Talk:False memory syndrome

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Medicine This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctor's mess.
Start This page has been rated as Start-Class on the quality assessment scale
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance assessment scale
WikiProject on Psychology
Portal		 This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, which collaborates on Psychology and related subjects on Wikipedia. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it needs.

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed.
Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.
Archive
Archives
Archive 1 (prior to 2008)


Contents

[edit] talk page archived

The talk page was getting long, so threads dated prior to 2008 have been archived to /Archive 1. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] tags added on neutrality and balance

I have added these tags, because IMO, it appears that most of the article presents the point of view of the FMSF and affiliated orgs. My hope is that additional data can be added to the article to balance these views. Abuse truth (talk) 02:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur with the addition of the tags. The article is currently far from unbiased. It needs a major rewrite and solid references to bring it to WP:NPOV. It will take time but it can be done. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
This article is terrifically POV, and rife with weasel words. It needs serious attention, ideally the attention of someone well-informed and reasonably impartial about false memory/recovered memory. Failing that, an editor who agrees with the work of Loftus et al. The numerous arguments to authority, which are invariably laden with weasel words ("other psychologists," "mainstream psychology," and "most psychologists"), are poor substitutes for factual discussions of this important and very controversial issue in psychology. To compound the problem, this article seems to subtly label psychologists who believe in FMS as child abuse apologists. --Kajerm (talk) 21:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] paragraph in the history section

This paragraph : The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has speculated that during the 1980s and 1990s, thousands or tens of thousands of therapists attempted to recover memories of early childhood abuse from their clients. The techniques, practices and exercises used in these attempts are often referred to as Recovered Memory Therapy and sometimes resulted in allegations of abuse being made by individuals against family members. Many of these individuals severed all connection with their parents, hundreds of whom were convicted of these crimes and imprisoned. Many of the people convicted on such charges have since been freed, in part due to the efforts of the FMSF and a wider, skeptical reappraisal of RMT and the veracity of individuals' recovered memories. Recovered memory therapy (RMT) on ReligiousTolerance.org

and the section in general appears to be poorly sourced. The above paragraph comes from a self-admittedly POV source, that uses very few references to back up the numbers stated in their article. Many of the statements they make do not appear to be backed up research.

Quote from their webpage on RMT: "Our normal policy is to explain both or all viewpoints that people hold on each issue. However, the extreme harm caused by RMT has now been well documented. The unreliability of RMT has been firmly established. Thus, this series of essays will mainly reflect the beliefs of a near-consensus of therapists in this series of essays: that RMT is a dangerous and irresponsible form of therapy."

Statements like "near-consensus" and "firmly established" appear to be statements of opinion not backed by data or research. I didn't want to delete the paragraph or section without a discussion first. Perhaps there is a way to save the section by bringing in reliable sources to bring in a more balanced perspective.Abuse truth (talk) 22:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I have added a paragraph to the history section in an attempt to balance the section with an RS peer reviewed journal article and abstract quote. This originally came from the wiki fmsf page. I have wikified it by using cite journal, adding the eric url and adding a balancing sentence at the end of the quote.Abuse truth (talk) 03:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

oops, should have read page better Ralphmcd (talk) 18:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Um...lack of range, maybe?

Yeah. So. False memory syndrome doesn't apply solely to memories of sexual abuse, it applies to...hmm, oh, I know - FALSE MEMORIES. Any sort of false memory can be included under FMS, but this article implies that the realm of FMS stops after sexual abuse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.218.179 (talk) 17:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

This article is not about "False Memories", it's about "False Memory Syndrome", and that term specifically as defined by the people who coined it applies specifically to memories of sexual abuse. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 18:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Considering the lengths that Loftus and other researchers have gone to in order to develop models of false memory formation in order to support the FMS hypothesis, FMS really should be briefly tied to the broader phenomenon of false memories. Failing to mention it at all just makes this article look even more like a blithe attempt to discredit FMS. --Kajerm (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] agree with recent line restoration

