The discussion in this article will be useful for any reader trying to weigh the analysis of reports that take strong recovered-memory positions.

Are memories of distressing events commonly repressed?  In a recent issue of The Journal of Psychiatry & Law, Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield argued passionately in defense of the theory that individuals can repress recollections of a traumatic experience and later accurately recover them.  We examine these arguments in detail, specifically elucidating their fundamental flaws in logic.  We also direct attention to Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield's unsupported assertions, misleading quotations of other authors, and inaccurate reporting of evidence.  We conclude that on the basis of currently available evidence, neither science not the courts can responsibly accept repression as a valid entity.

Authors' Note: The authors gratefully acknowledge the invaluable editorial assistance provided by Charles Brainerd, Ph.D. and R. Christopher Barden, Ph.D., J.D.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle is inborn in us.
Paul Valery

It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the data.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The concept of "dissociative amnesia" -- variously called "repressed memory," "psychogenic amnesia," or "traumatic amnesia" -- has fallen upon hard times.  A majority of board-certified American psychiatrists believe that "dissociative amnesia" should not be included as an official diagnosis in DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association.[1]  Skepticism about this concept is even more widespread among Canadian psychiatrists.[2]  The very term "dissociation" has recently been characterized as being "a creaky and imprecise 19th century metaphor . . . much in need of an overhaul, [and meaning] too many different things to different people."[3]  Courts around the United States have repeatedly refused to accept the validity of "repressed" and "recovered" memory (as we discuss below), while practitioners of therapies intended to recover repressed memories have watched in dismay as lawsuits and judgments against them have multiplied.[4]

But despite these adverse developments, some still continue to defend the theory that individuals can repress, and later accurately recover, the memory of a severely traumatic experience.  Among the most outspoken are Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield, who, in a recent issue of The Journal of Psychiatry & Law,[5] passionately defended this theory.

The lengthy article by these three authors (hereinafter "Current Evidence") extensively criticizes the work of scientists who have questioned the validity of repressed memory or traumatic amnesia.  To fully rebut that article would require an extremely long discussion.  Therefore, to keep the present paper to a manageable length, we have selected 18 areas in which Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield demonstrate fundamentally flawed reasoning or inaccurately report the evidence.  We detail each of these examples in the pages below.

Although the following discussion is keyed specifically to "Current Evidence," many of the points we make apply equally to the arguments of other writers who attempt to defend the dissociative amnesia concept.  Therefore we believe our discussion will be useful for any reader trying to weigh the analysis of other reports that take positions similar to those in "Current Evidence."

"Current Evidence," like the writings of some previous proponents of dissociative amnesia theory, is permeated with a common but very critical error.  This is the assumption that it is somehow the duty of science to disprove the concepts of dissociative amnesia or repressed memory.

On page 125 of their article, for example, Brown and colleagues state that "The burden of proof is on [critics of repressed memories] to show that repressed memories do not exist."  At other places in the paper one reads "That some people remember does not prove that no one forgets" (p.19), or that skeptics should present "contrary evidence" to disprove the phenomenon (p.37).  And finally, the authors assert that "Opponents of repressed memory ...cannot meet the Daubert standards for science.  Other than a few pro-false memory reviews, they can cite no data-based scientific studies in support of their viewpoint" (p.115).  These statements all imply, incorrectly, that scientists are obligated to disprove dissociative amnesia.  In reality, however, it is the proponents of this mental mechanism who bear the burden of proving its existence.  Why is this?

A fundamental scientific principle, more than 600 years old, forbids postulating a more complicated and novel explanation for a phenomenon if a simpler one, already established and at hand, provides a satisfactory explanation for that phenomenon. This principle, known as "Ockham's razor" after the 14th-century monk William of Ockham, states that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity (non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem). Sir Isaac Newton echoed the same principle in 1726: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."[6]

An example: Suppose our car abruptly stops on the highway.  Before considering novel possibilities -- such as that cosmic rays or leprechauns have interfered with the car -- we should first exclude ordinary, simpler possibilities -- such as that the car has run out of gas.  Or take a more scientific example.  Suppose a scientist believes that a hitherto undiscovered virus is responsible for an outbreak of disease.  The very first steps he or she must take are to consider, and then eliminate, the possibility that some _known_ microorganism has caused the disease.  To put this requirement in other terms: The burden of disproving the scientist's novel theory is not carried by those who question it.  Rather, Ockham and Newton require the scientist to demonstrate that already established alternatives do not explain the disease.

The same reasoning applies to the concept of "dissociative amnesia."  There are many known, simple reasons why people forget or seem to forget.  These include childhood amnesia, ordinary forgetfulness due to memory decay over time, amnesia due to biological factors (for example, brain injury; seizures; drug, medication, or alcohol ingestion; severe sleep deprivation), or even apparent "amnesia" in someone who claims forgetfulness but who actually remembers.  Examples of this latter "amnesia that isn't" include people who lack rapport with the interviewer, who wish to protect someone, who feel too embarrassed to discuss something, who are attempting to toll a statute of limitations, or who otherwise stand to derive benefit from claiming amnesia.  For any of these reasons people may fail to disclose what they actually recall.[7]

When faced with individuals who report that they have forgotten something, we must exclude the above-mentioned well-established causes of real or apparent forgetfulness before postulating the existence of an entirely novel form of forgetfulness such as dissociative amnesia. Brown and colleagues [8] fail to observe this discipline and thus attempt to avoid the requirements of Ockham and Newton.

To summarize: Repressed-memory proponents attempt to shift the burden of proof onto their critics' shoulders.  This shift would require that critics undertake the logical impossibility of proving a negative proposition:  that dissociative amnesia does not exist. Such an undertaking is doubly illogical, because there was never any scientifically sound evidence to begin with for the existence of this mental mechanism.[9]

Repressed-memory proponents sometimes argue that repression is not really new or novel.  After all, they say, Freud endorsed the phenomenon, even making it the cornerstone of his theory of mind.  This argument, however, misreads history.  Freud never postulated anything remotely akin to the kind of "repression" endorsed by today's recovered-memory theorists.[10]

Although "dissociative amnesia" has enjoyed widespread acceptance in popular culture (for example, in Hollywood movies where someone abruptly recalled a "repressed" memory of childhood), the mere fact of popular acceptance does not change the burden of proof described above.  For example, it is probably widely believed in our culture that chicken soup helps the common cold.  But this does not mean that chicken soup must be assumed to be effective until scientists disprove its efficacy.  Asking a court to accept the existence of "dissociative amnesia" simply because it has not been proved ineffective would be analogous to asking the court to accept the efficacy of chicken soup simply because no study has ever proved that it does not treat colds.

All these arguments have been previously discussed in more detail, including a discussion in an extensive chapter by Pope and colleagues [11] published over a year ago as of this writing.  Curiously, Brown and colleagues do not mention this review, which is one of the most extensive and detailed reviews of "dissociative amnesia" published.  When it is considered that Brown and colleagues criticize Pope and colleagues for allegedly failing to exercise "more careful scholarship,"[12] their omission of this most comprehensive review by Pope and colleagues is inexplicable.

BROWN AND COLLEAGUES IMPLY THAT DISSOCIATIVE AMNESIA IS REPORTED IN TYPICAL STUDIES OF TRAUMA VICTIMS

Not only does "dissociative amnesia" remain to be proved, but the observations of dozens of studies of trauma victims, comprising thousands of subjects, indicate that trauma is vividly remembered.  For example, Pope and associates have presented a collection of 63 studies, consisting of more than 10,000 victims of all manner of traumas.[13]  In these studies, not a single subject is described as developing amnesia for the traumatic event.  Yet Brown and colleagues attempt to establish the "failure of Pope et al.'s (1998) claim that their selected 63 studies disprove traumatic amnesia."[14]

Again, it would require inordinate space in the present article to rebut each of Brown and colleagues' individual criticisms of Pope et al. (1998). However, it seems most instructive to examine the nine studies of the 63 in which Brown and colleagues flatly state that "since amnesia was reported in all nine of these studies, we are at a loss to understand why Pope et al. reported these studies as examples of studies where no amnesia was reported.  Their reporting is simply incorrect."[15]

In fact, it is Brown and colleagues who are incorrect, as inspection of the original nine papers shows.  In Table 1 we present these nine studies, showing the claim that Brown and colleagues make for each, juxtaposed with actual information from the original papers.  This comparison will largely speak for itself.  It will be seen that Brown and colleagues sometimes make statements that simply do not appear in the papers at all.  At other times Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield fail to mention that the original papers provide graphic evidence of biologically based amnesia, early childhood amnesia, and other factors that clearly contradict the assumption of dissociative amnesia (see Table 1).  Brown and colleagues also fail to note that Pope and associates have specifically discussed this evidence in their reviews, the most comprehensive of which,[16] as indicated above, is not even cited in "Current Evidence."

Later in this paper, in the sections titled "Distorted quotes in `Current Evidence'" and "Misleading statements in `Current Evidence,'" we present other examples of misquotes of Brown and colleagues.

After attempting to disparage the evidence of Pope and colleagues' 63 studies above, Brown and associates (1999) go into detail about 68 studies that, they claim, support belief in dissociative amnesia.  At many points Brown et al. imply that the sheer number of these studies should be convincing.  They state, for example, that "Although some opponents may never accept this conclusion, even based on the result of the 67 [sic] studies to date, at what point will the evidence for substantial forgetting be sufficient for them?"[17]

Of course, the answer is that even as few as two or three studies would be very convincing if those studies met basic minimum methodological standards.  On the other hand, even a thousand methodologically inadequate studies would do no good at all.

Non-scientists are frequently impressed by the idea that a concept appears to be supported by a large number of observations.  But of course the number of observations is meaningless until one assesses the quality of those observations.  Consider, for example, that in the 20-odd years since the reported death of Elvis Presley, there have been hundreds if not thousands of Elvis sightings.  These observations have occurred with many different "methodologies":  Elvis has been sighted under many different circumstances and by many different types of observers.  But does this enormous number of observations convince us that Elvis still lives?  Or is science now obligated to demonstrate that all Elvis sightings are invalid?

We can pursue this analogy to further clarify the issue.  On page 67 Brown et al. (1999) state that "not one of the 68 studies failed to find complete forgetting/recovery of abuse memories in at least some portion of the sampled respondents."  Now suppose that we were to conduct 68 studies, in each of which we as researchers asked 100 people if they had experienced mental telepathy. It is likely that in every one of these studies at least some of the 100 people would report such an experience.  Should a court be obliged to conclude on the basis of this evidence that mental telepathy actually exists?  What if we doubled the number to 136 studies -- and continued to obtain positive findings in every one?  Suppose we protest (as do Brown and colleagues on pages 92-98) that to be certain we fully understood what the subjects meant by "Mental telepathy," we asked various questions in our 136 studies.  Is the existence of telepathy than proved?  The answer, of course, is that these 136 hypothetical "studies" would be virtually valueless in comparison with even one or two carefully designed investigations.

In a later section of this paper (Further flaws in "Current Evidence"), we discuss some of the deficiencies of the studies on which Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield rely to argue the existence of traumatic amnesia.

Confidence in the accuracy of Brown and colleagues' conclusions is shaken by some periodic inaccuracies in their paper.  Several examples follow.

I. "In a 17-year prospective study, Silverman et al [18] found that the first signs of significant impairments in functioning typically appeared around mid-adolescence (age 15)." (Brown et al., p. 44)

It is misleading to use Silverman and colleagues' data to claim difficulties first appeared around age 15. Silverman and colleagues unequivocally state that their findings are based solely on a single interview that occurred when the subjects were 15. Obviously, therefore, the impairments could have appeared at any time in the years before the interview.

