Lesson 11: The Other Side of the Story Attention Learning Outcomes Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:
Teaching
This is an advocacy web site...it is attacking some basic tenants of psychotherapy such as the desire for many therapists to "dig stuff up"...this has long been a method in counseling. The presumption that if you "get it out" you will feel better.
Also...it is not that therapists create memories on purpose...you are misreading this. It is that the highly motivated CLIENT (who is in real pain, often not knowing what it is they are in pain about) comes to the highly motivated THERAPIST who has been taught that sometimes memories are repressed. When the pained client begins to search for reasons for their pain the therapist may reinforce certain kinds ideas that the client talks about. If, for example, a client comes in and can't seem to form intimate relations with others, the therapist will ask about their past. If the client talks about their first childhood love that might go by without exploration...if the client then shares a "dream" they had about a dark figure hovering over them during summer camp...many therapists would jump right on that (due to research suggesting that sexual assault impacts intimate relationships). The FACT may be that the dream the client talks about really was a dream, but motivated to find a solution to their pain they may decide that the memory was true and begin to construct an event where they were sexually molested at camp. The language of "case" speaks to the notion that sexual assault does not have a "statute of limitations"...meaning cases like this have been presented and prosecuted in court years if not decades after the event (consider the age of many of the sexual abuse cases among catholic priests....some of these cases were 20-25 years old). The website is advocating that false memories CAN and DO sometimes get created inadvertently through this process. And the cost to others can be severe. Assessment Lesson 11 Discussion This week we are going to switch gears a bit and take a critical look at the world of False Memories and the role that some therapists have taken in "creating" memories in their patients. This is somewhat controversial because some advocate that hidden and unperceived memories are real while others feel that significant events actually leave very obvious memory traces and we would tend to remember those the MOST clear. To be good scientists we need to give both sides of the story their fair shake. What do you folks think about False Memories and the roles that therapists can play in creating them? Use the website mentioned above as a resource but feel free to use other sources as well.
|