ON REPRESSED MEMORY

Katy Butler’s review of my book, “Making Monsters: Psychotherapy, False Memories and Sexual Hysteria” (“Did Daddy Really Do It?,” Feb. 5), so grossly distorts the book’s message, the research on which it is based, and the facts it contains, that simple incompetence does not explain this bizarre review.

No one reading Butler’s review would know it, but in “Making Monsters” Ethan Watters and I write entirely about the victimization of psychotherapy patients by incompetent practitioners. We are forthright that our research has led us to feel outrage at the pointless and avoidable suffering this quackery is causing. Initially, it is the patients who suffer as they are misled by their therapists and turned into monsters full of hatred. Parents suffer because their adult children come to treat them as monstrous sexual predators. In the end, the patients suffer again when they realize they were deceived and betrayed by their therapists.

In “Making Monsters” we document that the process of recovered memory therapy is vicious, painful and sometimes life-ending. It strips away from patients confidence in their memories and therefore in their knowledge of their own lives. It can position patients so that imagining horrible experiences and tortures becomes the central activity of their lives. Therapists’ assurances convince them that these frightening visions are their true life histories. Therapists trick them into simulating the emotional reality of rape and brutalization by urging abreaction of emotions appropriate for their imagined tortures. A lengthy course of this psychological torture can precipitate life-threatening mental illness where none existed before. In “Making Monsters” we present the science that makes our conclusion inescapable and illustrate the damage done by reckless “recovered memory” therapists.

Butler crafts her hatchet job with such precision that those who have not already read “Making Monsters” could not detect that she is inventing criticisms and ignoring the actual book. Butler assaults my professional integrity by taking statements out of context. One example is her use of a remark made by a judge in a case written about in the book. It is out of the context of the case, the facts at issue and the judge’s fuller statement. The case involved a woman whose therapy led her to believe that she and her four siblings had been brutalized by her mother and father for 17 years. To this day her siblings cannot confirm the family’s collective 17-year-long history.

As we report, the judge who presided at the bench trial had a problem that journalists of Butler’s stripe have helped create by promoting the falsehood that criticism of recovered memory therapists is criticism of all reports of sexual abuse. The judge sat in a small city in which the case had become a cause celebre for the local “survivor” community. His problem was having to face reelection. Although the judge admitted publicly that he was not really sure which way the case should be decided, he ruled for the plaintiff. The judge cited two trivial statements made by two of the plaintiff’s siblings, but decided to ignore the fact that all four siblings were unable to corroborate any of the day-in, day-out horrors visualized by their sister.

RICHARD OFSHE, DEPT. OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIV. OF CALIF. BERKELEY

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Katy Butler has misled the readers of Los Angeles Times Book Review and has misrepresented our book, “Making Monsters,” in both its specifics and generalities. Butler’s review is disturbing not only because of its errors and omissions but because, in many instances, there is no doubt that these were not mistakes but a conscious distortion of our work.

She accused us of “inaccurate reporting” in our portrayal of the case of “Jane.” Butler claims that we fiddled with the timeline of when Jane reviewed “The Courage to Heal”--the insidious book that has misled so many women. By this, she implies that we misrepresented the ideas in “The Courage to Heal” began to affect Jane’s thinking about her life. We did nothing of the sort. Jane was an educational coordinator at a rape crisis center and used photocopies of “The Courage to Heal” in training sessions when she trained other volunteers. Based on Jane’s own notes, it was during these pre-therapy presentations that she began to wonder: “Was I a victim of abuse?”

We do make one mistake, which Butler points out and then goes on to misinterpret. We unintentionally added the words robes to a sentence describing the evolution of Jane’s most recent beliefs. While this was a mistake and will be corrected in further editions of the book, it in no way changes our conclusion that Jane’s latest visualizations had a familiar Satanic theme running through them. I informed Butler that this mental picture of standing around a fire with people in masks (but no robes) was part of a string of visualizations with macabre themes that Janes experienced late in therapy. Jane reports, for instance, seeing herself being put into a coffin as well as being terrorized with snakes. These details, among others which Butler leaves out, added up to our conclusion that Jane was on the road to a new series of Satanic fantasies.

We are, of course, not at all surprised that Jane believes that we misrepresented her story and has strained to find a basis on which to form a complaint. The fact that people in therapy can build artificial beliefs and invest their entire self-worth in defending them goes to the very heart of the argument made in “Making Monsters.” Our opinion about what happened to Jane is based on the totality of evidence--hundreds of pages of depositions, diary entries, therapy notes and other court documents.