II. On p. 37, Brown et al. (1999) claim that Piper [19] adopts a "standard that [dissociative amnesia for childhood sexual abuse] does not exist."  In fact, at no point in the original article does Piper take this position; he merely says "the scientific literature provides no support for [dissociative amnesia]." (p. 631)

III. In a study by Corwin and Olafson, both a six-year-old female's disclosure of sexual mistreatment and, 11 years later, an interview with the same person were videotaped.[20]  Commentaries on the study were provided by five experts on both sides of the recovered-memory debate. Brown and colleagues (1999) claim that

[m]ost of the experts on both sides of the debate, with the exception of Loftus, concur that the case is a good example of substantial forgetting and later recovery of a corroborated childhood sexual abuse memory. (p. 65)

However, they fail to note that even the study's authors were unsure about the "substantial forgetting." Here are Corwin and Olafson's (1997) words:

We do not know whether [the child] tried to recall the sexual abuse during the years that she said she could not recall [it]. Was [her] memory truly unavailable, or was it just that she had never specifically tried to recall sexual abuse? (p. 110)

Even more disturbing is Brown and associates' (1999) failure to mention that of the five commentators, not only Loftus, but also both Neisser [21] and Schooler [22] dispute the "substantial forgetting" claim. Neisser says:

The record as a whole points to a clear conclusion [that the child's] two dramatically recovered memories are far from accurate. . .  The first is entirely false and the second is substantially misleading. [23]

Schooler is even less supportive of Brown and colleagues' "substantial forgetting" assertion:

It therefore seems quite plausible that [the child's] memory for the sexual abuse might well have been available all along had she only looked for it. (p.129)

The only reasonable conclusion, it seems, is that if [the child] did not forget the issue of sexual abuse. . . she must have ignored it. (pp. 129-130)

DISTORTED QUOTES IN "CURRENT EVIDENCE"

Confidence in the veracity of Brown and colleagues' (1999) conclusions is further reduced because words or phrases are often omitted from, or altered in, cited material.  We provide several examples.

I. Quote from Brown et al., 1999. "We certainly do not agree with [Piper's] characterization that the definitional criterion for sexual abuse is `deeply flawed.'" (p. 38)

Original quote from Piper, 1997: "Of the 15 studies, only Loftus et al., Widom and Morris, and Williams provide evidence that they adhered to specific and well-defined criteria for `sexual abuse." . . .  The remainder of the investigations suffer from one or both of two defects. Some employ indistinct, overbroad, and vague inclusion criteria. . . .  In other studies, the defect involves deeply flawed inclusion criteria." [24]

II. Quote from Brown et al., 1999: "Piper [1997] has assumed that age of onset of the abuse and severity of mistreatment are the best predictors of dissociative amnesia." (p. 42)

Original quote from Piper, 1997: "Research indicates that certain kinds of sexual misuse -- namely, those involving a close relative; high frequency or long duration of sexual contact; the use of force; or oral, vaginal, or anal penetration -- are more likely to be associated with subsequent psychological problems" [references in original].[25]

III. Quote from Brown et al., 1999: "Piper has assumed that the reliability of reports of childhood sexual abuse prior to the age of 4 are necessarily suspect because of `the well-documented phenomenon of infantile and early childhood amnesia.'" (p. 39)

Original quote from Piper, 1997: "Because of the well-documented phenomenon of infantile and early childhood amnesia, it is known that most events prior to ages two to four are poorly recalled" [references in original].[26]

IV. Brown and colleagues (1999) state that "the clarifying [sic] interview strategy has been used in at least five recent studies" (p. 49). However, these authors' definition of clarification interview is entirely different from that used by other workers in the field. Specifically, Femina et al.,[27] whom Brown and colleagues cite in the same paragraph on page 49, use the term to describe a follow-up interview in a prospective investigation. For example, in the Femina et al. study, subjects failing to report a known episode of abuse were interviewed, confronted with their known abuse history, and asked if they recalled it. By contrast, Brown and colleagues use the term to describe a technique in retrospective studies, in which subjects were asked about the nature of their reported forgetting. This technique is utterly different from the procedure used by Femina and colleagues; Brown and colleagues mislead the reader by using the term inexactly.

V. We provide another instance of Brown and colleagues' (1999) distortion of other authors' statements. Piper states that

Burgess and colleagues [28] describe a case involving accusations -- made by two- and three-year-old children -- who were allegedly abused in a day-care center.  The alleged activities included very bizarre or low-base-rate behaviors: group sex with children, "ritualistic" abuse, wearing of masks and black robes by the accused, repeated insertion of foreign bodies into the children' vaginas or rectums, participation of females in the mistreatment, public exhibitions of intercourse between a man and his young daughter, etc.  Several children also reported seeing "Dracula" with red on his teeth.  According to the authors, the accused was "a high priest of a satanic sect."  Although Burgess and colleagues clearly consider the accusations to be well founded, they fail to note that reports of these kinds of elaborate and planned sexual activities, involving multiple simultaneous adult perpetrators and child victims, are exceedingly rare in the scientific literature [references in original].

They also fail to comment on the well-known difficulties involved in verifying such claims [references in original].[29]

What do Brown and associates (1999) say about this passage?  "[Piper] dismissed [outright] these data as being `very bizarre or low-base-rate behaviors' based solely on his unsupported personal belief that such behaviors could not have occurred." (p. 47)

Three comments seem apposite.  "Dismissing" data differs from raising concerns about them; the "unsupported personal belief" was in fact supported by no fewer than 11 citations from the literature; and nowhere in the original passage is it stated, or even implied, that the events could not have happened.

At times, Brown and colleagues (1999) inaccurately report the positions others hold while simultaneously employing "straw man" arguments as well. One example: they label as "extreme" (p. 82) the argument that patients recovering fictitious abuse memories in psychotherapy have been brainwashed.  Their only citation is to Ofshe and Watters' Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria[30] -- implying that Ofshe and Watters endorse brainwashing as the memory-recovery mechanism.

We have difficulty understanding this implication.  Even the most casual reading of Making Monsters shows that the psychotherapy procedures discussed therein fall well short of the criteria, listed by Brown et al. themselves, for brainwashing.  Brown and associates (1999) even acknowledge this fact: "Most psychotherapy," they say, "falls far short of meeting these conditions [i.e. to qualify as brainwashing]." (p. 83)  Furthermore, Ofshe and Watters neither mention nor imply that they believe recovered-memory patients are brainwashed.  Why, then, do Brown and colleagues even raise the issue in the first place?  The most reasonable inference is that they hoist up "brainwashing" for the sole purpose of knocking it down.

But while jousting with this straw man, Brown and colleagues say nothing about an actual, rather than contrived, malignancy that often seriously harms patients in repressed- and recovered-memory therapies: thought reform programs.[31]  Extreme repressed-memory psychotherapists not infrequently employ techniques derived from such programs; anyone who has observed the recovered-memory movement's excesses will recognize these techniques.

Thought reform programs attempt to teach subjects a set of behaviors or to have them adopt the leaders' ideology. The programs employ techniques intended to destabilize a subject's sense of self and to induce extreme anxiety and emotional distress. They create a sense of powerlessness in subjects; obtain substantial control over subjects' time and thought content; manipulate rewards, punishments, and experiences so that old behaviors are extinguished and new ones are promoted; maintain a closed system of logic; and keep subjects in a non-informed state.[32]

Another straw man appears in Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield's discussion of what is required to implant false memories in psychotherapy patients.  In attempting to cast doubt on claims that therapists implant such memories, these authors state (p. 81) that most psychotherapy is not conducted under conditions of extreme interviewing ("excessive police interrogations or . . . political brainwashing sessions").  True enough.  But of what significance is this statement?  The real questions are whether some psychotherapists conduct inappropriate and extreme interviews, or employ the thought reform techniques mentioned above.  That the answer to these questions is "yes," there can be no reasonable doubt.[33]

FALSE STATEMENTS IN "CURRENT EVIDENCE"

Both misleading the reader and misquoting sources offend the spirit of scholarship. So does another closely-related practice of Brown and associates: making statements that are simply untrue.

As one example, it is claimed in "Current Evidence" (p. 38) that "among the 25 studied described by Scheflin and Brown (1996) . . . most of the surveys generally have adopted Finkelhor's [34] definition of overt childhood sexual abuse."  According to Brown and colleagues (1999, p. 38), Finkelhor (1979) defines sexual abuse as sexual contact (ranging along a continuum from breast fondling to genital and anal intercourse) between a child prior to a cutoff age (typically 16 to 18 years of age) and an older adult (typically older by four to five years or more).

The claim made by Brown and colleagues that the surveys generally adopted Finkelhor's (1979) definition is incorrect.  We show here how the term "sexual abuse" was defined in ten of these 25 studies:

Briere and Conte, 1993.[35] "Forced sexual contact between [someone] < 16 years old and a person five or more years older" ("sexual contact" was not defined).

Cameron, 1994.[36] Therapists' "sexual abuse survivors" ("sexual abuse" was not defined).

Feldman-Summers and Pope, 1994.[37] The authors "made no attempt to limit the [respondents'] meaning of `sexual abuse.'"

Gold, Hughes and Hohnecker, 1994.[38] "Outpatients in therapy for traumatic effects of childhood sexual abuse" ("childhood sexual abuse" was not defined).

Herman and Schatzow, 1987.[39] "Incest victims" (not further specified).

Hovdestad and Kristiansen, 1996.[40] "Women who had experienced childhood sexual abuse" ("childhood sexual abuse" was not defined).

Kluft, 1995.[41] "Witnessing an episode of abuse or the confession of abuse by the alleged perpetrator" ("abuse" was not defined).

Roe and Schwartz, 1996.[42] "Individuals who had been sexually abused" ("sexually abused" was not further specified).

Roesler and Wind, 1994.[43] "Unwanted sexual experiences before age 16 [with relative]" ("unwanted sexual experiences" was not further specified).

Van der Kolk and Fisler, 1995.[44] "People haunted by terrible life experiences who had experienced "sexual abuse/assault" (none of those terms was defined).

Clearly the published descriptions do not allow one to determine whether these ten studies' authors adopted Finkelhor's definition.

Of the 15 remaining studies examined in the Scheflin and Brown (1996) study, ten were unavailable (nine unpublished, and one published only in Dutch).  Of the remainder, four (Elliott and Briere; [45] Loftus, Polansky and Fullilove; [46] Widom and Morris; [47] and Williams [48]) adhered to specific and well-defined criteria that track the Finkelhor definition.  In the remaining study (Burgess, Hartman, and Baker [49]), the abuse alleged was extremely bizarre and thus most unlikely to have occurred.[50]  In addition, serious questions about childhood amnesia are raised by the ages of the subjects studied by Burgess et al.  Exactly half of these subjects were less than two years old when they were allegedly abused; one was three months old.  And fully 90% were age five or less when they provided their abuse reports to Burgess and colleagues.

In summary, the discussion above demonstrates the grossly inaccurate nature of the claim made in "current Evidence" that "most studies" followed the Finkelhor standard.  Only four of the 25 studies offered clear evidence of adopting Finkelhor's definition of "sexual abuse."

Understanding what the investigators and the subjects who entered their studies considered to be "sexual abuse" is important.  Why?  As will be discussed below (Critics' arguments remain unanswered), it makes little sense to believe that people would "repress" memories of minor sexual contacts that might not have been particularly meaningful or memorable to them as children.

Another false statement is found on page 43 of "Current Evidence." There Brown et al. (1999) cite four reviews on which Piper [51] is supposed to have relied: Beichtman et al. (1991); Beichtman et al. (1992); Kendall-Tackett et al. (1993); and Rind and Tromovitch (1997).[52] But as can be verified by simply examining the references, neither Beichtman et al. (1991) nor Rind and Tromovitch is cited in Piper's article.

Brown and colleagues (1990) claim that Piper "has argued that recovered memories are the iatrogenic result of therapeutic suggestion." (p. 36)  This assertion, which the authors support only with a reference to trial testimony, implies that recovered memories invariably result from suggestion.  Such an implication is patently counterfactual.  In none of Piper's published articles has he ever taken such a position, nor has he adopted it in court testimony.

