Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria"In the last decade, reports of incest have exploded into the national consciousness. Magazines, talk shows, and mass market paperbacks have all jumped into the fray, as many Americans - primarily women - have come forward with graphic and true stories of sexual and psychological abuse. Many of these stories, however, have emerged from recovered memory therapy, a process by which the therapist leads the patient to recall long-buried memories." "Now the Pulitzer Prize-winning social psychologist Richard Ofshe and Mother Jones writer Ethan Watters demonstrate that these recovered memories can be false, fabricated in the highly charged atmosphere of therapy, usually through questionable techniques such as hypnosis. Ofshe and Watters not only take to task poorly trained therapists - and in many states no real clinical experience is required to practice - they also show how the mental health establishment has actually added to the confusion. Ofshe and Watters trace the problem back to its source - Sigmund Freud - and illuminate how and why the debate about recovered memories will drive psychology in the future." "Making Monsters is groundbreaking science with powerful stories. It comes at a time when parents and friends of recovered memory patients, wrongly accused of violent physical and emotional abuse, are banding together, searching for real answers to difficult questions. Timely and controversial, this book exposes a profound social and psychological crisis, and will curb a popular craze that is destroying thousands of families. Its message cannot be ignored."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Contents
The Myths of Memory | 15 |
Effort After Meaning | 45 |
Symptoms of Pseudoscience | 65 |
Copyright | |
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Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria Richard Ofshe,Ethan Watters No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
adult alter personalities Anne Anne's asked Barbara Bass and Davis behavior believe Braun bulimia child abuse Child Sexual Abuse childhood Christine client Clinical clinicians confirm Considering Courage to Heal created daughter described diagnosis Dissociation Dissociative Disorders dream eating disorders Eileen emotional evidence experience fantasy father feelings Feldman Fredrickson Freud happened Helen Herman hypnosis hypnotic Ibid idea images imagined incest Jane Journal later memories of abuse memory repression mental-health Michelle Remembers mind molestation mother Multiple Personality Disorder murder pain parents past-life Paul penis envy problems programs Prozan psychiatric psychotherapy question rape recovered memory movement recovered memory therapy remember reported repressed memories ritual abuse satanic abuse satanic cult satanic-cult scene seems sessions sexual abuse Stephanie Stephanie's stories subjects suggestion survivors symptoms talk techniques tell Terr Terr's theories therapists therapy setting told trance trauma treatment truth uncover victims visualizations women writes