Suggestibility and treatment as key variables in the recovered memory debate

Abstract

Alleged inducement of sexual trauma memory was studied from the perspective of suggestibility as embodied in false memory theory. The controversial assumption that therapeutic suggestion operates to cause events to be falsely remembered was tested using a sample drawn from practices that contained patients who did, as well as those who did not, recover memories while in treatment. Following two years of treatment, the most suggestible of the patients did not recover memories. Paradoxically, those with the weakest levels of suggestibility recovered memories from the same practices. Since it is not logically conceivable that therapeutic suggestion operates only in the nonsuggestible, the assumptions of false memory theory were interpreted as not relevant for understanding the emergence of memories of childhood sexual trauma. Claims involving simple cause and effect relationships between treatment and memory recovery are not viable.