The false statements of Brown and associates (1999) are not confined to citations from their critics' papers.  In writing of a study by Bagley,[53] for example, Brown and colleagues assert that "three . . . subjects failed to report the target abuse in the interview, though they reported other traumas." (p. 63) Bagley nowhere makes such a statement. Rather, he says:

One subject could not recall the verified abuse but did report being raped at 16 years.  Two subjects in the "known abuse" group did not as adults identify any "unwanted" sexual acts in childhood. (p.450)

An earlier paper, this one by Scheflin and Brown,[54] also reveals the same lax citation style shown by Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield (1999). Scheflin and Brown state the following:

Coons and Milstein reported an attempt to seek external corroborative evidence through a retrospective chart review of 31 child and adolescent patients, 19 of whom met the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified.  Abuse reports had been confirmed in 18 of the 19 cases diagnosed with a major dissociative identity disorder either by child abuse investigations or by witnesses to the abuse. (p. 177)

However, the actual language of Coons and Milstein [55] shows that nearly every statement in the above excerpt is inaccurate:

Subjects were 20 patients who met DSM-III criteria for multiple personality disorder. (p. 106)

In this series of 20 MPD patients, histories of childhood abuse and/or rape were confirmed by at least one other family member or emergency room reports in 17 individuals. (p. 107)

At least one other serious citation error mars "Current Evidence."  The authors assert that five attitudes held, or procedures employed, by psychotherapists lie at the heart of most of the lawsuits faced by therapists for allegedly implanting pseudomemories in patients. (p. 80)  The authors cite Taub [56] as their only reference for this assertion.  However, reading Taub's thoughtful paper will show that this citation, too, is a misattribution:  She says absolutely nothing to support Brown and associates' assertion.

On page 41, Brown et al. state: "After extensive research Bauer concludes that many very young children (i.e., ages 2 and under) remember certain events for long durations."  Brown and associates imply, of course, that such memories may persist into adulthood.  But the authors omit the following comments made by Bauer [57] in the same paper:

Although it is now apparent that young children form specific episodic memories, there is little evidence that these memories survive the transition from infancy to early childhood and become integrated into the presumably later-developing autobiographical or personal memory system [references in original].[58]

Similarly, a 1993 paper by Usher and Neisser [59] is cited in "Current Evidence" (p. 39) to support Brown and colleagues' contention that "older children and adults can report an accurate narrative memory [for notable experiences] as early as two years of age."  Brown and associates neglect to mention, however, the following passage from the same 1993 paper that severely undermines their contention:

Even in the 3rd and 4th years, only a few specially privileged experiences -- here, sibling birth and hospitalization -- are likely to persist into adult memory.  All other events from this period, even important ones like a death or a move, still fall victim to the pervasive adult amnesia for early childhood.  When memories do begin to appear, they are relatively thin and incomplete.  In all likelihood, this incompleteness results from poor understanding of the experiences themselves and [of] their significance.  Where there is no schematic understanding of individual events and no schematic life narrative to interrelate them, little recall can be expected.[60]

Usher and Neisser's analysis is also relevant to the discussion infra of "events of impact" (see Critics' arguments remain unanswered).

In their discussion of Widom and Morris,[61] Brown et al (1999) again mislead by employing selective quotation.  The study is cited as contributing to the "weight of the scientific evidence strongly favor[ing] the [repressed- and recovered-memory] position." (p. 68)  However, nowhere do Brown and colleagues mention that Widom and Morris themselves do not attribute their findings to repression.  (In fact, when asked if her paper should be read as providing evidence for "repression," Widom responded, "No.  I do not believe the paper presents any evidence about repression per se.  That was not our goal."  Cathy Spatz Widom, Ph.D., personal communication, December 1, 1999.) More tellingly, they fail to acknowledge Widom and Morris's specific disclaimer, italicized here:

A substantial group of people with documented histories of childhood sexual abuse . . . do not report these experiences when asked in young adulthood to do so.  Whether this is due to loss of memory, denial, or embarrassment is not known.[62]

Nor do Brown et al. mention the emphasis given by Widom and Morris to several studies showing how often people fail to report autobiographical events to interviewers.[63]  Indeed, as Pope and colleagues have shown,[64] a vast literature has demonstrated that a large proportion of respondents will deliberately withhold, or fail to report, information about autobiographical life events.  This is especially true if those interviewed are not specifically asked about the events (as in so-called "clarification interviews").

The Scientific method depends on using cogent data to support and defend one's opinions.  But Brown and colleagues (1999) sometimes fail to answer challenges to their theories, even though those challenges have been presented in the literature.

For instance, Brown and colleagues state that childhood sexual abuse is an "event of impact" that provides an "important exception to the otherwise expected childhood amnesia." [65]  But in making this argument, the authors fail to respond to two questions posed by Piper (1997) and by Ofshe and Watters (1995).

Piper (1997) presented evidence that many childhood sexual experiences cause children no physical pain.[66]  Several studies, he also noted, indicate that some people consider their childhood sexual experiences to have been either neutral or pleasant.[67]  The research further shows that some individuals appear to be unharmed by these experiences.[68]  For example, Constantine reviewed 30 studies of intergenerational sexual contact and concluded that as judged by standard measures of social adjustment and psychological health, only a small percentage of such contacts appear to cause seriously harmful or long-term adverse consequences.[69]  And, as stated by Finkelhor,[70]

much sexual abuse does not occur under conditions of danger, threat, and violence.  Many abusers, misusing their authority, or manipulating moral standards, act with the child's trust.  Sometimes the fact of having been abused is recognized only in retrospect as children learn more about appropriate conduct.[71]

In other words, not everything labeled "sexual abuse" is painful, traumatic, or immediately distressing to a child.  (This discussion is certainly not intended to minimize the serious harm that can occur to children who become sexually involved with adults.  Because even non-contact sexual activities may be harmful, even these are to be abjured.  Rather, our discussion here is intended to remind the reader that, first, in matters of sex, "wrongfulness" and "harmfulness" tend to be equated by our society: "If the behavior was wrong, then it must have harmed someone."  Harmfulness, however, cannot necessarily be inferred from wrongfulness.  Second, even though any sexual abuse of a child is unequivocally wrong, it does not follow that the abuse would be memorable to the child.)

The unqualified term "sexual abuse" is nebulous and therefore scientifically unsatisfactory.  Consider that many adult behaviors approximate child sexual misuse.[72]  Toweling off children's genitals, allowing a child frightened by a storm to sleep with a parent, or examining a youngster's anal or vaginal orifice for hygienic reasons could all be seen as suspicious activities.  And more than one person has landed in difficulty for photographing unclothed children; notwithstanding that they were the photographer's own children.  Whether such activities actually amount to sexual abuse depends entirely on the adult's intent -- the assessment of which often presents significant difficulties.[73]

But Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield ignore the critical distinction, drawn above, between activities that distress, traumatize, and harm children and those that do not.  Accepting this distinction leads to an important question that to our knowledge has never been answered by either Brown and colleagues or by any other repressed-memory theoreticians.  The question: If repression is intended to deny a painful memory access to consciousness because such admission would generate anxiety, then why would a memory of a nondistressing and nontraumatic experience need to be repressed?

Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield fail to answer a second question as well.  To assume that a young child would repress memory of a non-painful touch, Ofshe and Watters [74] note, requires a further -- and highly dubious -- assumption: That the child would have internalized a sophisticated analysis of such a contact.  In other words, in order to need to repress the memory, would not the child have to be able to understand that the touch was an illicit and harmful sexual contact, and that society condemns pedophiles?[75]  Usher & Neisser's discussion on schematic understanding,[76] cited above, also bears on this question.  That is, if the child has no cognitive framework into which to insert the abusive experience, accurate recall is less likely.

In another example of inadequately answering critics' arguments, Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield [77] fail to rebut Piper's [78] observation that most of the surveys in Scheflin and Brown's 1996 article [79] neglect to verify the abuse putatively suffered by the subjects.  The observation is correct: In seven of the 13 1996 surveys, the investigators mention nothing whatever about how they verified the abuse.  In one [80] of the remaining six surveys, the investigator accepted his patients' claims that they had confirmed the abuse; in another,[81] some memories were considered validated if the subjects themselves decided they were.  The other four studies used various measures of "verification" -- all dependent on subject self-reports.

As stated by Brown and colleagues (1999), "the central issue for the reader to consider pertains to the level of confidence given to the corroborative data."[82]  We agree: How confident can the reader be that self-report data verify -- in contradistinction to merely corroborate -- the claimed abuses?  (To "corroborate" means "to make something more certain," whereas "to verify" means to "prove the truth of something."  Random House Dictionary of the English Language, second edition, unabridged (New York: Random House, 1987).  We reiterate the claim, made above, that most of the 1996 surveys fail to verify the subjects' abuse.)

In "Current Evidence," Brown and associates frequently make dramatic but unsupported claims, two kinds of which we feel obligated to discuss.  The first kind appears in the form of assertions that one or another former skeptic has in effect "seen the light" and altered his or her beliefs.  These behaviors supposedly have occurred because the scientific data supporting repressed memories have ostensibly become overwhelmingly convincing -- thus forcing even diehard false-memory proponents to abandon their positions under fire.

One of the supposed apostates mentioned in "Current Evidence" is Stephen Lindsay.  Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield charge that he has "reversed his position and conceded that recovered memories are real phenomena" and "backed off from an attack on the existence of repressed memories."[83]  When presented with these claims, however, Lindsay replied as follows:  "For the record, I object to the statement that I have 'reversed' my position and 'conceded that recovered memories are real phenomena.' In the first paragraph of my first publication on this issue [84] we stated:

Although cognitive researchers have differing views about the mechanisms underlying loss of memory (e.g., repression, dissociation, or normal forgetting) [reference in original], all would agree that it is possible that some adult survivors of childhood abuse would not remember the abusive events, and that memories might be recovered given appropriate cues.  Thus we accept that some clients may recover accurate memories of childhood sexual abuse during careful, non-leading, non-suggestive therapies.[85]

This message can be found in all of my work on this topic."  (Stephen Lindsay, Ph.D., personal communication, November 16, 1999)

Pamela Freyd, the False Memory syndrome Foundation executive director, is another proponent who has supposedly backpedaled and abandoned her earlier position that repressed memories do not exist.  Freyd strenuously objects.  She acknowledges placing the burden of proof on repressed-memory proponents (as we ourselves do in this paper) but points out that doing so should certainly not be equated with saying repressed memories do not exist.  Further, Freyd maintains that she has never stated such memories do not exist; she challenges Brown et al. to show their evidence for their contention that she has. (Pamela Freyd, Ph.D., personal communication, November 29, 1999).

The second kind of dramatic claim appearing in "Current Evidence" is a pronouncement that something is true -- even though Brown et al. present no evidence of its truth.  As an example, consider the following claim:  "[It] is accepted in the body of the scientific literature that dissociative or traumatic amnesia is a commonly observed result of childhood sexual abuse."[86]  In view of the fierce controversy enveloping the concept of dissociative amnesia and the evident reluctance of many courts to embrace the concept, this bald assertion would seem to have deserved at least one supporting citation.

Literature support for such an assertion is especially necessary given the results of the review by Kendall-Tackett, Williams, and Finkelhor.[87]  Those three authors reviewed 45 studies that include over 3,000 children to assess the effect of childhood sexual mistreatment; their review mentions nothing at all about dissociative amnesia.  One can only wonder how "a commonly observed result of sexual abuse" could have completely escaped the notice of such recognized and skilled investigators.

Another unsupported pronouncement appears on page 82 of "Current Evidence."  There Brown and associated claim that "over a dozen laboratory studies" show that guided imagery, used with free recall, enhances certain kinds of information recall without increasing the memory error rate.  A supporting reference for this assertion would have been of great interest, given that the claim contradicts the well-established evidence that neither hypnosis nor any other procedure reliably enhances accurate as opposed to inaccurate recollection.[88]

Again, these unsupported assertions violate the requirement discussed above that any new theory's proponents must bear the burden of proving -- not merely asserting -- that theory.

On page 125 of their article, Brown and colleagues imply that "impossibly restrictive criteria" would be required to demonstrate that dissociative amnesia actually occurs.  However, as Pope and colleagues previously described in detail,[89] it would be perfectly straightforward to design a study, fully meeting all of the methodological standards that we have discussed earlier, to properly test the existence of dissociative amnesia.

For such a study, one would begin by identifying a group of individuals clearly documented to have experienced abuse.  For documentation, one could use either medical records (as in Williams's study [90] or concrete evidence from forensic investigations (in a manner similar to that of Widom and Morris [91]).

