Betrayal Trauma and Memory

1
Betrayal Trauma and Memory

• The Link between
• repression and recovery of memories and life
  threatening betrayal

2
Background - Sexual Abuse

• Historically, reported statistics varied
• Kinsey (1953)
• 1 in 4 women reported childhood sexual abuse
• Weinberg (1955)
• 1 to 2 cases of incest per year, per each million
  U.S. citizens
• Finkelhor (1975)
• 19 females and 9 males
• Henderson (1975)
• 1.1 to 1.9 per million people
• Timnick (1985)
• 27 females, 16 males
• Russel (1986)
• 16 of females were were sexually abused prior to
  18 years old
• Pope and Hudson (1995)
• 10 of women and 5 of men endured serious
  childhood abuse. (14 million adults in the US)

3
Background Lost and Recovered Memory

• Disparity between clinical practitioners and
  laboratory/cognitive scientists regarding memory.
• Clinicians reporting loss and then recovery of
  traumatic memories
• Pierre Janet (1889), Breuer and Freud (1893),
• WW I - Meyers (1915), Southard (1919)
• WW II Sargant and Slater (1941)
• Vietnam War van der Kolk, 1987

4
Background Lost and Recovered Memory

• False Memory Syndrome
• 1980s Day-Care Abuse Hysteria
• Kern County, McMartin, Wee Care
• ReligiousTolerance.org
• Lawrence Wright The New Yorker, 1993
• Remembering Satan
• Ingram case (Olympia)
• Confession followed by recantation by accused
  perpetrator
• Presented as modern day Salem Witch Trial
• Wright inferred that he had documented 1000s of
  cases of cases of false accusations.
• In Ethics on Trial Trash and Flash Threaten to
  Corrupt the American Media,Judith Herman noted
  that when confronted, Wright answered that he had
  only documented one case.
• The Facade of Scientific Documentation
• Many cognitive scientists also rejected concept
  of delayed recall or accuracy of retrieved
  memories. They had not experienced it in
  laboratory conditions.
• Link to Elizabeth Loftus article, 1995

5
Background Lost and Recovered Memory

• In 1990s Cognitive Scientists start to take
  Recovered Memory seriously
• Freyd, in 1996, published Betrayal Trauma
• Airline near-collision story
• Clarified/standardized terminology and techniques
• Utilized and expanded latest knowledge related to
  memory
• Eliminated diminutive terminology when referring
  to victims
• Mechanic, Resnick and Griffen in 1998 studied
  memory in 92 rape victims
• Within 2 weeks following rape 37 of the subjects
  experienced significant amnesia
• At 3 months only 16 of the completing subjects
  had significant amnesia
• Conclusions
• Following rape there is a high incidence of
  recovered memory
• Amnesia and recovered memory occur more often in
  response to victimization by known perpetrators
• Dissociation, but not ordinary memory processes
  like forgetting seems to play a primary role in
  the encoding, storage and retrieval of traumatic
  memories

6
Substantiated Case Informationof Recovered
Memories

• Brown University Site - Case information and
  Scholarly Research

7
Betrayal Trauma

• Jennifer Freyd, PhD, University of Oregon
• University of Oregon - Link

8
Betrayal Tauma

• Addresses both How and Why we forget traumatic
  experiences.
• How
• Narrative memory bypassed
• When recalled, majority of subjects report that
  they initially experienced their memories as
  sensations and affects
• Why (Think, survival!)
• Normal trauma (remembered)
• Important to remember the event, so as not to
  repeat it
• Betrayal Trauma (not remembered)
• Two dimensional model
• Terror and threats to life bodily harm
• Betrayal and threats to social survival
• Childhood sexual abuse is more likely to be
  forgotten if it is perpetrated by a parent or
  trusted caregiver in order for the victim to
  preserve the attachment.

9
Freyd's Two-Dimensional Model for Traumatic
Events
10
Understanding Mechanisms - How

• Traditional model of memory
• Conceptualized as a thing
• Looks at memory as coherent, single, system
• Encoding, storing, retrieval
• A more recent view of memory
• A component of a multitude of other systems
• Brain is multifaceted
• For each type of learning there is associated
  memory
• PET scans provide evidence that information
  stored in memory is linked to related mental
  mechanisms
• Object Knowledge, Multiple modules processing
  events in parallel
• Roe and Schwartz (1996)
• 60 of their abused inpatients reported their
  first recovered memory of abuse as somatosensory
  flashback.

11
Freyd - Mental Processing Clusters
External events
Mental processing clusters
Tactile perception / memory
Insect on skin
Cheater Detector (negative affect)
Abuse from parent
Social event comprehension / memory
Conversation in next room
Learning parenting skills
12
Selective Attention
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• J. Ridley Stroop (1935) impact of intrusive
  information and automatic processing in attempts
  at selective attention.

13
Selective Attention
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2
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5
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888
99999
555

• J. Ridley Stroop (1935) impact of intrusive
  information and automatic processing in attempts
  at selective attention.

14
Besel A. van der Kolkeffects of emotional
arousalon declarative memory
Sensory Organs
Prefrontal Cortex (integration and Planning)
Thalamus (sensory input)
Amygdala (significance)
Hippocampus (cognitive maps)
15
Freyd - Mental Processing Clusters(with
informational blockages)
External events
Mental processing clusters
Tactile perception / memory
Insect on skin
Cheater Detector (negative affect)
X
X
Abuse from parent
Social event comprehension / memory
X
Conversation in next room
Learning parenting skills
16
In Summary

• Freyd
• Abuse and interpersonal victimization is a
  staggering problem
• Some people forget the abuse
• Forgetting is more likely when the perpetrator
  was a care giver
• Memory accuracy is separate from memory
  persistence
• People have unscientific and biased ideas about
  these issues

17
In Summary

• Freyd
• What needs to change?
• We need to stop confusing the persistence of a
  memory with its accuracy because there is no
  compelling evidence that a memory is more or less
  accurate if it is continuous compared with
  recovered
• There is evidence that memories are more likely
  to be forgotten if the perpetrator is a care
  giver