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Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives
by Mark Pendergrast
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Upper Access (1996-06)
ISBN: 0942679180
EAN: 9780942679182
Dewy Decimal #: 616.858369
Paperback: 635 pages
Edition: 2 Sub
SKU: 071010003
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: This Second Edition, Updated and Expanded copy is in excellent condition. No visible markings, underlining, tears. However, the first 2 pages has neat highlights. Inside top front cover there is a name and date. The rest of the copy is clean. Tight text and spine. No Dust Jacket. Soft Cover has light shelf/edge wear. Very interesting copy, worth having at an affordable price. (K 21)
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Each year over a million Americans are convinced by their therapists (or by misguided 'self-help' books) that their childhoods were not as happy as they thought - that they harboured repressed memories of horrendous abuse by their parents, other relatives, and even satanic cults. Their identities are destroyed, their pasts rewritten, and their families are torn apart. Several books have been written about this strange phenomenon, some of them very good, but Pendergrast's has been consistently acclaimed by reviewers as the most comprehensive, balanced, and readable coverage of the topic. Originally published in 1995, the book was so highly received that a second edition came out just a year later. Among the publications that have given high praise to this book are "Scientific American", "New York Review of Books", "Booklist", the "Los Angeles Times", the "Journal of the American Medical Association", "Psychological Reports", and the "Montreal Gazette".
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Customer Reviews
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I am enraged
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-10-15
17 out of 29 customers found this reveiw helpful
When I was eleven years old my father started to sexually abuse me. When I was fourteen my half-brother sexually abused me. I have remember the abuses every single day for 37 years - never forgetting for a moment what happened to me. Up until seven years ago I played the dutiful daughter in our "happy little home" until I finally got the guts to confront my father. Did he deny it - No, he admitted it. When I asked my older sister if our father (actually her step-father) had abused her she, too, said that she had remembered it everyday since the age of seven. Our father admitted to that, too. When I confronted my brother about the abuse, he admitted it too. But did I announce to the world every sick detail that happened to me. Did I cut myself off completely from my family. No - but at least I didn't have to pretend anymore that my father was this upstanding person. Now I didn't have to come up with lame excuses when I didn't go to family functions. Did it affect me - yes it did.
I spent many years engaging in self destructive behavior. When I finally started seeing a therapist did he become my Svengali - did he try to dig further and further into my past using such disreputable techniques such as hypnotism, guided imagery, body memories, etc? No - he did not. Did he encourage me to join "Survivor" groups ("survivor" and "victims" are two lables used to somehow separate or isolate those with "repressed memories" from the rest of society; sort of an us vs. them mentality) so that the other "survivors" and I could spend our session trying to one-up each other - each person trying to come up with more horrible memories than the others? No - he didn't. Did he tell me that in order to get better I had to get worse. No - he didn't. Did he insist on focusing on painful aspects of my past? No - we focused on the present and ways of working towards a healthy future. Did he tell me to focus on rage, to act out rage and anger, to become consumed by anger. Absolutely not. Anger and rage are not healthy if they become a major part of one's life. Did he tell me that I had alters roaming around in my psyche - 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 5,000 of them. Nope just me.
Victims of Memory has numerous accounts of the so-called sexual abuse victims. Coming from my background and in speaking with other women who have always remembered their abuse, the stories of these "susvivors" do no ring true. No matter how detailed their "memories" may seem (and I haven't even touched on the allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse or MPD/DID) to others, they have no ring of truth to those of us who have been abused and always remembered. We don't want to listen to the minute details of what we went through - why would we. In fact, why would anyone except those who are titillated by the details. The goal is to deal with what (if anything) happened in our past and then get on with life. All of life's failures cannot be blamed on what did or did not happen in our childhoods. Eventually, as adults, we have to take responsibility for our problems and deal with them like adults.
Pendergrast's book delves deeply into the "repressed memory" phenonmenon. Personally, I think he treats the unscrupulous therapists too kindly - giving them the benefit of the doubt that they "mean well" and truly believe that what they are doing is somehow helpful to the client. I don't view them so kindly. After reading Victims of Memory (not just in this book but others on the false memory syndrome) I am glad that the falsely accused parents and "survivor"/retractors are finally receiving compensation through the courts - not for sexual abuse but for therapist abuse. These therapists (and as the book points out, pretty much anyone can call themself a therapist) need to be accountable for their actions. Authors of books such as Courage to Heal need to be held accoutable for all the irresponsible and blantantly false "advice" and information in their books.
