioned them over a decade after their counseling attendance during prosecution on several topics relating to their CSA. This article provides evidence that psychological counseling during or shortly after prosecutions may improve memory when asked to recall it later. This article shows that recovered memories nor repressed memories were an issue when victims of CSA were already assessed during and shortly after the CSA prosecution. Otgaar, H., Howe, M. L., Patihis, L., Merckelbach, H., Lynn, S. J., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Loftus, E. F. (2019). The return...