1 In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information.

Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Processes There are several ways to classify memories, based on duration, nature and retrieval of information. From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory: 1Encoding or registration (receiving, processing and combining of received information) 2Storage (creation of a permanent record of the encoded information) 3Retrieval or recall (calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity) Classification A basic and generally accepted classification of memory is based on the duration of memory retention, and identifies three distinct types of memory: sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory. Sensory Sensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial 200 - 500 milliseconds after an item is perceived. The ability to look at an item, and remember what it looked like with just a second of observation, or memorization, is an example of sensory memory. With very short presentations, participants often report that they seem to "see" more than they can actually report. The first experiments exploring this form of sensory memory were conducted by George Sperling using the "partial report paradigm." Subjects were presented with a grid of 12 letters, arranged into three rows of 4. After a brief presentation, subjects were then played either a high, medium or low tone, cuing them which of the rows to report. Based on these partial report experiments, Sperling was able to show that the capacity of sensory memory was approximately 12 items, but that it degraded very quickly (within a few hundred milliseconds). Because this form of memory degrades so quickly, participants would see the display, but be unable to report all of the items (12 in the "whole report" procedure) before they decayed. This type of memory cannot be prolonged via rehearsal. Short-term Some of the information in sensory memory is then transferred to short-term

2 memory. Short-term memory allows one to recall something from several seconds to as long as a minute without rehearsal. Its capacity is also very limited: George A. Miller, when working at Bell Laboratories, conducted experiments showing that the store of short term memory was 72 items (the title of his famous paper, "The magical number 72"). Modern estimates of the capacity of short-term memory are lower, typically on the order of 4-5 items, and we know that memory capacity can be increased through a process called chunking. For example, if presented with the string: FBIPHDTWAIBM people are able to remember only a few items. However, if the same information is presented in the following way: FBI PHD TWA IBM people can remember a great deal more letters. This is because they are able to chunk the information into meaningful groups of letters. Beyond finding meaning in the abbreviations above, Herbert Simon showed that the ideal size for chunking letters and numbers, meaningful or not, was three. This may be reflected in some countries in the tendency to remember phone numbers as several chunks of three numbers with the final four-number groups generally broken down into two groups of two. Short-term memory is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing information, and to a lesser extent a visual code. Conrad (1964)[1] found that test subjects had more difficulty recalling collections of words that were acoustically similar (e.g. dog, hog, fog, bog, log). Long-term Olin Levi Warner, Memory (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C. The storage in sensory memory and short-term memory generally have a strictly limited capacity and duration, which means that information is available for a certain period of time, but is not retained indefinitely. By contrast, long-term memory can store much larger quantities of information for potentially unlimited duration (sometimes a whole life span). For example, given a random seven-digit number, we may remember it for only a few seconds before forgetting, suggesting it was stored in our short-term memory. On the other hand, we can remember telephone numbers for many years through repetition; this information is said to be stored in long-term memory. While short-term memory encodes information acoustically, long-term memory encodes it semantically: Baddeley (1966). discovered that after 20 minutes, test subjects had the least difficulty recalling a collection of words that had similar meanings (e.g. big, large, great, huge). Short-term memory is supported by transient patterns of neuronal communication, dependent on regions of the frontal lobe (especially dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and the parietal lobe. Long-term memories, on the other hand,

3 are maintained by more stable and permanent changes in neural connections widely spread throughout the brain. The hippocampus is essential to the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory, although it does not seem to store information itself. Rather, it may be involved in changing neural connections for a period of three months or more after the initial learning. One of the primary functions of sleep is improving consolidation of information, as it can be shown that memory depends on getting sufficient sleep between training and test, and that the hippocampus replays activity from the current day while sleeping. Models Models of memory provide abstract representations of how memory is believed to work. Below are several models proposed over the years by various psychologists. Note that there is some controversy as to whether there are several memory structures, for example, Tarnow (2005) finds that it is likely that there is only one memory structure between 6 and 600 seconds. Multi-store (Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model) The multi-store model (also known as Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model) was first recognised in 1968 by Atkinson and Shiffrin. The multi-store model has been criticized for being too simplistic. For instance, long-term memory is believed to be actually made up of multiple subcomponents, such as episodic and procedural memory. It also proposes that rehearsal is the only mechanism by which information eventually reaches long-term storage, but evidence shows us capable of remembering things without rehearsal. Working memory The working memory model. In 1974 Baddeley and Hitch proposed a working memory model which replaced the concept of general short term memory with specific, active components. In this model, working memory consists of three basic stores: the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad. In 2000 this model was expanded with the multimodal episodic buffer.[3] The central executive essentially acts as attention. It channels information to the three component processes: the phonological loop, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer. The phonological loop stores auditory information by silently rehearsing sounds or words in a continuous loop; the articulatory process (the "inner voice") continuously "speaks" the words to the phonological store (the "inner ear"). The phonological loop has a very limited capacity, which is demonstrated by the fact that it is easier to remember a list of short words (e.g. dog, wish, love) than a list

