The Memory Wars in England: A Personal and Professional Experience

The term “false memory syndrome” originated in America in 1992 and spread to the UK in 1993. In the context of the success of the women’s movement in focusing on domestic abuse and then child abuse, the term was seductively softer than calling a victim a liar. Working with abuse survivors in the U.K. at that time, the author witnessed the process whereby, if this scientifically non-existent syndrome was to be publicly accepted, then the anger had to be directed elsewhere. It went, via the media, who are not held back by professional codes in the way a clinician is, to the professionals, especially psychotherapists, who had heard the allegation and therefore must have caused it. The author shows how the success of this anti-professional campaign, aided and abetted by disinformation and denial, affected work with abuse survivors ever since then. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who had previously worked in confidential privacy now found their work was being attacked and clinicians working in public service were subject to all kinds of reporting procedures if the allegations involved children. The author describes her own experiences of this. A paradigm shift led to both greater transparency and awareness of trauma but also more directives over treatment protocols. The author was working in the National Health Service (NHS) as a Consultant Psychotherapist when these attacks began. Although her work in revealing the level of sexual abuse experienced by children and adults with an intellectual disability was praised, the moment she reported from a piece of clinical work that involved allegations of ritual abuse, personal media attacks began that have continued ever since. The author warns that whenever society declares that a particular kind of abuse is never possible (as it sounds so bizarre), paedophiles are the only ones who benefit.