Choice Reviews Online · 1995 · 353 citations · 0 references
Social SciencesPsychologySocial PsychologyClinical PsychologyMemoryPsychotherapyFalse MemoryMental IllnessFalse Autobiographical MemoryFalse Memory FormationRecovered Memory
Incest allegations have surged in public consciousness, fueled by media coverage and recovered‑memory therapy that encourages patients to recall long‑buried experiences. The authors aim to trace the origins of recovered‑memory controversies to Freud and show how this debate will shape future psychology. They demonstrate that recovered memories are often false, fabricated through suggestive techniques such as hypnosis, and that inadequate therapist training and institutional confusion exacerbate the crisis, urging a halt to the harmful craze.
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.