4 of long words (e.g. association, systematic, confabulate) because short words fit better in the loop. However, if the test subject is given a task that ties up the articulatory process (saying "the, the, the" over and over again), then a list of short words is no easier to remember. The visuo-spatial sketchpad stores visual and spatial information. It is engaged when performing spatial tasks (such as judging distances) or visual ones (such as counting the windows on a house or imagining images). The episodic buffer is dedicated to linking information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information and chronological ordering (e.g., the memory of a story or a movie scene). The episodic buffer is also assumed to have links to long-term memory and semantical meaning. The working memory model explains many practical observations, such as why it is easier to do two different tasks (one verbal and one visual) than two similar tasks (e.g., two visual), and the aforementioned word-length effect. However, the concept of a central executive as noted here has been criticized as inadequate and vague. Levels of processing Craik and Lockhart (1972) proposed that it is the method and depth of processing that affects how an experience is stored in memory, rather than rehearsal. 1Organization - Mandler (1967) gave participants a pack of word cards and asked them to sort them into any number of piles using any system of categorization they liked. When they were later asked to recall as many of the words as they could, those who used more categories remembered more words. This study suggested that the act of organizing information makes it more memorable. 2Distinctiveness - Eysenck and Eysenck (1980) asked participants to say words in a distinctive way, e.g. spell the words out loud. Such participants recalled the words better than those who simply read them off a list. 3Effort - Tyler et al. (1979) had participants solve a series of anagrams, some easy (FAHTER) and some difficult (HREFAT). The participants recalled the difficult anagrams better, presumably because they put more effort into them. 4Elaboration - Palmere et al. (1983) gave participants descriptive paragraphs of a fictitious African nation. There were some short paragraphs and some with extra sentences elaborating the main idea. Recall was higher for the ideas in the elaborated paragraphs. Classification by information type Anderson (1976) divides long-term memory into declarative (explicit) and

5 procedural (implicit) memories. Declarative memory requires conscious recall, in that some conscious process must call back the information. It is sometimes called explicit memory, since it consists of information that is explicitly stored and retrieved. Declarative memory can be further sub-divided into semantic memory, which concerns facts taken independent of context; and episodic memory, which concerns information specific to a particular context, such as a time and place. Semantic memory allows the encoding of abstract knowledge about the world, such as "Paris is the capital of France". Episodic memory, on the other hand, is used for more personal memories, such as the sensations, emotions, and personal associations of a particular place or time. Autobiographical memory memory for particular events within one's own life - is generally viewed as either equivalent to, or a subset of, episodic memory. Visual memory is part of memory preserving some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. One is able to place in memory information that resembles objects, places, animals or people in sort of a mental image. Visual memory can result in priming and it is assumed some kind of perceptual representational system underlies this phenomenon. In contrast, procedural memory (or implicit memory) is not based on the conscious recall of information, but on implicit learning. Procedural memory is primarily employed in learning motor skills and should be considered a subset of implicit memory. It is revealed when one does better in a given task due only to repetition - no new explicit memories have been formed, but one is unconsciously accessing aspects of those previous experiences. Procedural memory involved in motor learning depends on the cerebellum and basal ganglia. So far, nobody has been able to successfully isolate the time dependence of these suggested memory structures. Classification by temporal direction A further major way to distinguish different memory functions is whether the content to be remembered is in the past, retrospective memory, or whether the content is to be remembered in the future, prospective memory. Thus, retrospective memory as a category includes semantic memory and episodic/autobiographical memory. In contrast, prospective memory is memory for future intentions, or remembering to remember (Winograd, 1988). Prospective memory can be further broken down into event- and time-based prospective remembering. Time-based prospective memories are triggered by a time-cue, such as going to the doctor (action) at 4pm (cue). Event-based prospective memories are intentions triggered by cues, such as remembering to post a letter (action) after seeing a mailbox (cue). Cues do not need to be related to the action (as the mailbox example is), and lists, sticky-notes, knotted handkerchiefs, or string around the finger are all examples of cues that are produced by people as

6 a strategy to enhance prospective memory. Physiology Overall, the mechanisms of memory are not completely understood. Brain areas such as the hippocampus, the amygdala, the striatum, or the mammillary bodies are thought to be involved in specific types of memory. For example, the hippocampus is believed to be involved in spatial learning and declarative learning, while the amygdala is thought to be involved in emotional memory. Damage to certain areas in patients and animal models and subsequent memory deficits is a primary source of information. However, rather than implicating a specific area, it could be that damage to adjacent areas, or to a pathway traveling through the area is actually responsible for the observed deficit. Further, it is not sufficient to describe memory, and its counterpart, learning, as solely dependent on specific brain regions. Learning and memory are attributed to changes in neuronal synapses, thought to be mediated by long-term potentiation and longterm depression. Hebb distinguished between short-term and long-term memory. He postulated that any memory that stayed in short-term storage for a long enough time would be consolidated into a long-term memory. Later research showed this to be false. Research has shown that direct injections of cortisol or epinephrine help the storage of recent experiences. This is also true for stimulation of the amygdala. This proves that excitement enhances memory by the stimulation of hormones that affect the amygdala. Excessive or prolonged stress (with prolonged cortisol) may hurt memory storage. Patients with amygdalar damage are no more likely to remember emotionally charged words than nonemotionally charged ones. The hippocampus is important for explicit memory. The hippocampus is also important for memory consolidation. The hippocampus receives input from different parts of the cortex and sends its output out to different parts of the brain also. The input comes from secondary and tertiary sensory areas that have processed the information a lot already. Hippocampal damage may also cause memory loss and problems with memory storage[5]. Disorders Much of the current knowledge of memory has come from studying memory disorders. Loss of memory is known as amnesia. There are many sorts of amnesia, and by studying their different forms, it has become possible to observe apparent defects in individual sub-systems of the brain's memory systems, and thus hypothesize their function in the normally working brain. Other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease can also affect memory and cognition. Hyperthymesia, or hyperthymesic syndrome, is a disorder which affects an individual's autobiographical memory, essentially meaning that they cannot forget small details that otherwise would not be stored.[6] While not a disorder, a common temporary failure of word retrieval from memory is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. Sufferers of Nominal Aphasia (also called