I agree with the 4/1 restoration of the sentence in the opening section. "Not irrelevant, as it implies that he considers them biased." ResearchEditor (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cryptomnesia / research

From all I've heard about FMS, it appears to me to be related to, if not the same as, cryptomnesia, which renowned skeptic Arthur C. Clarke described in one essay as "the incredibly detailed and creative recall of memories under hypnosis" [italics in original]. He was making the point that hypnosis subjects aren't compelled by their state of mind to tell the truth; on the contrary, the tendency of people to say what they believe their listener wants to hear, may actually be boosted by hypnosis.

Also, ISTR reading some years ago about some psychologists (in response to claims that FMS is just a term invented as a cover-up for child abuse) doing an experiment which (they claimed) proved once and for all that there is such a thing as FMS; they subjected volunteers to hypnotherapy sessions, during which they persuaded the subjects that in their childhood they had visited Disneyland and met Bugs Bunny there. A "significant number" of the subjects afterwards "remembered" the encounter; despite the fact that there is no possibility of it actually having taken place, as Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, not Disney.

Perhaps, if good citations can be found for either or both of these, they can be folded into the article. -- 217.171.129.73 (talk) 00:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

It's important to use clear boundaries. "False Memory Syndrome" is a hypothesis put forth by a few people in the specific context of recovered memories of abuse. It's not a general theory of "false memories". "Cryptomnesia" is not about memories of abuse or of any events in a person's life, it's about recalling information without realizing that the information came from somewhere else, resulting in unconscious plagiarism.
Regarding the Bugs Bunny story, the controversial study was reported in the press but not peer-reviewed, and did not involve memories of abuse or mention the term "false memory syndrome" - so it's not related to this article. Here's an article that provides some perspective on the Bugs Bunny paper: Freyd, J.J. (2003). "Commentary: Response to 17 February 2003 Media Reports on Loftus' Bugs Bunny Study".
With both of the above items, it's unlikely there are reliable sources connecting them to FMS - if you find some, that would be of interest, otherwise they can't be used in the article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] revisiting the religioustolerance.org reference and statement

After a lot of deliberation, I removed the religioustolerance.org reference and statement, that has been previously discussed several times already.

I read through their material to check the accuracy of the statement and I found that even if the source were reliable, the paragraph would need to be rewritten to correctly relate the information in the source. But rewriting the paraphrase doesn't appear to be appropriate anyway since the reliability of the source has been questioned, and has not been established. It's one person's interpretation of the topic; the author is not a researcher or otherwise recognized authority; and, he states his bias on the topic and is writing to prove his point - not to present the information in a neutral and balanced way. If he were a notable commentator, it might be useful to present his personal views, but in addition to the other problems with the reference, as a self-published advertiser-supported website, again, the source fails WP:V and WP:RS. -Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] deleted miscategorization

I have deleted this category because this page does not discuss "Crimes that have aspects involving Satanism or the occult." ResearchEditor (talk) 21:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Satanic ritual abuse and the "satanic panic" of the 1980s are intimately associated with the FMS debate. While I agree that it was a miscategorization, this historical context (and its use as evidence both in favor of and against the FMS hypothesis) should be explicitly mentioned. --Kajerm (talk) 21:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] recent edits

I have restored an entire section that was deleted by an anonymous IP address w/o reason. The anon IP also deleted the phrase "so-called." I have added this back as "alleged" which more closely reflects the source and is more NPOV. I have deleted the one sentence history section which was unsourced. I added a line in the header about frequency rate from the Whitfield "Memory and Abuse" source that comes from a section on page 13 of his book, that he backs with four additional sources. I also combined several duplicate references. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] recent revert and tags

I have deleted an unrelated link and undid bold on a link to fix undue weight. I propose that the old tags on the top of the article be removed, since they haven't been discussed in a long time. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)