As we stated in the book, the evidence is now overwhelming that something has gone horribly wrong in therapy settings that employ recovered memory theories and techniques. I am sorry, but I just do not believe that there is any excuse for a continued blindness to the suffering of women like Jane and their families or to the malpractice of these therapists. By defending such bad therapy Butler is allowing the further victimization of those she claims to defend.

ETHAN WATTERS, SAN FRANCISCO

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Butler suggested in her review that the anonymity of the victims of recovered memory therapy was a trick engaged in by Ofshe and Watters. I am “Ann Stone” and my family’s mental health horror story is profiled by Ofshe in the chapter, “Therapy of a High Priestess.” He interviewed my husband and me for several days and reviewed hospital and court records.

Our family’s ordeal included my 27 month psychiatric hospitalization by a recovered memory therapist who used hypnosis and led me to believe I was the High Priestess of a satanic cult. My 4-year-old son was hospitalized on a Child Psychiatric Unit for 32 months and my 5-year-old son for 39 months. They, too, began to believe that they had been involved in the murder of human beings and the torture and cannibalizing of babies. It was 1,200 days from the time I entered the hospital until the court ordered my two children released from their “voluntary” hospitalization--1,200 days of locked incarceration for my family, 1,200 days on a long road to freedom.

Ofshe was diligent in documenting incidents in this chapter. After reading “Making Monsters,” I wrote Ofshe the following letter:

Thank you so much for the tender and thoughtful way that you presented our family’s horror story. My husband and I read most of the chapter to our boys, skipping the worst parts, of course.

I am proud of the way that you have written my history for my sons. I didn’t know how I was going to do it myself, but I knew I needed to help put all of this into perspective for them, because it is their history as well.

Thank you for making my deepest mother’s wish come true!

NAME WITHHELD

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I can hardly express enough gratitude to Katy Butler for her poignant and detailed review of “The Myth of Repressed Memory” and “Making Monsters.”

Her research reveals what the authors knew but did not wish to disclose in their books. The example she cites of a study from a substance abuse center where more than half the women report sexual abuse, with almost a fifth of them having no memory of it for a period of time is of paramount importance. To ignore information of this nature is grossly irresponsible.

The slant these authors take is indicative of this problem itself. Instead of looking at both sides, abusive parents strip children of all rights, with no arena to seek any.

It appears that the coping mechanism for this atrocity can be memory loss. Under these circumstances, a new path other than a scientific approach needs to be taken. How else can we hope to regain memories and provide a safe arena for them to be explored.

I share Butler’s concern that these two books have placed a road block on this new path of discovery. They truly might have a deep negative impact on what little precious ground has been made so far.

LORI BERGVALL, WEST HILLS

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Rather than silence men and women who have suffered sexual abuse, researchers like Ofshe and Loftus open up clear avenues toward identifying and giving appropriate scientifically based treatment for these victims. As an accused parent, I have presented this issue to the California Assn. for the Prevention of Child Abuse at UCLA Harbor General, the California Board of Behavioral Science and the San Diego Bar Assn. with highly regarded mental health professionals who are dismayed at the direction their associates have taken. Child abuse and incest are horrible crimes and desperately need the attention of all concerned. Well-meaning but grossly misinformed therapists have created an industry that has overlooked the real problem.

JERRY R. SHORE, STATE CHAIR, NATIONAL ASSN. FOR CONSUMER PROTECTION IN MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICES, LAGUNA BEACH

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Butler tries to disguise her weak and unscientific views by arguing that the authors of the subject books appear to be more concerned about falsely accused parents than about children who are true victims of sexual abuse. This argument, of course, is a canard. The fact is that the absurd and witch-like allegations generated by the “Recovered Memory Movement,” covering the gambit from ritual abuse to kidnaping by space aliens, have surely made it more difficult for children who are suffering real abuse to be believed--which is the ironic tragedy.

ROBERT LIGON, LA CRESCENTA

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Katy Butler responds:

Space did not permit a fuller discussion of the “Crook” case. I omitted from my account the bulk of Judge Dennis Yule’s criticisms of Ofshe’s testimony, but in ordering Lynn Crook’s parents to pay her $150,000 for sexual abuse, the judge said: “The evidence does not show a highly suggestive therapy gone wild.” On the issue of recovered memories, I defer to the American Psychological Association’s working group, which acknowledges both false memories and the delayed recall of traumatic events.

I would also like to make clear that my review did not intend to imply that Lynn Price Gondolf had been abused by her parents--only that, as Elizabeth Loftus’ book states, her most recent therapist suggested that she stop trying to disentangle false from true memories and concentrate instead on her present life.