False Memories

Unfortunately the therapist is caught in a 'catch 22', if on one side the experimental literature is to be believed then any form of memory work may lead the patient to recover false memories. However on the other side the patient needs to be helped to resolve lingering trauma. "Patients with genuine abuse memories have the right to expect proper treatment. Equally those with no abuse history have the right to scientifically based therapy that doesn't lead to a false memory" (Scotford, 1999). Arguably psychotherapy as a profession needs to rethink certain key issues surrounding it's practices and supportive evidence for such practices.
This applies to experimental research; a trend has developed for those in the profession to implicate their results with this current debate such as that done by Roediger and McDermott (1995) (For commentary on their arguments see Freyd & Gleaves, 1996), implicating miss-associations in word recall to the creation of false memories in therapy. Such nuisance research brings down the credibility of genuinely related research and the profession as a whole.
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