‘Recovered Memories’

In response to “A Legitimate Therapy Suffers Rip-Offs,” Commentary, Dec. 3:

In his excellent article on the harmfulness of suggesting to psychotherapy patients that they were sexually molested as children, Dr. Richard Metzner correctly mentions that hypnosis can inadvertently create “false” memories. The scientific literature shows that hypnosis is not a truth serum. It produces more material--some factually true, some seemingly realistic but factually untrue. Without corroboration (e.g., from a sibling or a parent), there is no way to distinguish the true from the unconsciously and unintentionally confabulated. Ethical psychologists and psychiatrists will tell this to their patients.

The above information can be upsetting to those patients who were truly abused as children. Many of them had tried as children to tell someone of the sexual abuse, but were greeted with minimization or outright denial. Consequently, there is the unfortunate possibility that they will hear the above information about hypnosis as another denial of their trauma. Competent psychotherapists will convey to their patients that this is not their intention.

Hypnotic psychotherapy is fraught with potential pitfalls. On the one hand, someone who truly was abused might not get the confirmation that he or she so desperately needs. On the other hand, there could be tragic consequences for a family if a patient who was not abused mistakenly comes to believe that he or she was.

Research shows that adults who have been sexually molested as children show significantly more depression, personality disorders, substance abuse, phobias, and suicidal behaviors. None of these symptoms or diagnoses, however, are exclusive to having been abused. In addition, it is simplistic to make a one-to-one correlation. There are several important considerations--e.g., developmental stage of the child, relationship to the perpetrator, response of the family--which influence the long-term psychological consequences. Most importantly, simple discovery of childhood sexual abuse is not a cure. How the psychologist assists the patient in integrating this painful material is the critical healing factor. All of this emphasizes the need for patients to be sure that they are seeing a licensed mental health professional who has had a substantial supervised training course in hypnotherapy.

DONALD STOLAR , Ph.D., Los Angeles