To avoid concerns about ordinary childhood amnesia, one would then remove from this group all the individuals who were less than five years old at the time of the abuse.  To avoid concerns about biologically based amnesia, all individuals who had experienced a possible biological insult  (such as head injury, seizures, or drug intoxication) would also be removed.  And finally, to avoid concerns about ordinary forgetfulness, one would select only people who had experienced trauma so severe that everyone would agree they could not normally forget it.

At a later date, one would then interview all the selected individuals.  They would be asked whether they remembered the episode of maltreatment they were documented to have undergone.  If any denied the episode, they would be administered a "clarification interview" in the manner described by Femina and colleagues.[92]  Here the respondents would be presented with information about their known episode of maltreatment and then asked directly if they remembered it.  If a substantial number of individuals continued to deny any memory for the traumatic experience, and if -- importantly -- they derived no apparent secondary gain by simply claiming amnesia, then one would have a methodologically sound study demonstrating that "dissociative amnesia" for abuse experiences can actually occur.

Of course, the possibility remains that some "false positives" might still occur in such a study -- people who reported amnesia even though they actually remembered.  But if one obtained a large number of individuals professing amnesia, well above the rate that might be expected from occasional "false positives" due to misclassification error, then the findings would strongly favor the hypothesis that dissociative amnesia exists.[93]

Admittedly such a study might take several years to complete and require hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding.  But far larger studies, costing larger sums, are regularly conducted in other forensically important areas of medicine.  Millions are spent to assess the environmental hazards posed by specific chemical compounds, the carcinogenic potential of food additives or chemicals, the safety of specific drugs in pregnancy, and so forth.  And pharmaceutical companies routinely spend tens of millions of dollars on studies of safety and efficacy before obtaining federal approval to market their products.  These manufacturers are not allowed to market inadequately tested drugs that might affect people's lives merely because they find it difficult and expensive to provide such documentation.  By analogy, legal decisions, which also might profoundly affect human lives, should not rest on the concepts of repressed and recovered memory unless these concepts have also been rigorously and properly tested.

One of the most inaccurate implications made by Brown and colleagues is that courts have generally favored the concepts of "repressed" memory and "recovered" memory.  For example, the authors say that "if a nose count were to be taken, the majority of appellate courts that have addressed the issue have correctly decided to admit expert testimony on repressed memory."(p. 124)  No reference is given in "Current Evidence" to support this statement.  In the next sentence, the authors cite Shahzade v. Gregory from 1996 but fail to note that this was merely a district court -- not appellate court -- case.  "Although some appellate courts have rejected repressed-memory testimony," Brown and colleagues state, "the better view is that followed by most courts, that such testimony is admissible."(p. 124)  The reference given for this latter statement lists only four cases.

However, the reality is very different from the picture painted by Brown and colleagues.  Table 2 summarizes appellate-level decisions in the United States during the last five years (between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 1999).  As will be seen, in the great majority of these decisions the courts have refused to acknowledge the validity of repressed and recovered memory for either of two purposes:  either to justify tolling a statute of limitations, or as a scientifically established theory that may legitimately be presented to a jury.

The quotations in Table 2 are taken from the actual court decisions.  These quotations show that the courts have repeatedly acknowledged the controversy surrounding repressed memory and, in many cases, have openly expressed their skepticism of the concept.

Note also that in several cases state supreme courts have required evidentiary hearings on the validity of repressed and recovered memory before allowing testimony about these phenomena and have accordingly remanded the cases to trial courts.  As shown in Table 2, in every one of these cases the hearing resulted in a determination that the concepts of repressed and recovered memory were neither scientifically accepted nor admissible to a jury.

It is important to recognize that Brown was one of the expert witnesses in at least two of the cases shown in the table. These include the Hungerford decision in New Hampshire and the Quattrocchi decision in Rhode Island.  In both cases Brown provided extensive testimony in favor of the concepts of repressed and recovered memory -- yet in both cases the courts ruled against his position.  Conversely, we can find no place in the entire paper where Brown and colleagues cite a single court case in the last five years, anywhere in the United States, where any of them provided testimony that actually persuaded a court to accept the validity of repressed and recovered memory as a concept meeting Frye-Daubert admissibility standards.

The overwhelming unwillingness of actual courts to accept repressed and recovered memory -- even in cases where these concepts were supported by the personal testimony of Brown, Scheflin, or Whitfield -- represents, in our opinion, some of the most graphic evidence that these concepts have failed to pass scientific muster.

It would require an extremely lengthy discussion to give an exhaustive summary of all the flaws in "Current Evidence."  Therefore we have chosen several particularly noteworthy samples to discuss here.

1. CONFLATING DISPARATE CONCEPTS

The authors fail to draw distinctions between forgetting and reminiscence, on the one hand, and repression and recovery of repressed memories, on the other.  This is a serious matter, because forgetting and reminiscence are well-established phenomena that have been extensively studied in the laboratory, and their basic characteristics are well understood.  By failing to draw the proper distinctions between these two phenomena, Brown and associates encourage readers to infer that the solid experimental literature on forgetting-reminiscence somehow confers scientific credibility on repression-recovery.  (Charles Brainerd, Ph.D., personal communication, November 17, 1999)

In the same manner, "Current Evidence" fails to distinguish between unconscious, automatic repression (the posited mechanism in traumatic amnesia) and conscious, deliberate forgetting of painful experiences (directed forgetting).  Because there exists an extensive experimental literature on directed forgetting, the reader is again encouraged to infer that such work somehow confers scientific credibility on dissociative amnesia.

Crucial to the paper's claims about memory research is its failure to formally define the key concepts of "traumatic memory repression" or "recovery of traumatically repressed memories."  Lists of testable criteria to differentiate these concepts from "forgetting" and "reminiscence" are nowhere given.  Without definitions capable of experimental falsification, we cannot decide whether there is something called "traumatic amnesia" that differs from "forgetting" just as we cannot decide whether there is something called "recovery of repressed memories" that differs from "reminiscence."  (Charles Brainerd, Ph.D., personal communication, November 17, 1999)

These concerns are relevant to Brown and colleagues' contention that "not one of the 68 studies [cited in "Current Evidence"] failed to find complete forgetting/recovery of abuse memories in at least some portion of the sampled respondents." (p. 67)

They are also relevant to the claim that "incompleteness of memory [is] part of the natural history of all major traumas." (p. 11)  Brown et al. consider "extreme incompleteness of memory" to be a synonym for dissociative or traumatic amnesia. (p. 11)  But to define "dissociative amnesia" so expansively is to ignore the discussion above (Brown and colleagues imply that science must disprove dissociative amnesia) -- people forget, or appear to forget, for reasons other than that they dissociate.

Ignoring these concerns leads to the error of considering all forgetting to be amnesia. For example, in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law [94] Brown and colleagues contend that people have developed amnesia for nazi concentration camp experiences. As McNally [95] notes, one might infer from this statement

That some camp survivors have completely repressed years of trauma [as] certain childhood sexual abuse survivors are said to have done.  But what Brown et al. mean by "amnesia" are instances where Holocaust survivors had merely forgotten specific terrifying events (among countless others they remembered all too well). (p. 379)

McNally continues: "It is hardly surprising that isolated events, similar to many others, had been forgotten, especially in view of the organic factors [starvation, head injury] operative." (p. 379)  Forgetting individual events from a series of many similar, repeated events is not repression.  Such forgetting illustrates, rather, the well-known "serial position effect."[96]

The authors of "Current Evidence" consider Pope and colleagues' efforts to delimit the concept of dissociative amnesia to be "extremely restrictive."  (p. 47) Such beliefs increase the likelihood that Brown and colleagues will espy dissociation everywhere.

2. WEAKNESS OF THE RETROSPECTIVE STUDIES CITED BY BROWN AND COLLEAGUES

In a retrospective investigation, both the alleged traumatic event and the period of amnesia for that event occurred before the subject was enrolled in the study.

Brown and associates cite several retrospective investigations as evidence for traumatic amnesia.  These surveys, however, employ a seriously flawed question -- some variant of "Was there ever a time when you could not remember any or all of your abuse?" -- to assess respondents' putative amnesia.  The question is flawed in at least three ways.

First, as McNally [97] comments, "an affirmative answer [to the above question] implies repeated unsuccessful retrieval attempts.  But if respondents were amnestic for their abuse, on what basis would they attempt to recall it in the first place?" (p. 379)

Second, using patients' retrospective judgments of remembrance is another attempt to prove a negative: How can you prove you never remembered?

And finally:

Asking patients to remember a time when they couldn't remember something is a logical quandary.  The question borders on the ridiculous, because it assumes the subject would have knowledge of the status of memory during a period when that memory, by the subject's own admission, never came into consciousness.[98]

This third flaw has repeatedly been discussed in the literature.[99]  However, "Current Evidence" does not respond to those discussions -- another example of Brown and colleagues' failure to comment on skeptics' cogent criticisms.

The illogicality of attempting retrospective assessments might be apparent from the following.  According to "Current Evidence," when subjects in a study by Melchert [100] were asked the reason for their inability to recall their abuse, over half responded, "Apparently I had repressed it -- I unconsciously blocked out the memories because [remembering them] would have been too painful." (p. 92)  Unconscious processes are, of course, unavailable to consciousness.  One can therefore express only perplexity at Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield's confidence about the accuracy of such retrospective self-evaluations.

Using the information from six studies, Brown and colleagues present a pie chart on page 98.  It purportedly demonstrates the "contributing factors to underreporting childhood sexual abuse."  The largest pie slice, by far, is labeled "dissociation, unconscious blocking."  Two smaller ones are "misappraisal" and "cognitive avoidance."  Finally there is a mouse-sized sliver -- "ordinary forgetting" -- which is apparently of such minuscule importance that the authors feel no need to even mention it in their discussion on the next page:

Adult memory disturbances [of] childhood abuse are associated with, [or] due to, a mixture of misappraisal, cognitive avoidance, and dissociation. (p. 99)

Do Brown and colleagues really believe that simple forgetting plays no role in loss of memory for childhood sexual abuse?

In any case, the use of this pie chart is misleading and scientifically inappropriate because it implies that the authors are presenting quantitative data.  In fact, however, Brown and colleagues offer no quantitative data whatever to support the chosen size of the pie slices.

3. WEAKNESS OF THE PROSPECTIVE STUDIES CITED BY BROWN ET AL

Brown and colleagues (1999) acknowledge on page 60 that retrospective studies cannot prove the claimed abuse actually occurred.  This weakness is significant.  As one of us has noted elsewhere: BLOCKQUOTE>

It seems obvious that in order to have a "dissociated," "recovered," or "repressed" memory, there must first be a memory, and the memory must be for some actual occurrence.  It is inaccurate to speak of a memory for an event that never happened.  These common-sense expectations underlie [the] requirement that investigators wishing to prove repression's existence must confirm that the claimed traumatic events actually occurred.[101]

With these thoughts in mind, and recalling our belief that "even a thousand methodologically inadequate studies would do no good at all," we decline to comment further on any of the retrospective studies cited in Brown et al. (1999).  Instead, we turn to the eight prospective studies in Table 8 of "Current Evidence" (p. 68).

We examine only six because two of these studies cannot be discussed here.  In one case, Brown and colleagues cite a study (Burgess and Hartman, 1996) for which they provide no reference.  And one of the other prospective investigations in "Current Evidence" is a poster session; lack of access to these data precludes discussion of this study as well.

As mentioned above, and discussed in detail by Pope and associates,[102] only two conditions are required to demonstrate that dissociative amnesia causes any one specific episode of forgetting.  It must be shown (1) that a child beyond the age of infantile or childhood amnesia actually experienced a traumatic event unlikely to be forgotten; and (2) that this person later actually forgot the event.

The first requirement -- that the subject should have experienced an extraordinary and highly distressing event -- is intended to ensure that simple forgetting does not explain the subject's failure to recall.  And the second requirement is intended to eliminate other well-established causes of actual or apparent recall failure: metabolic or biological insults to the brain, and voluntary nondisclosure.  As noted above, voluntary nondisclosure is tested for by directly asking respondents whether or not they recall the event (the "clarification interview").