7 Anomia), however, do experience the Tip of the Tongue phenomenon on an ongoing basis due to damage to the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain. Impaired memory can be a symptom of hypothyroidism. Amnesia and deliberate forgetting Amnesia - loss of memory - takes many forms and can be hugely distressing. Amnesia is one of the fiction writer's favourite ploys. Typically, the victim of an assault has no memory of the incident so cannot say 'whodunit'. Better still they wake up with no recollection of who they are. Then there are those whose traumatic memories are 'suppressed' but gradually spontaneously return. In reality, because memory is not a single simple system (see Learning and memory), amnesia is similarly complex and takes many forms. In general terms, the nature of the amnesia depends on the nature of the damage to the brain. One of the most striking forms of amnesia is the inability to make new memories (anterograde amnesia). This often follows damage to the hippocampus, which is needed to establish new memories stored elsewhere in the brain. People may have perfect memories up to the point that they suffered the damage but can then make no new memories. Researcher Eleanor Maguire of University College London describes how people she studies can get confused if she leaves the room: they may be unable to recall what they are doing with her (see Magic Memories). One of the most heart-rending tales is that of Clive Wearing. After a viral infection, he lost the ability to make new memories, as well as much of his past memory. In effect he 'wakes up' every few seconds, unable to remember what has just happened in his life. (His story was told in the 2005 ITV documentary 'The Man with the 7 Second Memory' and a poignant account of his relationship with his wife appeared in the 'Daily Telegraph' - The man who keeps falling in love with his wife.) Perhaps sadder still is the case of a patient known as 'HM' or 'Henry M'. Henry grew up normally enough in Hartford, Connecticut in the 1920s, but in late adolescence developed epilepsy. By the 1950s, he was enduring several seizures a week. With no other options available at the time, he underwent surgery. A significant chunk of his brain was removed including most of his hippocampus, which at that point was not known to be important in memory making. From that moment on, Henry was unable to add new memories. He has been studied intensively, providing new insight into many aspects of memory. He seems to have learned to cope, though worries about making friends he forgets people minutes after seeing them. He has to be reintroduced to his doctors every morning. Most sadly, at regular intervals he relives the grief of discovering his mother has died.

8 Interestingly, Henry (like Clive Wearing) can still remember how to do things and can learn new skills (though cannot remember learning them). This shows how different aspects of memory are handled by different parts of the brain. Being particularly associated with damage to the hippocampus, anterograde amnesia is rare. More common is retrograde amnesia, where memories made before a trauma cannot be recalled. The effect may be temporary, with memories gradually returning, or long term. Head injury may cause various forms of amnesia. Impaired memory of events just before the head trauma reflects the absence of memory consolidation during the traumatic episode. Loss of memory is also a characteristic feature of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Some (but not all) aspects of memory are impaired in old age, such as short-term memory.

History
People have sought to understand the nature of memory since at least the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who is usually credited with the earliest serious discussion of it. He believed memory was like a blank slate on which accurate impressions of the world were made and preserved indefinitely. Plato distinguished two aspects of memorythe power to retain or keep information, and the power of recollection, or remembering information that is already present in memory. Plato's ideas still influence many contemporary psychological theories of memory contain these same beliefs. During the Middle Ages, before the printing press, memory served as the vehicle through which history and knowledge were passed between people and generations. It seems having a good memory was greatly prized during the Middle Ages, and the improvement of memory skills was an important topic. A distinction was made between natural and artificial memory where natural memory was the memory abilities we were born with. They could not be trained and were thought to operate in a spontaneous, instinctive manner. On the other hand, artificial memory abilities were held to be trainable, and numerous systems were developed to improve them. As the printed word spread and the individual's memories became less essential in the transmission of knowledge the importance placed on memory by society apparently diminished. During the 1800s, educators also focused on training and exercising the memory. Memory was seen

9 by many as being like a muscle that required exercise to remain fit. Thus memorization was thought to strengthen one's current memory system as well as future memorization skills, and rote memorization (memorizing information for no purpose other than to memorize it) was advocated for students. This view came under great criticism as the 1800s ended, and eventually the advocacy of rote memorization within the school system faded. Indeed, more recent research indicates that memorization for memorization's sake does not improve overall memory abilities in any observable way. During the late 1800s the medical profession became interested in disorders of memory such as aphasia (a complete or partial impairment of the ability to understand or use words), and amnesia (generally, a partial or total loss of memory). The medical profession naturally focused on physiological and biological factors, and one of their most important findings was that aphasia was caused by lesions in the brain. This finding was of immense importance as it demonstrated for the first time that physiological and psychological functioning are connected. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician who began his career in the 1890s, focused on psychological disorders that he felt were caused by memory disturbances. Freud felt mental illness occurs when unpleasant childhood memories are repressed, or kept from consciousness. His highly influential theory of psychoanalysis is in fact based on the concept that memories can be repressed, and he developed psychoanalytic therapy to uncover those memories and cure the patient. The German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, carried out the first controlled experiments on memory in 1885, and in so doing set a pattern for modern experimental research on memory. Ebbinghaus developed many methods of studying memory that are still in use today. For example, he developed lists of nonsense syllables (one syllable groups of letters that have no meaning, e.g. "treb," "fug," or "duj"), that individuals would be asked to memorize. Ebbinghaus used nonsense syllables in an attempt to avoid the effects of previous learning,

10 and associations the individual might have to meaningful words. Ebbinghaus would vary different aspects of the experiments to test different aspects of memory. For instance, he varied the lists by length to see how the number of syllables affected recall, and he would vary the amount of time between memorization and recall to see how the amount of time lapsed between learning and recall affected the amount of material recalled or forgotten. tip.psychology.org/memory science.jrank.org www.web-us.com/memory/theories_and_processes.htm www.changingminds.org/explanations/theories/a_memory www.srmhp.org/0202/review-