As Pendergrast points out in his book, it is so ironic that feminists in the post-modern women's movement overwhelmingly support the repressed memory phenomenon. The whole repressed memory concept was one of Freud's pet theories - not someone whose theories I would except to see embraced by modern feminists. In addition, repressed memory therapy by nature forces the client (usually a woman) into a weak, dependent - almost childlike - state quite unlike the strong independent woman one would expect feminists to support.
I suppose this doesn't seem like much of a review of Pendergrast's book but more of a personal rant. But that's how Victims of Memory made me feel. Not anger at the author but anger - and sadness - over all the ruined lives that are a consequence of the repressed memory phenomenon. I only have a couple of criticisms of Victims of Memories. First, this second edition of the book came out in 1996. The book could really use an updating. There has been so much research done recently on memory showing how easy it is to implant false memories. An updated edition could help with this added info. In addition, many of the statistics certainly could use updating. Updates on the falsely accused in prisons, updates on changes in the policies of professional organizations, and information on the trends in the number of repressed memory cases.
Whenever someone professes that repressed memories have to be true I always ask the same questions. Where are all those who suffered horrible tortures and abuses at the hands of the Nazis in the WWII concentration camp claiming annesia? Where are all those amnesiacs who made it out alive from Pol Pot's regime and the Killing Fields? Where are all the children who have completely forgotten seeing their mother, sister or friend killed right before them by a drive-by shooter? These aren't people who forget - they have vivid memories - memories they can't forget even if they wanted to.
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A Thoughtful and Important Book
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-04-27
6 out of 13 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is an excellent book examining how and why some people come to believe that they have suffered appalling abuse that most probably never happened. It DOES NOT deny the reality of or harm caused by sexual abuse (the author explicitly states this on many occasions) and the reviewer who suggested that this is "a terrific book if you are child molester" probably (I guess) didn't bother reading it and made up the especially foul accusation to prevent others from examining the issues surrounding repressed memory and the cult of therapy.
The author shows how even trained professionals can disregard overwhelming evidence against a particular hypothesis (repressed memory/MPD/satanic cults) and rely on their intuition to (unintentionally) wreak havoc with their clients lives. In the upside-down world of some therapists, lack of hard evidence is trumped by strength of feeling for even the most outrageous accusation. Pendergrast demonstrates how uncertain and malleable human memory can be.
The book is written in an easy style and despite what another particularly stupid review suggests, concentrates specifically on the scientific evidence for his claims.
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Lacking in objectivity; also fails to address key issues
Rating  (1)
Date: 2004-06-02
20 out of 39 customers found this reveiw helpful
This author's personal and highly emotional story lacks academic rigor and fails to address key issues regarding what we do know of cognitive science and basic physiological responses to trauma, all of which have been well documented repeatedly. If the author is indeed a victim of highly suggestible daughters and their highly unscrupulous therapists--something that cannot here be truly determined--he is part of the estimated 2% of that population. The much larger population of those with actual repressed traumatic memories, as well as perpetrators never called to account, is not responsibly addressed here. In the medical community, we know the scientific basis for natural human reactions to severe trauma, and we do not ignore the incontrovertible evidence that these phenomena exist. It does not further the interests of research, truth, or compassion to give fodder to exaggerated and reactionary (however understandable if the author has indeed been falsely accused)generalizations, as he does. The human mind is complex, this is not an either/or situation, and it is irresponsible to take one experience and create sweeping generalizations--and fallacies--from it.
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Making sense of senseless cruelty
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-11-04
12 out of 20 customers found this reveiw helpful
Those so called "professionals" of the cottage industry called "childhood sexual abuse" should be forced to read this book before lunging foward to "save" more kids. The witch hunt we've seen in this nation makes Salem look like a tea party. Beautifully written, well researched, heartbreakingly fair - the enemies of critical thought and careful observation will hate this book.
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HELP out of Hell
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-05-30
11 out of 15 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book was real help to get out of the Hell my family has been in since falsely accused of abuse. The irresponisible therapists have NO idea the pain they have caused.
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