How well do Brown and associates' six remaining prospective studies satisfy these requirements?

Bagley, 1990.[103] Bagley provides neither the ages at which the children in his study were maltreated nor information on what their "sexual abuse" entailed, nor any evidence that either voluntary nondisclosure or biological causes for the amnesia were excluded.  This study therefore provides no support for rigorously defined "dissociative amnesia."

Burgess, Hartman, and Baker, 1995 [104] As discussed above, the overwhelming majority of the respondents in this investigation were very young children.  Infantile amnesia is therefore more than sufficient to explain any memory deficits these authors may have discovered.  We have also noted above that Burgess and colleagues inadequately verified the abuse putatively suffered by their respondents.  The study thus fails to satisfy the first requirement of Pope and associates.[105]

Corwin and Olafson, 1997 [106] As we mentioned above, these two investigators interviewed a six-year-old female, Jane, who had disclosed sexual mistreatment.  Then 11 years later, they reinterviewed her.

This investigation, according to Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield, "documents that the narrative memory for [an experience of] childhood sexual abuse had been forgotten completely." (p. 65)  To prove this assertion, Brown and colleagues say that at age 17, Jane (abused at age six by her mother)

Recalled telling the court that her mother had abused her at age six but [she] had "a problem remembering" any specific details of the experience itself.  (Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield, 1999, p. 65)

But as even a cursory reading of Corwin and Olafson's narrative of the interview shows, Brown and colleagues misstate the facts. The experience to which Jane refers in the passage just above is not one of sexual abuse at all:

I told the court that my Mom abused me, that she burned my feet on a stove. . . .  I've since seen pictures of how they looked, and I still don't remember if that's in fact how I was burnt. That's what I'm having a problem remembering.[107]

When the 17-year-old Jane does speak of the sexual abuse, her statements almost invariably fail to support the belief that she ever forgot it.  For example, during the interview with Corwin she made comments such as "I remember [the abuse} happening"; "I recall saying it at age six and I remember it happening"; and "I don't remember anything specific until I felt that pain and then I remember, you know."[108]  Only one single remark during the entire interview supports Brown and colleagues' belief that Jane forgot and then recovered her memory of the abuse: "I recall. I didn't -- that's the first time I've remembered that since saying that when I was six years old, but I remember."[109]  Even this rather ambiguous remark by Jane is bracketed by two firm avowals that she recalls and that she remembers.

In the final analysis, it is significant that of the five experts who comment on the Corwin and Olafson (1997) study, not one endorses the recovered-memory position espoused by Brown and associates.  And, as noted above (Misleading statements), some of the experts express skepticism about this position.

In summary, then, Corwin and Olafson's investigation fails to answer the question asked by Pope et al.:[110]  Did the respondent actually forget a traumatic event?

Duggal and Srofe, 1998.[111] In the abstract of their lengthy paper, Duggal and Srofe claim that they provide evidence of "documented" sexual trauma in early childhood.  However, the facts belie this statement.

To begin with, the overwhelming majority of the "documentation" consists of first- and second-hand reports by the child's mother (Ms. Miller).  At the time she made the abuse allegations, Ms. Miller was involved in what certainly seems to have been an unpleasant divorce from the alleged abuser (the child's father).  It is known that abuse allegations made under such circumstances must be regarded with special scrutiny, because they may be motivated or influenced by anger at the divorcing spouse.[112]  We provide examples of what Duggal and Srofe consider to be documentation:

I. "Ms. Miller reported that Laura (the child) had said, 'My dad comes to me out of the closet.  It's like a nightmare.  He touches me down here and it hurts.' According to Ms. Miller, Laura continued to say this consistently, pointing to the genital area as she said it." (p. 309)

II. "Ms. Miller [reported] that the [police officer who interviewed Laura] felt certain that something had happened to Laura at her father's house" (p. 309)  Although any objective reader would of course be interested in first-hand police reports, Duggal and Srofe imply that these reports were unavailable to them because "Ms. Miller stated that the police records were sealed at [the father's] request." (p. 310)

III. "Ms. Miller [reported] that Laura had repeatedly described a day when [her father 'pretended like a dream' . . . and touched her while she begged him to stop." (p. 306)

Duggal and Srofe rely as well on a single interview with a psychotherapist who was involved in Laura's childhood treatment and on therapy records from that time.  However, the interview seems to have occurred about 14 years after the therapist treated Laura.  Because the therapist was interviewed in a way that did not provide "any information to assist her recall" (p. 311), one must wonder how accurately she remembered the details of the case after such a long time.

The therapy records likewise do nothing to prove that Laura was abused.  They contain ambiguous comments made by the child that Duggal and Srofe do not explain, such as "Daddy knows he did it, he's just scared." (p. 306)  Duggal and Srofe say these records "do not suggest any doubt by the therapist . . . that Laura had experienced trauma." (p. 307) But the notes provide no answer to the two critical questions:  What kind of trauma?  When did it occur?

Curiously, and more worrisomely, Duggal and Srofe fail to offer the father's perspective on the abuse allegations; they never interviewed him.  This breach of the accepted recommendations for conducting a proper evaluation produces, of course, a situation in which "the child tends to see the [evaluating] clinician as aligned with [one parent]," resulting in a distorted and one-sided evaluation.[113]  The breach also "makes it unlikely that reasons other than sexual abuse will be considered . . . to explain the child's statements and behaviors." [114]

But, in the final analysis, Duggal and Srofe themselves acknowledge their failure to satisfy any reasonable documentation requirements.  They say, "The precise nature of the trauma reported during Laura's childhood is unknown." (p. 319)

Moreover, Duggal and Srofe fail to document Laura's age at the time the sexual trauma is supposed to have occurred.  As nearly as can be determined from the information the authors provide, she was about four years old -- raising the question of childhood amnesia as an explanation of any memory failure she may have experienced.

Duggal and Srofe's belief in the accuracy of Laura's supposedly recovered memory is equally poorly supported.  They report that when Laura, at age 18, recovered the recollection of the sexual abuse she had allegedly suffered as a child, she "totally went into shock ... screaming 'get him away from me.'" (p. 315) But what did she recall that precipitated such a response?  Only this:  That her father had once kissed her on the cheek while she was lying in bed; according to Duggal and Srofe,

Laura's recovered memory consisted largely of a compelling sense that there was a sexual component to the interaction with her father. (p. 316, emphasis added)

Strangely enough, Duggal and Srofe nowhere indicate that Laura ever recovered any memories of the lurid maltreatment -- for example, forced genital touching -- discussed in their paper.  Duggal and Srofe evidently believe that the recovered memory of the kiss somehow represents all these abuses, and that this memory somehow proves these abuses actually occurred.  The authors also seem to be implying that this pallid and quite ordinary kiss somehow qualifies as severe "sexual trauma."

In sum: Duggal and Srofe offer neither evidence that the child experienced any dramatic, memorable event nor evidence that if she did, it occurred beyond the age of childhood amnesia.  The authors also fail to support their contention that the respondent's putatively recovered memory accurately reflected some childhood mistreatment.

Widom and Morris, 1997.[115]  This prospective study assesses the accuracy of adults' recollections of court-substantiated childhood sexual abuse.  As noted in "Current Evidence," Widom and Morris show that 37% of the adults with such histories failed to report the abuse when interviewed 20 years after it occurred.  Brown and colleagues believe this investigation provides evidence for dissociative amnesia.  That belief is incorrect, because Widom and Morris satisfy neither of the minimum, basic requirements for a valid investigation listed by Pope and colleagues.[116]  (As we mentioned above, the Widom and Morris study was not intended to satisfy these requirements.)

The information provided by Widom and Morris does not allow the severity of the childhood mistreatment to be independently assessed.  That is, although some abuses took the form of "sodomy, incest and so forth," [117] others were much more pedestrian and less extraordinary: being "fondled," "asked to do something sexual," or "hugged in a sexual way."[118]  As discussed above, these latter, less distressing experiences might fail to be recalled years later simply because they are relatively unremarkable: non-memorable events are forgotten, not repressed.

The second requirement necessary to prove dissociative amnesia is that voluntary nondisclosure must be eliminated.  Again, Widom and Morris's investigation made no attempt to distinguish between forgetting and deliberate nondisclosure -- and, as mentioned above, they readily acknowledge the latter possibility.  In particular, Widom and Morris performed no clarification interview.

For these two reasons, the Widom and Morris study cannot be read as supporting the existence of dissociative amnesia.

Williams, 1994.[119]  In this investigation Williams studied 129 women who, after reports of sexual assault, had been examined for it at a hospital emergency room in 1973-75, when they were ten months to 12 years old.  About 17 years later the subjects were contacted and reinterviewed.  At that time, 38% failed to report the index event for which they had been evaluated at the hospital.  Brown and colleagues imply that this study provides scientific support for the concepts of dissociative amnesia and repressed memory.  In reality, the study does no such thing.

First, the investigation did not establish that the children had experienced a severe and seriously upsetting event that they would always be expected to remember.  That is, in about a third of the cases the children's abuse consisted of nothing more traumatic than touching and simple fondling.[120] Ordinary forgetting may thus account for some of the failure to recall the index event.

Second, although 45% of those under age four when abused recalled the mistreatment, the respondents whose abuse occurred at an earlier age were less likely to report it.  Also, about a quarter of the non-reporting subjects had experienced their index episode of abuse at age four or earlier.  These figures suggest that childhood amnesia contributed to the memory deficits observed in the study.

And, finally, the women were never actually asked during the follow-up interview whether they recalled the index episode.  They may have recalled the abuse but failed to report it when interviewed.

Williams believes such voluntary nondisclosure is unlikely.  She implies that the extent of sensitive or embarrassing information revealed by the women during the interview argues that the respondents were candid with the interviewer.

This interpretation is challenged, however, by the literature on nondisclosure.  For example, in another prospective study, Femina and colleagues [121] interviewed 69 adults known to have been abused years before.  During the interview, 18 of these minimized or denied any such history.  Femina and colleagues then performed a second, clarification interview with eight of these individuals, asking them directly about their abuse histories.  All acknowledged that they had actually recalled the mistreatment during the initial interview but had chosen not to reveal it.  Numerous other studies have similarly shown that people not infrequently fail to reveal all kinds of autobiographical information during interviews.[122]

In summary, William's 1994 investigation shows only that her respondents either failed to report their childhood abuse experiences or simply forgot them.  It does not provide cogent support for repression or dissociative amnesia [123]

D. DEFICIENCIES OF METAMEMORIAL JUDGMENTS

In section 3a of "Current Evidence," which discusses interviews that purportedly identify cases of "true repression," patients are asked to make judgments about whether or not they could, or did, remember at some earlier time.  For nearly two decades at least three problems with these metamemorial judgments have been widely recognized in the memory literature.  Brown and colleagues (1999) fail to discuss these difficulties.

First, such judgments typically correlate either poorly or not at all with actual memory performance (i.e., the correlations do not rise to a forensically acceptable standard).  Second, errors of omission are common (as when metamemorial judgments predict that a certain recollection will be absent, but memory tests reveal that it is actually present).  And third, errors of commission are common (as when such judgments predict that a certain memory will be present, but memory tests show that it is actually absent).[124]  Of course, the first problem's existence guarantees problems two and three.  It is for these three reasons that Schooler warns: "Given the problems inherent in retrospective claims of [memory] unavailability, we should be cautious in using [people's] retrospective reports as a source for conclusions about the actual prior state of their memories." [125]

E. ILLOGICAL STATEMENTS ABOUT THE LEGAL ASPECTS OF PSEUDOMEMORIES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

Brown and colleagues (1999) offer the courts several criteria to evaluate allegations that a psychotherapist has committed malpractice by implanting a false abuse-related memory in a patient.  One recommendation is that the therapist must have subjected the patient to an "extensive and rigorous pattern of systematically suggested misinformation within and across interviews." (pp. 81, 84)  Furthermore, Brown and colleagues believe the therapist is subject to legal sanction only if the "great proportion of abuse-related themes are unequivocally supplied by the [therapist] and do not originate with the patient." (p. 84)

These arguments simply will not fly.  Suppose the therapist haphazardly, rather than rigorously and systematically, indoctrinates the patient.  Is that therapist then immune from criticism for implanting pseudomemories?

