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The Epistemological Politics Of"False Memory Syndrome", Michele Blatzheim

Theses and Dissertations

In the 1990s the psy-disciplines found themselves embroiled in one of the most acrimonious conflicts these fields have ever experienced. Often called the “Memory Wars”, this conflict emerged from the growing number of people, overwhelmingly women, alleging that a parent, overwhelmingly fathers, had sexually abused them in childhood based on previously inaccessible memories. The conflict was roughly split between clinicians who saw such delayed recall as relatively common among trauma survivors and a group of experimental psychologists who were skeptical of the veracity of such memories. The latter group would eventually ally themselves to an advocacy organization, the False Memory …