Theories of basic memory processes

It is important to note that Ebbinghaus was working within the philosophical/psychological framework of associationism. With roots stretching back to Aristotle, associationism asserts that higher order mental processes, such as creativity or language, are produced by the combination of simpler mental processes, such as the mental association of objects, ideas, or experiences due to their similarity. Memory is said to be made up of associations between elements based on their similarity, contrast, or occurrence together in time or space. This implies a rather passive or inactive mind and memory, where the individual and their memory receives impressions and basically categorizes them according to their straightforward, objective characteristics. Remembering is simply reproducing these impressions and associations. Within this framework, when asked to remember and describe a rose, a person might "search" their memory for a specific representation of a rose or a specific experience with a rose, and use this to describe one. This is in contrast to reconstructive theories of memory as proposed for example by William James in 1890, and by Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett in 1932. Within these theories, memory is seen as an active reconstruction and organization of

11 past experiences that influences how new information is interpreted and organized, as well as how and what information is remembered. In contrast to associative theories, reconstructive theories of memory hold that abstract principles about new experiences and information are what is stored, not exact reproductions of the experiences themselves. During recall, specific memories are often reconstructed according to these general principles, they are not always reproductions of experience. Thus memory processes take an active role in what and how information is remembered. Within this framework, a person asked to remember and describe a rose might first access their general knowledge of plants, then flowers, then their knowledge of roses in general, and using this information, build or construct a description of a rose. In recent years, reconstructive theories of memory have gained favor as many psychologists believe that most mental processes, such as language and perception, are too complex to be explained by the combination of simple associative connections and reproductive memory.

Theories of memory In this section, we briefly review the four major theories of memory, in order to place the psychology of forgetting in its proper context. We will examine the multi-store model of memory of Atkinson and Schiffrin (Atkinson & Schiffrin 1968), the levels-of-processing model of Craik and Lockhart (Craik & Lockhart 1972), Baddeleys working memory model (Baddeley & Hitch 1974), and Tulvings non-unitary long term memory model (Tulving 1972). These various theories are not completely incompatible, but are best seen as comments or criticisms of each other. We will not attempt to make any judgements about which one(s) is (are) superior. We begin, though, by reviewing the basic concepts of the psychological study of memory.

Basic concepts Information processing

The psychological approach with which we are going to be concerned is the information processing view (Baron 1989), which obviously gains its inspiration from computer architectures. There are three basic operations that make up memory on this view. Registration, the transformation of sensory input into a form in which it can be stored. Storage, the holding of information in memory. Retrieval, extracting stored information.

Forgetting could be seen as a further basic operation, but in general it isnt. Instead, it is conceptualised in this framework as a failure in one of the three basic operations. A relevant distinction for forgetting is between a failure of availability (i.e. the information is no longer stored) and a failure of accessibility (i.e. it is stored but cannot be retrieved).

12 Alternatives to the information processing view

This information processing approach, which is clearly related to Good Old-Fashioned AI (GOFAI), is not the only relevant approach which we could adopt. An alternative would be to examine connectionist ideas of memory (McClelland & Rumelhart 1986). In this paper, we shall focus on ideas about forgetting and memory that have been developed in the context of the standard information processing view; however, we are planning a future paper about connectionism and memory should follow within this task. An area of particular interest might be the question of whether the opposition between new ideas about AI (e.g. connectionism) and more standard views (GOFAI) is or could be mirrored by an opposition within knowledge management between a distributed view of knowledge and a more standard view with whose properties we are more familiar. Similarly, another area that should be of interest, yet is beyond the scope of this paper, is the idea of collective memory, where people collaborate to provide a group memory of something. Here, forgetting can take place, for example, because the forgetter is aware that someone else will hold the memory for him. Once more, we can flag this area of research as being interesting for a future discussion within AKT.

Dual Coding Theory (A. Paivio) Overview: The dual coding theory proposed by Paivio attempts to give equal weight to verbal and non-verbal processing. Paivio (1986) states: "Human cognition is unique in that it has become specialized for dealing simultaneously with language and with nonverbal objects and events. Moreover, the language system is peculiar in that it deals directly with linguistic input and output (in the form of speech or writing) while at the same time serving a symbolic function with respect to nonverbal objects, events, and behaviors. Any representational theory must accommodate this dual functionality." (p 53).

The theory assumes that there are two cognitive subsystems, one specialized for the representation and processing of nonverbal objects/events (i.e., imagery), and the other specialized for dealing with language. Paivio also postulates two different types of representational units: "imagens" for mental images and "logogens" for verbal entities which he describes as being similar to "chunks" as described by Miller. Logogens are organized in terms of associations and hierarchies while imagens are organized in terms of part-whole relationships. Dual Coding theory identified three types of processing: (1) representational, the direct activation of verbal or non-verbal representations, (2) referential, the activation of the verbal system by the nonverbal system or vice-versa, and (3) associative processing, the

13 activation of representations within the same verbal or nonverbal system. A given task may require any or all of the three kinds of processing. Scope/Application: Dual coding theory has been applied to many cognitive phenomena including: mnemonics, problem-solving, concept learning and language. Dual coding theory accounts for the significance of spatial abilities in theories of intelligence (e.g., Guilford). Paivio (1986) provides a dual coding explanation of bilingual processing. Clark & Paivio (1991) present dual coding theory as a general framework for educational psychology. Example: Many experiments reported by Paivio and others support the importance of imagery in cognitive operations. In one experiment, participants saw pairs of items that differed in roundness (e.g., tomato, goblet) and were asked to indicate which member of the pair was rounder. The objects were presented as words, pictures, or word-picture pairs. The response times were slowest for word-word pairs, intermediate for the picture-word pairs, and fastest for the picture-picture pairs. Principles: 1. Recall/recognition is enhanced by presenting information in both visual and verbal form.
Freuds Theories of Repression and Memory
A Critique of Freud and False Memory Syndrome by Phil Mollon

