York University’s False Memories disappoints

First of all I want to say that I love York University. I earned my Psychology degree from there. I enjoyed carrying a York University binder at the University of Toronto during Grad studies just to keep things interesting. I obviously love the University of Toronto as well. I received a lovely coffee cup from York University Alumni a few days ago for attending webinars. I cannot complain about what I have learned from either universities, but yesterday I was disappointed. First, I asked in the Question portion if I could get a copy of the slides. I received no answer and then I made a comment and asked about research and received no reply. This is a first. No matter which live webinar or seminar etc…when a question exists, there is usually some sort of reply. Apparently 500 people had registered. Not all are Canadians. I was really excited about attending this. It began with an organization representing Victims. However, what was brought on was Therapists being responsible for creating false memories during therapy and a case was mentioned where a person after therapy no longer wanted to have contact with her family because she had memories of abuse which we were informed, did not exist. Now, I am thinking, how is it known it did not exist? Then they talked about a bill about stopping this from happening. By now I am scratching my head wondering what I have attended. I have read articles a long time ago regarding therapists responsible for implanting false memories. It was before I became a therapist. I studied memory in my undergrad and therefore I found the research depicted in this seminar very basic and not based on trauma. Then the Host named a book written by a therapist and trashed it. Maybe I should write a book on therapy and see who trashes mine - just for the excitement. This Psychologist Host was also surprised when a speaker who had talked about false memories, began receiving death threats. Now that is becoming common place and I think it is not surprising at all. However, I also believe that the culprits should be charged. I was still trying to figure out what I was attending. First of all I find it in very poor taste to publicly demean any therapist’s book to the world. If you believe that the book is harmful or the therapist is causing harm than there is a complaint process. The therapist is investigated and then it is posted for the world to see. One speaker with slides indicated that memory is malleable and reconstructed which is true. The slide also revealed that as of April 2021, 375 people were falsely imprisoned based on eye witness identification. Of 61 cases, the average time served was 14 years; 29% confessed. I had just recently watched a documentary of a person who had confessed but was innocent of killing his child. This was in the States. There were books mentioned which would be interesting such as “Picking Cotton” Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption and The Lawyer’s guide to the Forensic Sciences. What I was hearing during this webinar was sloppy police work. But then again, I don’t have all the facts in any of this to make a clear assessment. The man Cotton was falsely accused of rape. This is probably in the States because I cannot remember anyone in Canada serving so much time. Again that would not take too much time to look up. The survivor in this case had reported that that she would remember the man who raped her because she studied his face to be able to identify him. However, she was shown him in two separate incidents and so she recalled seeing him before. So, when she saw him the second time, in her mind there was that recognition of him being her rapist. He was cleared by DNA. This makes me wonder of when this occurred because we have had DNA evidence for some time now. I don’t know how dated this is or if it is sloppy police work. Now there is some work in changing policies - Policy and procedure recommendations for the collection and preservation of eye witnesses Id evidence (2020). Jeopardy in the Courtroom 2020, Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck (sp). Then the topic of children came up and how reliable are they? They reported that children as young as four are able to remember into adulthood. “Tell me what happened” was the phrase suggested for questioning them. I know that police are trained to ask open ended questions. Personally I think that the police in Canada are trained quite well. Now, that doesn’t mean that there are no problems with how some incidents are investigated. However, I have a problem of an all or nothing concept - All police are great or all are bad. I see this as a disturbing trend. Even yesterday two Officers were injured trying to break up a homeless encampment. The arrested offenders were demonstrators having nothing to do with the encampment. We need to take assaults against the police very seriously. Back to the webinar. The question asked: Is opening up memories beneficial? Of course the Psychologist annoyed me again when she blurted out that when clients come to see you for a reason you should stick to that. Really? Really? It was in my undergrad that our Prof Psychologist with a private practice revealed that a person would see him for one reason and it would be something else entirely different that was the cause of her anxiety. One speaker said that dreams can be a source of false memories. Our host asked him about hypnosis. He told her to stay away from it. One of my professors at York had studied hypnosis and was disappointed as well. According to her if my “memory” serves me well, it relaxed the client but was not very effective for anything else. I suppose she isn’t at York University anymore if this question is