[lbo-talk] Re: [Marxism] the politics of paranoia

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Thu Mar 10 17:34:16 PST 2005


On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:44:44 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes:
> >"recovered memory" (not repressed memory), with some REMOTE
> >connections to psychoanalysis, was more or less a creation of the
> >new "feminist" therapies of the 1970's, most of them decidedly not
> >Freudian, and, for many of them, the main enemy was men, as
> fathers,
> >lovers, potential rapists, etc. I really defy you to show me a
> >"liberal feminist psychoanalyst" who propagated this "recovered
> >memory" crap. I think Ofra Bikel did an eyeopening documentary on
> >this 10-12 years ago.
> >
> >steve heeren
>
> I've seen the same phenomenon refereed to by various terms --
> "recovered memory," "repressed memory," and "false memory" (the last
>
> term used by skeptics) -- both in popular magazines and scholarly
> literature.
>


> Initially, most clients who believed that they recovered their
> repressed memory of sexual abuse were women and children, but
> nowadays an increasing number of men, too, seem to suffer from the
> same idea, as some of the Catholic Church sex scandals, which has
> given a second wind to the false memory syndrome, show.

In the Father Shanley case in Massachusetts, the role of "repressed memory" was basically of allowing the case against him to go forward without running afoul of the statute of limitations, since under Massachusetts law, the time period under which the law applies can, in cases of sexual molestation of minors, begin, if a judge so rules, not from the period when the crime allegedly occurred but rather from the time the victim, who has allegedly "repressed" the memory of the crime, has "recovered" his memory of the alleged incident. So basically, the testimony from the prosecutors and the victim, or alleged victim, was arguably, at least in part, an artifact of the requirements of the statute of limitations which would have otherwise run out in this case. Interestingly enough, the defense in this case called Elizabeth Loftus as their only witness, in order to testify to the lack of scientific standing of the idea of "repressed memory," but that was to no avail in this case.

Jim F.


> --
> Yoshie
>
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