Phil Mollons Freud and False Memory Syndrome (2000) gives a succinct account of Freuds early clinical experiences, and of his theories of repression and the nature of memory. Mollons discussion of some of Freuds early cases enable the reader to gain an idea of the roots from which Freuds theories developed, and afford the present writer the opportunity to consider these in some detail. It will be evident that what follows is not a conventional review of the book. Though Mollons expositions will be critically examined, they will predominantly be used as a convenient base for a discussion of Freuds clinical claims and his theories of repression and memory in relation to childhood experiences. Mollon opens with a brief discussion of the bearing of Freuds early clinical experiences on current concerns as to the apparent recovery of memories of childhood sexual abuse, mostly in the course of psychotherapy (Mollon, 2000, pp. 38). However, comment on this is postponed until Freuds ideas on memories of early childhood have been considered and his clinical claims at the beginning of his psychoanalytic career have been critically examined. Before discussing details of Freuds early case histories in Studies on Hysteria (1895b), Mollon addresses certain misconceptions of this book [that] have been propagated and recycled in the current debates about recovered memory, and he selects a passage from Daniel Schacters book Searching for Memory (1996) as typifying what he calls the attempt to assimilate Freud into the category of recovered memory therapist (Mollon, 2000, pp. 910). As Mollon reports, Schacter writes that Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuers classic studies of hysteria described patients who could not explicitly remember childhood sexual abuse, but experienced

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disabling fears, nagging anxieties, intrusive thoughts, or disturbing images that reflected implicit memory for the trauma. However, these cases proved difficult to interpret because independent corroboration was often lacking. (Schacter, 1996, p. 274) (Mollon, 2000, p. 9). Mollon describes this passage as typical of the rhetoric of the false memory debate and says that it can only be based on a fantasy of what Freud said rather than an actual reading of the text, for the five case histories do not concern problems resulting from childhood sexual abuse (p. 10). From this passage and what follows (pp. 1017) it is evident that he has taken Schacter to be referring only to the cases reported in Studies on Hysteria (1895b). However, a closer reading of the passage in question indicates that what Schacter had in mind was the whole period in the late 1800s during which Breuer and (especially) Freud investigated cases they diagnosed as hysteria. Schacters mentioning childhood sexual abuse is misleading to the extent that it seems to imply that such a trauma was frequently implicated throughout these years, rather than during the brief seduction theory episode (18951897). Also, many of these cases involved specific physical symptoms in addition to the symptomatology listed by Schacter. Otherwise he provides a reasonably accurate overview of the cases reported by Breuer and Freud in this period, with the caveat that their contention that the symptoms reflected implicit memories of traumas was assumed rather than demonstrated, as is implied by Schacters noting the general lack of independent corroboration. In his introductory remarks on the cases in Studies on Hysteria, Mollon (p. 9) alludes to what he describes as a discovery that he partly ascribes to Breuer, who provided the first case history in the book (that of Anna O.). He writes that when a patient was encouraged to talk freely it was often possible to trace the origin of a patients symptom, the psychodynamic understanding of which would result in its removal. However, Mollon makes no mention of the doubts that have been expressed in recent times about the traditional accounts of the Anna O. case, which have been shown to be misleading in several important respects. For instance, some of the patients symptoms diminished spontaneously (Hirschmller, 1989, pp. 286, 289), the patient was far from cured when the treatment terminated (Ellenberger, 1972; Hirschmller, 1989, pp. 113116, 201), and it is evident from the discovery of his original notes that the case history written by Breuer (partly from memory) some 13 years after the events is a retrospectively idealized account of the treatment (Webster, 1995, pp. 122135; Borch-Jacobsen, 1996b, pp. 4961; Macmillan, 1997, pp. 324). Mollon goes on to provide a brief summary of Freuds 4 main cases in Studies on Hysteria, and concludes: Contrary to Schacters assertion, the cases in the Studies do not concern repression of memory, nor recovered memory, and are not related to childhood sexual abuse. Rather, the four cases treated by Freud are all presented as examples of emotional conflict and trauma, resulting in undischarged and dammed up affect or libido. His final conclusion is that [n]one of these cases, as described by Freud, involved repression of memory. The objects of repression were thoughts, feelings and desires. (pp. 1617) Mollon is certainly correct in saying that sexual abuse plays little role in the cases in Studies (though, in one of the main cases, Katharina reported an instance of attempted sexual assault in her early teens), but his final conclusion is questionable. In Breuer and Freuds theory the undischarged affect associated with repressed memories of traumatic events give rise to ideas, and the goal of the therapy is to enable these unconscious ideas to reach consciousness so that the patient can abreact the affect. This aim can be