Also, we and others [126] have repeatedly seen cases where the therapy transcripts clearly demonstrated that at least some of the abuse themes originated with the patients.  However, even though the beliefs originated with patients, the clinicians often vigorously encouraged the patients to devote therapy time to repeatedly elaborating on and discussing these themes, writing about them in journals, fantasizing about "what might have happened" during childhood, and searching between sessions for evidence confirming that abuse had actually occurred.  Some clinicians suggested during the first therapy session that the patients had symptoms of non-remembered abuse; others improperly used hypnosis to trawl for other memories, inappropriately placed patients in "abuse survivors' groups," or harshly accused patients of resisting if they did not generate new abuse memories quickly enough.  The clinicians did not supply "most of the content of the abuse-related themes" or "rigorously" suggest "misinformation within and across sessions."  Should these therapists also be immune from criticism for implanting pseudomemories?

A similarly illogical statement is found on page 85, where Brown and colleagues (1999) argue that a therapist can be considered to have implanted false memories only if the specific misinformation supplied by the psychotherapist is "uncritically" accepted by the patient.  But the authors offer no suggestions about how one assesses "uncritical acceptance."  Furthermore, what patient would uncritically accept a suggestion, coming out of a clear blue sky, that he or she was sexually mistreated as a child? [127]  No -- Brown and colleagues' argument gives psychotherapists far too much latitude.

Another blank check is given to therapists by a third idea, advanced on pages 855-86 of "Current Evidence."  There Brown and colleagues argue that therapists should not be held legally liable for false memories developing from extra-therapeutic sources.  But all mental health workers have a settled duty to discourage their patients' harmful and illogical beliefs, regardless of the source of those beliefs.  Therefore it seems to us that in legal cases a more reasonable suggestion is to examine the extent to which the therapist has attempted to reduce his or her patients' attachments to illogical beliefs unsupported by evidence.

F. A CYNICAL VIEW OF COURTS On page 126 of "Current Evidence," Brown and colleagues say: "The presumption applied in courts that reject repressed memory -- that every such memory is necessarily false -- is unscientific and unjust."  The comment implies that Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield believe courts are incapable of making principled and fine-grained determinations of valid versus invalid repressed-memory claims; those authors apparently believe that whenever a court renders a judgment adverse to the repressed-memory position, it does so not because of thoughtful consideration of the evidence presented to it, but because of prejudicial "presumption."

G. FLAWS IN DALENBERG, 1996

Brown and colleagues (1999) cite an investigation by Dalenberg [128] as one that "strikes at the heart of the false-memory controversy." (p. 74)  We agree, because the investigation vividly demonstrates some of the recovered-memory studies' deficiencies.

According to Brown and colleagues, Dalenberg "studied 17 women [patients who had] incest histories. . .  Patients, family members, and alleged [abusers] collaborated" in collecting evidence for or against the alleged mistreatment. (p. 74)  These statements provide further examples of Brown and colleagues' inaccuracies.  Dalenberg says "all subjects had accused their . . .  fathers of sexual or physical abuse" (p. 236) -- not of incest, as misstated by Brown and colleagues.  And because not all abuse allegations were confirmed, it is inaccurate to speak of incest "histories."

Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield believe Dalenberg's research "specifically addressed the accuracy of [abuse] memories recovered [during psychotherapy]." (p. 74)  Is this belief warranted?

After the father-daughter teams took a few months to search for their evidence, someone from the team reported it to Dalenberg -- who, while the daughters were gathering their evidence, was treating them in psychotherapy.  (Exactly who did the reporting is not stated by Dalenberg, but it was clearly the daughters.)  Dalenberg then rated the evidence as to how strongly it confirmed or disconfirmed the alleged childhood mistreatment.  She also interviewed each father, asking him "to say whether he believed the [abuse] memory to be true or false" (p. 242) and "spoke personally with each alleged witness" to the abuse. (p. 244)

The evidence obtained by the teams was submitted to raters.  Two of these were graduate students and six "were recruited based on their scores on a . . . survey of beliefs regarding recovered [and] false memory." (p. 244)  Of those recruited, three prospectively estimated "the percentage of abuse allegations that were objectively false [to be] between 15 and 50%," and the other three "believed fewer than 10% of abuse allegations were objectively false." (p. 244)  The article does not mention whether steps were taken to prevent Dalenberg's ratings from influencing the raters.

Given the multiple routes by which transferential and countertransferential distortions could creep into Dalenberg's data, the effect of allowing the daughters to convey the evidence for or against their own memories, the role diffusion exhibited by Dalenberg, and the bias of the raters, can anyone entertain any doubts as to the value of this study?  Of course.

CONCLUSIONS

In their recent article, Brown, Scheflin, and Whitfield have made a valiant attempt to salvage the concept of dissociative amnesia or repressed memory and to portray it as something generally accepted by scientists.  But in their paper, as in others like it, conceptual flaws, unsupported assertions, distortions of fact, false statements, and frank errors undermine the credibility of their conclusions.

The discussion above illustrates some of the most graphic of these weaknesses.  We hope this discussion will help to enforce a more rigorous and scientifically valid evaluation of the concept of dissociative amnesia.  As we have noted, it would not be technically difficult to employ properly designed, methodologically sound prospective studies to determine, once and for all, whether or not the concept is valid.  We continue to eagerly await such studies. But for now neither science nor the courts can responsibly accept dissociative amnesia as a valid entity.

[1] H.G. Pope, Jr., P.S. Olivia, J.I Hudson, J.A. Bodkin and A.J. Gruber, "Attitudes toward DSM-IV dissociative disorders diagnoses among board-certified American psychiatrists," American Journal of Psychiatry 156 (1999): 321-323.

[2] J.K Lalonde, J.I. Hudson, R.A. Gigante, and H.G. Pope, Jr., "Attitudes of American and Canadian psychiatrists toward DSM-IV dissociative disorders diagnoses," 49th annual meeting of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Toronto, September 1999.

[3] C. Perry, book review: "Memory, Trauma Treatment and the Law," International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 47 (1999): 366-374, p. 367.

[4] H.G. Pope, Jr. and J.I. Hudson, "'Recovered memory' therapy for eating disorders: Implications of the Ramona verdict," International Journal of Eating Disorders 19 (1996): 139-145; H.G. Pope, Jr., "Recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse: The Royal College of Psychiatrists issues important precautions," British Medical Journal 316 (1998): 488-489; H.G. Pope, Jr., "Recovered memories of childhood abuse," British Medical Journal 317 (1998): 1012.

[5] D. Brown, A.W. Scheflin, and C.L. Whitfield, "Recovered memories: The current weight of the evidence in science and in the courts," Journal of Psychiatry and Law 27 (1999): 5-156.

[6] I. Newton, "Mathematical principles of natural philosophy," in R.M. Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: W. Benton, 1982), p. 270.

[7] H.G. Pope, Jr. and J.I. Hudson, "Can memories of childhood sexual abuse be repressed?" Psychological Medicine 25 (1995): 121-126; H.G. Pope, Jr., J.I. Hudson, J.A. Bodkin and P. Olivia, "Questionable validity of `dissociative amnesia' in trauma victims," British Journal of Psychiatry 172 (1998): 210-215.

[8] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5.

[9] S. Brandon, J. Boakes, D. Glaser and R. Green, "Recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse: Implications for clinical practice," British Journal of Psychiatry 172 (1998): 296-307; C. McGinn, "Freud under analysis," New York Review of Books, November 4, 1999, pp. 20-24, and February 24, 2000, pp. 46-48; R. Ofshe and E. Watters, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994), pp. 32-36.

[10] F. Frankel, "Discovering new memories in psychotherapy: Childhood revisited, fantasy, or both?" New England Journal of Medicine 333 (1995): 591-595; E. Loftus, "The reality of repressed memories," American Psychologist 48 (1993): 518-537; D. Schacter, Searching for Memory (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 264.

[11] H.G. Pope, Jr., P.S. Oliva and J.I. Hudson, "The scientific status of research on repressed memories," in D.L. Faigman, D.H. Kaye, M.J. Saks and J. Sanders, Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1999), pp. 115-155.

[12] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5.

[13] Pope and Hudson, supra note 7; Pope, Hudson, Bodkin and Oliva, supra note 7.

[14] Brown, Schflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 30.

[15] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 28 (Italics in original).

[16] Pope, Oliva and Hudson, supra note 11.

[17] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 68.

[18] A.B. Silverman, H.Z. Reinherz and R.M. Giaconia, "The long-term sequelae of child and adolescent abuse: A longitudinal community study," Child Abuse and Neglect 20 (1996): 709-723.

[19] A. Piper, Jr., "What science says -- and doesn't say -- about repressed memories: A critique of Scheflin and Brown," Journal of Psychiatry & Law 25 (1997): 615-638.

[20] D.L. Corwin and E. Olafson, "Videotaped discovery of a reportedly unrecallable memory of child sexual abuse: Comparison with a childhood interview videotaped 11 years before," Child Maltreatment 2 (1997): 91-112.

[21] U. Neisser, "Jane Doe's Memories: Changing the past to serve the present," Child Maltreatment 2 (1997): 123-125.

[22] J.W. Schooler, "Reflections on a memory discovery," Child Maltreatment 2 (1997): 126-133

[23] Neisser, supra note 21, p. 123.

>[24] Piper, supra note 19, pp. 620-621.

[25] Piper, supra note 19, p. 619

[26] Piper, supra note 19, p. 622.

[27] D.D. Femina, C.A. Yeager, and D.O. Lewis, "Child abuse: Adolescent records vs. adult recall," Child Abuse and Neglect 14 (1990): 227-231.

[28] A.W. Burgess, C.R. Hartman, and T. Baker, "Memory presentations of childhood sexual abuse," Journal of Psychosocial Nursing 33 (1995): 9-16.

[29] Piper, supra note 19, pp. 624-625.

[30] Ofshe and Watters, supra note 9.

[31] M.T. Singer and R. Ofshe, "Thought reform programs and the production of psychiatric casualties," Psychiatric Annals 20 (1990): 188-193.

[32] Singer and Ofshe, supra note 31, pp. 189-190.

[33] J. Acocella, Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999); H. Merskey, "The manufacture of personalities: The production of multiple personality disorder," British Journal of Psychiatry 160 (1992): 327-340; D.A. Poole, D.S. Lindsay, A. Memon and R. Bull, "Psychotherapy and the recovery of memories of childhood sexual abuse: U.S. and British practitioners' opinions, practices, and experiences," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 63 (1995), 426-437; M. Pendergrast, Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives, 2nd edition (Hinesburg, VT: Upper Access, 1996); A. Piper, Jr., Hoax and Reality: The Bizarre World of Multiple Personality Disorder (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997).

[34] D. Finkelhor, Sexually Victimized Children (New York: Free Press, 1979).

[35] J. Briere and J. Conte, "Self-reported amnesia for abuse in adults molested as children," Journal of Traumatic Stress 6 (1993): 21-31, p. 23.

[36] C. Cameron, "Women survivors confronting their abusers: Issues, decisions and outcomes," Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 3 (1994): 7-35, p. 10.

[37] S. Feldman-Summers and KS Pope, "The experience of `forgetting' childhood abuse: A national survey of psychologists," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 (1994): 636-639, p. 636.

[38] S.N. Gold, D. Hughes, L. Hohnecker, "Degrees of repression of sexual abuse memories," American Psychologist 49 (1994): 441-442, p. 441.

[39]J.L. Herman and E. Schatzow, "Recovery and verification of memories of childhood sexual trauma," Psychoanalytic Psychology 4 (1987): 1-14, p. 3.

[40] W.E. Hovdestad and C.M. Kristiansen, "A field study of `false memory syndrome': Construct validity and incidence," Journal of Psychiatry and Law 24 (1996): 299-338, p. 307.

[41] R.P. Kluft, "The confirmation and disconfirmation of memories of abuse in DID patients: A naturalistic clinical study," Dissociation 8 (1995): 253-258, p. 254.

