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Does anyone else consider themselves to be a victim of the recovered memory craze of the 1990's?
I never recovered any memories... but I was pressured into trying. It was a really confusing time for me.
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Originally Posted by ACrystalGem
Yes! I remember trying to convince myself that none of what I remembered was true. But then a family member did (abusive thing) twice in the space of a few days & I couldn't deny what was happening - I was 22 at the time.
A few years later, after I ran away from my family, I asked a specialist if my memories could be false - she shook her head sadly & said: "Far too many details, and what you say doesn't change." It was so depressing when she said that. I still sometimes wish, 25 years on, that it was fake, but it's not. Memories still come back til this day - very early ones. But I'm glad I was convinced enough when they first started resurfacing, to get out & run away.
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First of all, I'm sorry that you had the experience you did. I can't imagine how difficult that must have been.
But, I think you must have misunderstood me. I was sexually molested when I was about 7-8 years old. I always knew it happened, but I never told anyone until about 1989 ( I was in my 20's).
Unfortunately, for a time in the late '80s and early '90s a large number of therapists were convinced that most if not all psychological problems were caused by "repressed memories" that had to be rooted out. Most of the hype started with the book The Courage to Heal. The therapist I told about being sexually molested was one who bought into repressed memories.
What would happen is that someone would see a therapist for some problem (depression, bulimia, you name it), and that person would be told that their symptoms must be evidence that they had repressed memories of sexual abuse. Then they would be "encouraged" (strong encouraged) to remember those abuses. Unfortunately, many people ended up making claims of abuse that were false.
What I experienced was being told that what I remembered must be only the tip of the iceberg. I was encouraged to try and remember more (she suggested my parents had groomed me for sexual abuse me and had sexually abused me themselves) and even hypnotized. She told me there had to be more that I was repressing. It was a distressing time for me because I knew that I was being manipulated and because it was hard to know who to trust or what was real. I see the therapy I got during that time period itself as a form of abuse. But, I think the my particular therapist was just naively following the "common wisdom" of the time period.
I'm looking for others who had the same experiences in the late '80s and early '90s.