15
achieved only if the original event is recalled, and Studies contains several examples of patients supposedly recovering forgotten memories of incidents associated with disturbing ideas (e.g., Freud, 1895b, pp. 120, 178, 179, 180, 273, 274). Breuer and Freud (1895b) claimed that patients symptoms disappeared when we had succeeded in bringing clearly to light the memory of the event by which it was provoked and in arousing its accompanying affect . . . (pp. 6, 255), and it was their contention that this happened on occasion with their patients. In his brief accounts of the 4 main cases described by Freud in Studies, Mollon (pp. 10 17) follows Freuds versions of events, writing that (with the exception of the case of Emmy von N.) painful emotional conflicts and dilemmas involving desire, guilt and shame (p. 17) were at the root of the patients symptoms. But for all Freuds confident assurances to the reader, it remains a fact that these are, for the most part, assumptions on his part that he has by no means demonstrated. [1] As Slater (1965) has pointed out, trouble, discord, anxiety and frustration are so prevalent at all stages of life that their mere occurrence near to the time of onset of an illness does not mean very much (p. 1399). Mollons propensity to accept uncritically whatever Freud reported is illustrated by his writing in relation to Katharina that the patient agreed with [Freuds] reconstruction of the supposed traumatic idea he had inferred (p. 14), when according to the case history she actually said, rather unconvincingly: It may well be that that was what I was disgusted at and that that was what I thought (Freud, 1895b, p. 131). A more critical commentator might observe that Katharinas words suggest that Freuds patients may have been inclined to confirm whatever he insisted was at the root of their symptoms. (For a perceptive discussion of the Katharina case, see Swales, 1988, pp. 125129.) That it was not unusual in this period for Freud, rather than the patient, to provide the supposed traumatic idea or memory is evident from his writing in Studies (1895b) that the principal point is that I should guess the [traumatic] secret and tell it to the patient straight out, and that it is of use if we can guess the way in which things are connected up and tell the patient before we have uncovered it (pp. 281, 295). Freuds early cases are usually represented as demonstrating his facilitating patients recall of forgotten traumatic incidents, thereby relieving the patients symptoms (Freud, 1910, pp. 2223), but a critical examination of the relevant case histories reveals that this is an idealized story, originating not only from the impression created by Freuds contemporary accounts, but also from misleading retrospective reports in his general expositions. For instance, in the Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis that Freud delivered at Clark University in 1909 he alluded to the case of Elisabeth von R. in terms that must have seemed immensely impressive to his audience. He reported that the patient had completely forgotten a specific scene by her sisters [death]bedside and the odious egoistic impulse that she experienced at that moment, but remembered it during the treatment and reproduced the pathogenic moment with signs of the most violent emotion, and, as a result of the treatment, she became healthy once more (1910, pp. 2425). However, it is evident from the case history in Studies that Elisabeth had not forgotten the scene by her sisters deathbed (1895b, pp. 142143). Moreover, close reading of the relevant paragraph in the case history reveals that Freud did not explicitly state that Elisabeth recalled the traumatic impulse (though his readers may well be left with that impression from the artfully composed passage in question) (pp. 157158); rather, he inferred that it was present as an unconscious memory from her strenuous resistance when he put the situation [i.e., his own surmise] drily before her.

16
Furthermore, his claim that her leg pains were cured as a result of his supposedly uncovering the pathogenic moment (1910, p. 25) does not withstand critical scrutiny (1895b, pp. 158160; see Webster, 1995, pp. 163164). [2] The last part of this case history (1895b, pp. 145160) exemplifies the way in which Freuds excessive confidence in his own analytic inferences results in his entwining them with factual information in such a way that readers are almost insidiously led to view the patients experiences through Freuds interpretative lens. Mahony (1984) observes that he is ever struck by Freuds early written endorsement of hypnosis and enthusiastic description of its cures as compared with his subsequent scepticism about its means and achievements, and notes more generally the assured tone and persuasive force of Freuds expositions that contrast with his subsequent retractions when he has moved on to new procedures and theories (p. 160). These observations are especially pertinent to the next stage of Freuds career, the period immediately following the publication of Studies on Hysteria. The Seduction Theory Following his discussion of the cases in Studies, Mollon (pp. 1718) turns to Freuds 1896 papers, in which he claimed that for all his patients he had uncovered repressed memories of sexual abuse in early childhood. As Mollon notes later (p. 40), during the period in question Freud was using an early version of his technique of free association, starting from a symptom, supplemented as necessary by his pressure procedure. This involved his pressing on the patients forehead and insisting that something would come to mind, with the expectation that the resulting ideas or images would eventually lead to material relating to an event or idea that could be identified as the determining trauma (Freud, 1895b, pp. 268272). In the seduction theory papers, Freud claimed that the sexual abuse he had supposedly uncovered most commonly occurred at age 3 or 4, and for 2 cases at half these ages (Freud, 1896a, p. 152; 1896b, p. 165). Furthermore, he reported that for most of his patients he had found that there had been 2 or more infantile abuse experiences, and that in a few instances the accumulation of sexual experiences coming from different quarters was truly amazing (1896c, p. 208). Although he had not reported having uncovered any cases of sexual abuse in infancy before he alighted on the seduction theory in early October 1895 (Masson, 1985, pp. 144, 145), only 4 months later he claimed to have analytically traced back from his patients symptoms to repressed memories of multiple childhood sexual experiences, mostly in infancy, for no fewer than 16 patients (13 hysterics and 3 pure obsessionals: Freud, 1896a, pp. 142, 152, 155; 1896b, pp. 168169). But, as he himself acknowledged, he did not in these papers provide the evidence needful to support [his] assertions (1896a, p. 162; see also 1896c, p. 203); as Eissler (2001) observes, he spread his clinical evidence surprisingly thin (p. 113). So Freuds readers were effectively left to take on trust his claim that he had succeeded in awakening the psychical trace of a precocious sexual event (1896a, p. 153) for all his patients. This raises the issue of what exactly his evidence comprised. Eissler (2001, p. 137) asks pertinently: Was a period of not quite four months really all that was needed to uncover the data for all the cases alluded to in the first seduction theory papers? [3] In the Aetiology paper Freud claimed that the patients reproduced the infantile sexual experiences that he warn[ed] them would emerge (1896c, p. 204), but it is far from clear what he meant by reproductions. Considering his 1896 papers and his later sketchy reports to Fliess about individual cases, all one can say is that they seem to have ranged from violent sensations, which he interpreted as indicating the emerging