[42] C.M. Roe and M.F. Schwartz, "Characteristics of previously forgotten memories of sexual abuse: A descriptive study," Journal of Psychiatry and Law 24 (1996): 189-206, p. 192.

[43] T. Roesler and T. Wind, "Telling the secret: Adult women describe their disclosures of incest," Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9 (1994): 327-348, p. 329.

[44] V.A. van der Kolk and R. Fisler, "Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: Overview and exploratory study," Journal of Traumatic Stress 8 (1995), pp. 515-516.

[45] DM. Elliott and J. Briere, "Posttraumatic stress associated with delayed recall of sexual abuse: A general population study, " Journal of Traumatic Stress 8 (1995): 629-647.

[46] E. Loftus, S. Polonsky and M.T. Fullilove, "Memories of childhood sexual abuse: Remembering and repressing," Psychology of Women Quarterly 18 (1994): 67-84.

[47] C.S. Widom and S. Morris, "Accuracy of adult recollections of childhood victimization: Part 2. Childhood sexual abuse," Psychological Assessment 9 (1997):34-36.

[48] L.M. Williams, "Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 (1994): 1167-1176.

[49] Burgus, Hartman and Baker, supra note 28.

[50] J. Paris, "A critical review of recovered memories in psychotherapy: Part I -- trauma and memory," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 41 (1996): 201-205.

[51] Piper, supra note 19.

[52] J.H. Beichtman, K.J. Zucker, J.E. Hood, G.A. DaCosta, D. Akman and E. Cassavia, "A review of the short-term effects of child sexual abuse," Child Abuse and Neglect 15 (1991): 537-556; J.H. Beichtman, K.J. Zucker, J.E. Hood, G.A. DaCosta, D. Akman and E. Cassavis, "A review of the long-term effects of child sexual abuse," Child Abuse and Neglect 16 (1992): 101-118; K.A. Kendall- Tackett, L.M. Williams and D. Finkelhor, "Impact of sexual abuse on children: A review and synthesis of recent empitical studies," Psychological Bulletin 113 (1993): 164-180; B. Rind and P. Tromovitch, "A meta-analytic review of findings from national samples on psychological correlates of child sexual abuse," Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 237-255.

[53] C. Bagley, "Validity of a short measure of child sexual abuse for use in adult mental health surveys." Psychological Reports 66 (1990): 449-450.

[54] A.W. Scheflin and D. Brown, "Repressed memory or dissociative amnesia: What the science says," Journal of Psychiatry and Law 24 (1996): 143-188.

[55] P.M. Coons and V. Milstein, "Psychosocial disturbances in multiple personality: Characteristics, etiology, and treatment," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 47 (1986): 106-110.

[56] S. Taub, "The legal treatment of recovered memories of child sexual abuse," Journal of Legal Medicine 1 (1996): 183-214.

[57] P.J. Bauer, "What do infants recall of their lives? Memory for specific events by one- to two-year-olds," American Psychologist 51 (1996): 29-41.

[58] Bauer, supra note 57, p. 37.

[59] J.A. Usher and U. Neisser, "Childhood amnesia and the beginnings of memory for four early life events," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 122 (1993): 155-165.

[60] Usher and Neisser, supra note 59, p. 164.

[61] Widom and Morris, supra note 47.

[62] Widom and Morris, supra note 47, p. 44.

[63] Widom and Morris cite J. Garofalo and M.J. Hindelang, An Introduction to the National Crime Survey (U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, SD-VAD-4 1977) (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), and A.G. Turner, The San Jose Methods Test of Known Crime Victims (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service) (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972). See also E. Loftus, M. Garry and J. Feldman, "Forgetting sexual trauma: What does it mean when 38% forget?" Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 (1994): 1177-1181.

[64] Pope et al., supra note 11.

[65] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 39.

[66] W.D. Erickson, N.H. Walbek, and R.K. Seely, "Behavior patterns of child molesters," Archives of Sexual Behavior 17 (1988): 77-86.

[67] G.G. Abel, J.V. Becker and J. Cunningham-Rathner, "Complications, consent, and cognitions in sex between children and adults," International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 7 (1984): 89-103; A.C. Kinsey, W.B. Pomeroy, C.E. Martin and P.H. Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1953), pp. 120-121; J.A. Nelson, "Intergenerational sexual contact: A continuum model of participants and experiences," Journal of Sex Education and Therapy 15 (1989): 3-12; P. Okami, "Self-reports of `positive' childhood and adolescent sexual contacts with older persons: An exploratory study," Archives of Sexual Behavior 20 (1991): 437-457; T. Roesler, "Reactions to disclosure of childhood sexual abuse: The effect on adult symptoms," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 182 (1994): 618-624; T. Roesler and N. McKenzie, "Effects of childhood trauma on psychological adjustment in adults sexually abused as children," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 182 (1994): 145-150.

[68] J. Anderson, J. Martin, P. Mullen and S. Romans, "The prevalence of childhood sexual experiences in a community sample of women," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 32 (1993): 911-919; Beichtman et al., supra note 52; E. Levitt and C.M. Pinnell, "Some additional light on the childhood sexual abuse-psychopathology axis," International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 43 (1995): 145-162; D.S. Lindsay and E.D. Read, "'Memory work' and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse: Scientific evidence and public, professional, and personal issues," Psychology, Public Policy and the Law 1 (1995): 846-908; P.E. Mullen, J.L. Martin and J.C. Anderson, "Child sexual abuse and mental health in adult life," British Journal of Psychiatry 163 (1993): 721-732; J. Paris, supra note 50; J. Paris, "A critical review of recovered memories in psychotherapy: Part II -- trauma and therapy," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 41 (1996): 206-210. See also K.A. Kendall-Tackett, L.M. Williams, and D. Finkelhor, "Impact of sexual abuse on children: A review and synthesis of recent empirical studies," Psychological Bulletin 113 (1993): 164-180; Rind and Tromovitch, supra note 52; and B. Rind, P. Tromovitch and R. Bauserman, "A meta-analyticexamination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples." Psychological Bulletin 124 (1998): 22-53.

[69] L.L. Constantine, "The effects of early sexual experience: A review and synthesis of research," in L.L. Constantine and F.M. Martinson, eds., Children and Sex (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), pp. 217-244.

[70] D. Finkelhor, "Early and long-term effects of child sexual abuse: An update," Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 21 (1990): 325-330.

[71] Finkelhor, supra note 70, p. 328.

[72] T.W. Campbell, "Repressed memories and statutes of limitations: Examining the data and weighing the consequences," American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry 16 (1995): 25-51.

[73] A. Piper, "A skeptic considers, then responds to Cheit," Ethics and Behavior 9 (1999): 277-293.

[74] Ofshe and Watters, supra note 9.

[75] Ofshe and Watters, supra note 9, p. 32.

[76] Usher and Neisser, supra note 60.

[77] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5.

[78] Piper, supra note 19.

[79] Scheflin and Brown, supra note 54.

[80] Kluft, supra note 41.

[81] Roe and Schwartz, supra note 42.

[82] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 46.

[83] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 71.

[84] D.S. Lindsay and E.D. Read, "Psychotherapy and memories of childhood sexual abuse: A cognitive perspective," Applied Cognitive Psychology 8 (1994): 281-338.

[85] Lindsay and Read, supra note 84, p. 281.

[86] Brown, Scheflin and Whitfield, supra note 5, p. 68.

[87] Kendall-Tackett, Williams and Finkelhor, supra note 52.

[88] Brandon et al., supra note 9; J.F. Kihlstrom, "Hypnosis, delayed recall, and the principles of memory," International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 42 (1994): 337-345; S.J. Lynn, T.G. Lock, B. Meyers and D.G. Payne, "Recalling the unrecallable: Should hypnosis be used to recover memories in psychotherapy?" Current Directions in Psychological Science 6 (1997): 79-83; N.P. Spanos, Multiple Identities and False Memories (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1996), chapter 8.

[89] H.G. Pope, Jr., Psychology Astray: Fallacies in Studies of "Repressed Memory" and Childood Trauma (Boca Raton, FL: Upton, 1997); Pope et al, supra note 11.

[90]. Williams, supra note 48.

[91] Widom and Morris, supra note 47.

[92] Femina et al., supra note 27.

[93] Pope et al., supra note 11; Pope, supra note 89.

[94] D.F. Brown, A.W. Scheflin and D.C. Hammond, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law (New York: Norton, 1998), p. 156.

[95] R.J. McNally, book review: "Memory, Truama Treatment, and the Law, International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 47 (1999): 374-382. V[96] J.W. McCrary and W.S. Hunter, "Serial position curves in verbal learning," Science 117 (1953): 131-134; E.A. Feigenbaum and H.A. Simon, "A theory of the serial position effect," British Journal of Psychology 53 (1962): 307-320.

[97] McNally, supra note 95.

[98] Ofshe and Watters, supra note 9, p. 308.

[99] Loftus et al., supra note 63; Pope et al., supra note 11.

[100] T.P. Melchert, "Childhood memory and a history of different forms of abuse." Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 27 (1996): 438-446.

[101] Piper, supra note 19, 623.

[102] Pope, et al., supra note 7; Pope et al., supra note 11.

[103] Bagley, supra note 53.

[104] Burgess et al., supra note 28.

[105] Pope et al., supra note 7; Pope et al., supra note 11.

[106] Corwin and Olafson, supra note 20.

[107] Corwin and Olafson, supra note 20, p. 105.

[108] Corwin and Olafson, supra note 20, p. 106.

[109] Corwin and Olafson, supra note 20, p. 106.

[110] Pope et al., supra note 7; Pope et al., supra note 11.

[111] S. Duggal and L.A. Srofe, "Recovered memory of childhood sexual trauma: A documented case from a longitudinal study," Journal of Traumatic Stress 11 (1998): 301-321.

[112] A.P. Derdeyn, A. Poehailos and E. Seigle, "Adequate evaluation of divorce-related child sexual abuse allegations," Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law 22 (1994): 279-287; M.S. Elterman and M.F. Ehrenberg, "Sexual abuse allegations in child custody disputes," International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 14 (1991): 269-286.

[113] Derdeyn et al., supra note 112, p. 280.

[114] Derdeyn et al., supra note 112, p. 286.

[115] Widom and Morris, supra note 47.

[116] Pope, supra note 89; Pope et al., supra note 7; Pope et al., supra note 11.

[117] Widom and Morris, supra note 47, p. 36.

[118] Widom and Morris, supra note 47, pp. 36, 38.

[119] Widom and Morris, supra note 48.

[120] Williams, supra note 48; L.M. Williams, "Adult memories of child sexual abuse: Preliminary findings from a logitudinal study," American Society for the prevention of Child Abuse Advisor 5 (1992): 19-20.

[121] Femina et al., supra note 27.

[122] Loftus et al., supra note 63; Pope et al., supra note 11.

[123] Loftus et al., supra note 63.

[124] W. Schneider and M. Pressley, Memory Development Between 2 and 20 (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989); M. Pressley, J.G. Borkowski and J.T. O'Sullivan, "Children's metamemory and the teaching of memory strategies," in D.L. Forrest-Pressley, G.E. MacKinnon and T.G. Waller, eds., Metacognition, Cognition, and Human Performance (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985), pp. 111-153; M. Carroll, T.O. Nelson and A. Kirwan, "Tradeoff of semantic relatedness and degree of overlearning: Differential effects on metamemory and on long-term retention," Acta Psychologia 95 (1997): 239-253; J. Dunlosky and T.O. Nelson, "Similarity between the cue for judgments of learning (JOL) and the cue for test is not the primary determinant of JOL accuracy," Journal of Memory and Language 36 (1997): 34-39.

[125] J.W. Schooler, "Seeking the core; The issues and evidence surrounding recovered account of sexual trauma," Consciousness and Cognition 3 (1994): 452-469, p. 458.

[126] Acocella, supra note 33; B.L. Bottoms, P.R. Shaver and G.S. Goodman, "An analysis of ritualistic and religion-based child abuse allegations,"Law and Human Behavior 20 (1994): 1-34; Poole et al., supra note 33; Ofshe and Watters, supra note 9; Pendergrast, supra note 33; M.A. Polusny and V.M. Follette, "Remembering childhood sexual abuse: A national survey of psychologists' clinical practices, beliefs, and personal experiences," Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 27 (1996): 41-52.