being posed to a visiting lecturer. Now I will provide my perspective if “memory” is serving me right. My education at York University is a grounded one which is why I was so disappointed with this webinar. There are things that I simply cannot talk about because I think it would be unethical in providing my views. However what I will say is that research is extremely important. The reason I took a different direction for my Masters is because I don’t want to do research. However, that is getting more difficult to avoid. In Canada we have a process, a legal process that Lawyers and Police need to abide in. There are rules to abide in for every aspect. The court and only the court room is a place to determine if a person is guilty of a crime, not public opinion. There is a legal process. When this process is abused or not abided by then a case can be thrown out of court. It is a more complex system but I am trying to keep it short and simple. Now perhaps I was missing the picture during this webinar. It spoke of false memories as basic false memories and the research provided was not based on therapists being responsible for instilling false memories regarding abuse. If we are going to make a statement such as that then it requires supporting evidence. If we are going to bash a therapist’s book perhaps I would like the opportunity to read it first. Then again perhaps that is better left in a classroom where there can be some serious research and debate. What I can tell you is that aside from my education which is clearly important, I have a wealth of experience. However, I am a student for life. I am consistently weaving myself. I have had clients who have suffered at the hands of therapists in conversion therapy. This was before it was regulated. I have seen the harm. When I have a new client, I will ask how I can help them, what they would like work with etc….However, what clients need is to feel safe and validated. I believe my clients. I have heard so much about human suffering. I have heard of child abuse, sexual abuse, sexual assault’s etc…..Last night I was watching a documentary of Hoko Horam where a child of 14 years of age was raped by 10 men and found bleeding by the 18 year teen forced to help abduct her or she herself would be killed. The 14 year old had been captured in a village and her parents killed trying to prevent the kidnapping. The 18 year old had also been taken from her family when she was 14. One of these terrorists were holding her arm and her brother was holding her other arm trying to protect her until he was stabbed. She fainted and her mother fainted. She awoke in the woods, in their custody. This 18 year old could hear the screams throughout the night and was told to bring the girl food. The girl did not eat or drink but died alone because the 18 year old was not allowed to be with her. The amount of tragedy that occurs and the horrors that people experience is horrendous world wide. Fortunately in our country and in the West we have laws to protect all of us equally. That is something that needs to continue because in recent years we have observed how delicate democracy can be. When I have a client who has suffered sexually by a parent, a step parent, a family relative, a family friend, you bet I believe him and her. When a veteran suffers PTSD, you bet I believe him and her. This is trauma. I have mentioned a three day sexual assault course, I took in a previous career. I shall mention it again here. To introduce us to the course we had a survivor of sexual abuse. She told us she was raped growing up, by her biological father and brother. She was strong enough and brave enough to lay a complaint with the OPP Officer leading the course. She said she was able to pour out everything because the Officer never looked at her watch. In this situation the mother told her that there was never any such abuse that had occurred and that it was all made up. The mother told her daughter that she was shaming the family and that she was no longer welcome. What a start to a program! I later asked the Officer if it was a conscious effort not to look at her watch. It wasn’t. I tell my clients that they can report such incidence to the police. I tell them because it is important for them to know that they have options. They can make their own decisions. I see clients who don’t know what is bothering them, why they can’t sleep or eat or drink too much, are aggressive etc…….And sometimes but not always people do need to look at their past to make peace with it and move forwards, depending on the individual and what they bring to the therapy room. How many parents will admit sexually abusing their children? Deny, deny deny. Will there be mistakes? Of course. My job is helping people. It is up to them if they want a relationship or not. I will talk about that more in my talk about couple and family therapy. For now I said my peace of false memories. There are certain situations that are so terrifying that the body responds to the trauma. Yes, in general we all do have false memories. There is just too much information which is stored in our brain. It is all there. We perceive things differently. You can have two brothers in the same scenario as children and both remember things quite differently as adults. That is normal. If we are going to talk about false memories of abuse I want to see more specific data supporting that statement. What I associated the slides with was elementary - Watson. I am excited about tonight. I will be attending a Sisters in Crime event and Michael Kaufman is the guest speaker who recently became a member of Sisters in Crime. I studied a few of his books in Social Science at York University, Man and Masculinity. So,,,,,excited…. Take care of yourself.