17
of repressed memories, to the production of fragmentary ideas and images, which he took to be representations of the anticipated sexual scenes (1896c, p. 204; 1896a, p. 153). It seems likely that in some cases Freud relied almost entirely on the symbolic interpretation of symptoms that lay at the heart of his etiological determinations. [4] This is apparent in the one case of hysteria or obsessional neurosis in the 1896 papers for which he gives specific details of his interpretive procedure (1896b, pp. 172, 172 n.1), and in the case of Miss G. de B. reported to Wilhelm Fliess in January 1897 (Masson, 1985, pp. 220221). (In the latter case, having inferred an infantile scene of fellatio from eczema around the mouth and other indications, Freud wrote that he thrust the explanation at the patient, and then threatened to send her away if she persisted in her skepticism.) Given also the extraordinarily short time between Freuds postulating the theory and his claim of 100% corroboration for 16 patients, the situation is best summed up by Schimeks (1987) conclusion that the knowledge of the original trauma, whether considered as unconscious memory or fantasy, was based on Freuds interpretation and reconstruction; it was not directly revealed by the patient (p. 960), a view originally put forward by Cioffi in the early 1970s (Cioffi, 1972, 1974; see also Esterson, 1993 [pp. 1131], 1998; Israls and Schatzman, 1993; Scharnberg, 1993; Schatzman, 1992). Mollons propensity to take Freuds clinical claims at face value is apparent in his discussion of the instances of supposedly objective corroborations adduced in The Aetiology of Hysteria (1896c, p. 206). He notes that Freud argued that there would be unassailable proof if there were confirmation from someone other than the person being analysed, praises him for having put forward the standard of proof requested by those who support todays false memory societies, and goes on to report Freuds examples. In the first of these, Mollon writes, a brother confirmed his childhood sexual activity with his sister (p. 35). If we turn to what Freud actually wrote, however, we find that he did not deliver what he had promised, for the brother of his own accord confirmednot, it is true, his earliest sexual experiences with his sister (who was the patient)but at least scenes of that kind from later childhood, and the fact that there had been sexual relations dating further back (1896c, p. 206). So the crucial infantile sexual scene was not confirmed by the brother. Moreover, Freud failed to provide some important details: Did he obtain the information directly from the brother, or was it conveyed to him secondhand? What, precisely, was the sexual behavior allegedly confirmed? How can the brother have confirmed that there had been sexual relations dating further back, i.e., before those incidents he actually recalled? These are all elementary questions that need answering before we attain the standard of proof alluded to by Mollon, even to provide satisfactory corroboration of the later sexual activities. In addition, Freud is not consistent in his claims relating to such activities between siblings. In Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses (1896a) he stated that where there had been sexual relations between a slightly older boy and his patient (mostly brother and sister), this had sometimes continued . . . until the little guilty parties reach puberty (p. 152). Yet in the Aetiology (1896c) paper, he asserted that such practices had been often prolonged beyond puberty (p. 208). In the face of several such inconsistencies and incongruities (Eissler, 2001, pp. 107 117), it should be evident that Freuds clinical claims in the Aetiology paper need to be treated with considerable caution, as is clear from the second instance of corroboration cited by Mollon. This involved 2 female patients who, in infancy, had supposedly had sexual relations with the same man. As Freud (1896c) expressed it, A particular

18
symptom, which was derived from these childhood events [sexual scenes trois], had developed in both women, as evidence of what they had experienced in common (p. 206). This hardly lives up to the claim of objective confirmation asserted by Freud; as Smith (1991) observes, One would need to know how it was that Freud reached his conclusions in order to even begin to assess his claim (p. 13). And there is another question to be considered here. Freud (1896c) stated that out of eighteen cases, he had obtained an objective confirmation . . . in two (p. 206). Yet, as Scharnberg (1993) has pointed out (pp. 156157), the second instance involves the supposed mutual experiences of 2 patients, making a total of 3 of the 18. (Note that Freud did not state that either of these patients explicitly implicated the other in the alleged events; and in any case, such a circumstance would not have met the objective standard claimed, since it could have arisen as a product of his flawed clinical procedure.) This anomaly casts further doubt on the second confirmation. In short, the information adduced by Freud does not provide the objective confirmatory evidence that he claimed. It is no easy task to obtain reliable corroboration of early childhood events the memories of which are supposedly recovered 2 or more decades later (Pope, 1997; Pope, Oliva, & Hudson, 2002), and Freuds report does not come close to providing such evidence. Equally problematic are Freuds claims about his having uncovered material concerning sexual relations between very young children. Mollon writes that Freud provides the further interesting observation that where there had been a relationship between two children, he sometimes found that the boy who initiated the sexual activity had previously been seduced by an adult female and that he had subsequently tried to repeat with the little girl exactly the same activities that the adult had performed on him (p. 37; see Freud, 1896a, p. 152; 1896b, pp. 164165; 1896c, p. 208). The first question to ask here is: What was the source of the information that the boys in question (the assailants of some of his female patients) had themselves been previously seduced by adult females? And, even more pertinently, how could Freud have discovered that the supposed abusers in these cases had in early childhood been subjected to exactly the same sexual practices as they had perpetrated on the infant girls? (The problem is, of course, compounded by the fact that the supposed infantile experiences of his own patients were themselves doubtful analytic findings, purportedly of deeply repressed unconscious memories.) Freud made no attempt to provide any information about how he acquired this unlikely knowledge, and Mollon evidently requires none. That Freud (1895b) asserted that he was able to obtain this knowledge about the abusers with certainty in a few cases (pp. 164165) tells us more about his reporting practices than about the reliability of his claims. It is of more than passing interest to note that he never again mentioned these remarkable findings once he had abandoned the seduction theory. After a lengthy passage (pp. 2840) in which he presents a highly favorable account of the arguments adduced in The Aetiology of Hysteria, Mollon alludes (pp. 4041) to Freuds use of the pressure procedure, and writes of the danger of its generating confabulations rather than authentic memories. However, he is mistaken in saying (p. 41) that it requires todays knowledge to appreciate this. That patients might confabulate as a result of suggestions emanating from the physician, even unconsciously, was widely recognized in the last decades of the 19th century (BorchJacobsen, 1996a, pp. 2125), and it was precisely on this issue that much contemporary criticism of Freuds clinical findings was based (see Kiell, 1988, pp. 68, 74, 82; Israls and Schatzman, 1993, p. 4344). However, Freuds contemporaries would not have appreciated that when he asserted that no physician who did not use his new clinical