[127] E. Bass and L. Davis, The Courage to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 86-91; R. Kluft, "The initial stages of treatment of multiple personality disorder patients," Dissociation 6 (1992): 145-161; Ofshe and Watters, supra note 9, p. 89.

[128] C.J. Dalenberg, "Accuracy, timing, and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse," Journal of Psychiatry and Law 24 (1996): 229-275.

Studies alleged by Brown et al. to provide evidence of dissociative amnesia: claims of Brown et al. vs. actual information from original papers.

BSW: "Although Cardena and Spiegel say that 'neither partial or full amnesia for the traumatic event was frequently reported,' they did find it in about 3%-5% of subjects in the 'severely affected group.'"

TRUTH: No such statement exists, either on page 476 or elsewhere in the paper.  The only remotely similar statement in the paper is that "some anecdotal accounts that were given to the first author by a different group of more severely affected individuals suggest that partial forms of amnesia may have occurred...(p. 476, emphasis added).

BSW: "Two of 38 lightning victims suffered amnesia for the event."

TRUTH: BSW fail to mention that the two amnestic boys were "side-flash victims" who "suffered medical complications."  Thus, these boys in effect received an electroconvulsive treatment from lightning -- and ECT has been known for more than a half-century to cause simple biological amnesia, as discussed by Pope et al.

BSW: "Flash flood survivors suffered a variety of symptoms, including amnesia, paralysis, and fainting spells."

TRUTH: Although amnesia is mentioned generically as one of several "pseudoneurological" symptoms assessed, the authors do not state, nor present any evidence, that any subject actually forgot the flash flood.

BSW: "Reported that 7% of the children showing PTSD symptoms following a flood disaster were unable to recall parts oF what happened to them."

TRUTH: BSW fail to mention that some children were as little as 2 years old at the time of the flood -- and hence almost certain to experience childhood amnesia, as discussed by Pope et al. in the original review.

BSW: "Amnesia was reported significantly more often in the victims relative to a control group."

TRUTH: No such statement appears anywhere in the actual article.  The only similar statement in the article is that "a subgroup of avoidance symptoms -- amnesia, disinterest and detachment -- was very powerful in differentiating the site victims from control subjects" (p. 473).  The authors do not state, nor present any evidence, that any subject actually forgot the pipeline disaster.

BSW: "A total of 32% of the older children who directly experienced the Armenian earthquake suffered amnesia."

TRUTH: Although "psychogenic amnesia" is listed in Table 2 of the paper, BSW fail to mention that this interview item was also endorsed by 68% of 25 comparison children who were not exposed to the trauma! BSW also fail to state that 49 of the 50 children had symptoms of "re-experiencing" the earthquake, including "intrusive recollections" in 46 of the 49.  There is no statement nor any evidence that any child forgot the earthquake.

BSW: "Some child survivors of the nazi holocaust 'continued to struggle with memories, whether there is too much of it, or too little.'"

TRUTH: BSW fail to mention that the author's quote refers primarily to young children who lost parents to the Holocaust when very young, and hence had only a few early childhood memories of parents.  No statement is made nor evidence provided that any subject forgot his involvement in the Holocaust, as discussed by Pope et al.

BSW: "`Loss of memory' or `failing memory' was found in 78% of Norwegian camp survivors."

TRUTH: The paper never states that "loss of memory" was found in 78% of cases.  Although "failing memory" was reported in 78%, BSW fail to mention that 96% of subjects tested had an "organic pattern" on neuropsychological testing, 92% had neurological symptoms, and 90% had abnormalities in cerebrospinal fluid, electroencephalogram and/or pneumoencephalogram.

BSW: "20% of Bosnian refugees suffered amnesia."

TRUTH: This 20% represents only 4 subjects, 3 of whom were scored as having amnesia "once a week or less, a little bit, once in a while," and only 1 as having amnesia "2-4 times per week, somewhat," or greater.  No subject is described as having continuous amnesia for the experience of ethnic cleansing.

TABLE 2.

APPELLATE-LEVEL DECISIONS 1995 TO THE PRESENT INVOLVING THE VALIDITY OF REPRESSED/RECOVERED MEMORY.

A.  Cases addressing the validity of repressed/recovered memory as a basis for tolling the statute of limitations.

1. Cases "FOR" (court appeared to accept the validity of repressed/recovered memories, or at least did not explicitly reject the concept):

DOE v. ROE 955 P.2d 951 (AZ 1998)

Appeals court accepted repressed memories as valid but remanded the case to allow jury to decide on plaintiff's motion to toll the statute of limitations.  "...[W]e have accepted the case as presented by the parties, and have assumed the phenomenon of repressed memory exists and the concept could be applied to Plaintiff's discovery and tolling claims."

HOULT v. HOULT 57 F. 3d 1 (MA 1995)

Defendant David Hoult did challenge the validity of repressed/recovered memories at initial trial in Dec. 1993.  The appeals court denied his right to challenge it after the fact, but did not explicitly rule on its validity.

PHINNEY v. MORGAN 654 N.E.2d 77 (MA 1995)

Court accepted existence of repressed memory, citing the Hoult case.  However, the court ruled that the plaintiff's could not toll the statute of limitations because of evidence that they were aware of the injury prior to the alleged date on which they discovered it.

2. Cases "AGAINST" (court appeared not to accept the validity of repressed/recovered memories; in all cases below, the court denied plaintiff's request to toll the statute of limitations on the basis of repressed/recovered memories):

FRANKLIN v. STEVENSON 94-090177PI (UT 1999)

"[T]he trial court erred in not finding the plaintiff's experts' testimonies [regarding recovered memories] inadmissible."

ENGSTROM v. ENGSTROM Cal. App., 2nd App. Dist., Div. 2 (CA 1997)

"[Repressed memory] is not generally accepted as valid and reliable by a respectable majority of the pertinent scientific community..."

DALRYMPLE v. BROWN 701 A.2d 164 (PA 1997)

"[T]he validity of repressed memory theory is subject to considerable debate in the psychological community and some courts have rejected its admissibility."

JOHN BBB DOE v. ARCHDIOCESE OF MILWAUKEE et al. 565 N.W.2d 94 (WI 1997)

"...[T]he consensus of professional organizations reviewing the debate is that there is no consensus on the truth or falsity of these memories."

S.V. v. R.V. 933 S.W.2d 1 (TX 1996)

"...[T]he scientific community has not reached consensus on how to gauge the truth or falsity of 'recovered' memories."

TRAVIS v. ZITER et al. 681 So.2d 1348 (AL 1996)

"[T]here is no consensus of scientific thought in support of the repressed memory theory." P>DOE et al. v. MASKELL et al. 679 A.2d 1087 (MD 1996)

"We are unconvinced that repression exists as a phenomenon separate and apart from the normal process of forgetting."

M.E.H et al. v. L.H. et al. 669 N.E. 2d 1228 (IL 1996)

"We believe the discovery rule does not apply to cases in which the plaintiff alleges that she repressed the conscious awareness of sexual abuse as a child and remembered it years later."

HUNTER v. BROWN 546 N.W.2d 1 (TN 1996)

"We find that there is simply too much indecision in the scientific community as to the credibility of repressed memory."

LEMMERMAN v. FEALK and WILLIFORD v. BIESKE 534 N.W.2d 695 (MI 1995)

"[W]e cannot conclude with any reasonable degree of confidence that factfinders could fairly and reliably resolve the questions before them, given the state of the art regarding repressed memory and the absence of objective verification."

B. Additional cases in which the court addressed the validity of repressed/recovered memory in the absence of a statute of limitations issue.

Cases "AGAINST" (court appeared NOT TO ACCEPT the validity of repressed/recovered memories):

STATE of NEW HAMPSHIRE v. HUNGERFORD and STATE of NEW HAMPSHIRE v. MORAHAN 698 A.2d 1244 (NH 1997)

"The phenomenon of recovery of repressed memories has not yet reached the point where we may perceive these particular recovered memories as reliable."

STATE of NEW HAMPSHIRE v. WALTERS 697 A.2d 916 (NH 1997)

"[W]e conclude, as we did in Hungerford, that `[t]he indicia of reliability present in the particular memories in [this] case [] do not rise to such a level that they overcome the divisive state of the scientific debate on the issue.'"

C. Cases in which a lower court assessed the validity of repressed/recovered memory after hearing the case on remand from an appellate-level court.

Cases "AGAINST" (court appeared NOT TO ACCEPT the validity of repressed/recovered memories):

STATE of RHODE ISLAND v. QUATTROCCHI C.A. No. P92-3759 (RI 1999)

[on remand from the Rhode Island Supreme Court 681 A.2d 879 (RI 1996)] "The State has not met its burden of establishing that repressed recollection is reliable and admissible as scientific evidence."

LOGERQUIST v. DANFORTH et al. CV 92-16309 (AZ 1998)

[on remand from the Arizona Court of Appeals 932 P.2d 281 (AZ 1996)] "[T]his Court has concluded that the theories advanced by Plaintiff's experts are not generally accepted in the relevant scientific community of traumamemory researchers."

BARRETT v. HYLDBURG 94-CVS-793 (NC 1998)

[on remand from the North Carolina Court of Appeals 487 S.E.2nd 803 (NC 1997)] "There has been no general acceptance in the relevant scientific community of the theory of repressed memory."

Footnote: Many other cases involving repressed/recovered memory and/or childhood sexual abuse were evaluated for the above list, but were excluded for various reasons. These included:

A. Cases where repressed/recovered memory was asserted, but did not enter into the court's final decision because other legal arguments took precedence:

RAMONA v. RAMONA 66 Cal. Rptr.2d 766 (CA 1997)

[recovered memories using sodium amytal]

". . .[I]nadmissible under Kelly due to the lack of general acceptance in the scientific community of the reliability of memories recalled after a sodium amytal interview."

BORAWICK v. SHAY 68 F.3d 597 (CT 1996)

[recovered memories using hypnosis]

"The fact remains that the literature has not yet conclusively demonstrated that hypnosis is a consistently effective means to retrieve repressed memories of traumatic past experiences accurately."

B. Other sexual abuse cases excluded from the above list where repressed/recovered memory was asserted in attempting to toll the statute of limitations, but did not enter into the court's final decision: Albright v. White 503 S.E.2d 860 (WV 1998); Harkness v. Fitzgerald et al. 701 A.2d 370 (ME 1997); Hunter v. Brown 955 S.W.2d 49 (TN 1997); M.E.H et al. v. L.H. et al. 685 N.E.2d 335 (IL 1997); Swackhammer v. Widnall 1997 U.S. App. Lexis 18955 (WA 1997); Florez v. Sargeant III and Duncan v. Moonshadow 917 P.2d 250 (AZ 1996); Woodroffe v. Hansenclever 540 N.W.2d 45 (IA 1995).

C. Cases excluded because victims claimed to have always remembered sexual abuse but sought to toll the statute of limitations on the grounds that they failed to appreciate the "causal connection" between the abuse and later harm: W.J.L. v. Bugge 573 N.W.2d 677 (MN 1998); Nolde v. Frankie 949 P.2d 511 (AZ 1997); Blackowiak v. Kemp 546 N.W.2d 1 (MN 1996); Sellery v. Cressey 55 Cal.Rptr.2d 706 (CA 1996); Frideres et al. v. Schiltz et al. 540 N.W.2d 261 (IA 1995); Lent v. Doe 55 Cal.Rptr.2d 951 (CA 1995); Roark v. Crabtree 893 P.2d 1058 (UT 1995); K.B. v. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America et al. 538 N.W.2d 152 (MN 1995).

D. Cases involving repressed/recovered memory, but excluded from the above list because they were remanded to a lower court and where no subsequent lower court decision is available: Clay v. Kuhl 696 N.E.2d 1245 (IL 1998); Kelly et al. v. Marcantonio et al. 678 A.2d 873 (RI 1996); Peterson v. Huso 552 N.W.2d 83 (ND 1996); Sheehan v. Sheehan 901 S.W.2d 57 (MO 1995).