19
methodology was in a position to reject his claims (1896c, p. 220), he was alluding to his technique of analytic reconstruction, which did not necessitate patients actually reporting the crucial unconscious memories he believed he had uncovered (1896c, pp. 191192; 1924, p. 196). Those who are inclined to accept the false memories version of the seduction theory episode should consider whether it is conceivable that Freuds 6 obsessional patients reported to him that they had recovered repressed memories of both having been sexually abused in infancy and also having themselves, a few years later, sexually abused an infant sister (1896a, p. 155; 1896b, pp. 168169). Similarly, those who believe that Freuds seduction theory claims were for the most part based on authentic reports by patients need to consider if it is likely that the 6 obsessionals should have had these remarkable multiple experiences in childhood, so conveniently in accord with his theoretical requirements (Masson, 1985, pp. 144, 154, 209; Freud, 1896b, pp. 168169). (It should be noted here that in a paper [1895a] published only 8 months before he announced the seduction theory to Fliess, in not a single one of 11 cases of obsessional neurosis that he subjected to psychological analysis [pp. 7579] did Freud report that he had uncovered childhood sexual abuse.) Mollons attempt to maintain a precarious balance between his favorable exposition of Freuds arguments in the Aetiology paper and an acknowledgment of serious deficiencies in his clinical procedures leads him into inconsistencies. In two separate passages (pp. 34, 38) he commends Freud for being highly alert to the dangers of patients confabulating, yet he implicitly exculpates Freuds supposed failure to distinguish confabulations from authentic memories by reason of his not having todays knowledge of the propensity for hypnotism and related methods to generate confabulation rather than authentic memories (pp. 34, 41). Mollons suggestion that such an awareness requires current knowledge is also contradicted by his earlier observation (p. 34) that in a passage in the Aetiology paper Freud (1896c) was anticipating colleagues objections that the patients were likely to confabulate under the influence of his clinical procedures (pp. 203205). Freuds confident rejection of the confabulations challenge to his 1896 clinical claims can be seen in a more revealing light, namely, that what he regarded as his main proof (1896c, p. 205) for his purported findings was based on his new analytic technique for reconstructing repressed memories, not on patients reports. As he wrote 2 years later: By a curious circuitous path [i.e., psychoanalysis], . . . it is possible to arrive at a knowledge of this aetiology [of the psychoneuroses] and to understand why the patient was unable to tell us anything about it (Freud, 1898, p. 267). [5] In his retrospective accounts, when he needed an explanation for his seduction theory error that did not raise doubts about the reliability of his analytic technique, he disingenuously asserted that his erroneous claims resulted from his being misled by patients reports (1914, p. 74; 1925, pp. 3334). This is in blatant contradiction to his writing at the time that he would have to accuse [himself] of blameworthy credulity if he did not possess more conclusive evidence than reports from patients (1896a, p. 153). At the end of his section on the seduction theory episode Mollon takes issue with certain critics of Freuds accounts of the seduction theory in terms that need to be quoted in full: Some recent commentators have argued that Freud dishonestly distorted the true situation regarding his change of mind. They argue that Freud first coerced his patients into producing false scenes of childhood sexual abuse, which were really his own inventions, and then, realising his error, he subsequently claimed that his patients had spontaneously told him of their sexual scenes, and in this way had given him the idea of

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childhood sexuality and the Oedipus complex. They further point out that Freud originally claimed the sexual abusers were nursemaids, governesses and so on, but later claimed that most of his patients had said they were abused by their fathersa claim, it is alleged, that would have been convenient for his account of how he discovered the Oedipus complex whereby the child desires the father or mother in phantasy. These points have little substance. They are all covered by Freuds actual texts and his later footnotes. He freely admits that in early papers he played down the role of seduction by fathers because the idea would seem too disturbing to his readers (as well as perhaps to himself). His change of mind about how crucial sexual abuse was can be seen as part of a wider and consistent pattern whereby Freud continually revised his views in the light of his further clinical experience and thought. (pp. 4546) Mollon references Crews et al.s The Memory Wars (1995) and my Seductive Mirage (1993) in relation to this passage, but neither of us argues that the patients produced false memories of infantile sexual abuse. Our position is that the patients did not report recollections of infantile sexual abuse experiences at all, and that the sexual scenes were essentially Freuds own analytic reconstructions made on the basis of the symbolic interpretation of symptoms, patients associations, and fragmentary ideas and images produced in the course of his applying his pressure procedure (Crews, 1995, pp. 5759; Esterson, 1993 [pp. 1131], 1998). Nor are Mollons other assertions in this passage valid. The problem is not that Freud revised his views, but that he made retrospective changes regarding factual details. Mollon purports to refute the contention that there are inconsistencies in Freuds reports and that he later tendentiously misrepresented his original claims, but he can do so only by selective quotation from Freuds later writings (pp. 4345), and, in one instance, an allusion to a nonexistent statement (see below). Numerous inconsistencies in Freuds accounts have been cited in several articles, [6] the most comprehensive of which is largely devoted to documenting them in some detail (Esterson, 2001). One crucial inconsistency can be seen from Freuds report of the episode in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), in relation to what he describes as an interesting episode in the history of analytic research: In the period in which the main interest was directed to discovering infantile sexual traumas, almost all my women patients told me that they had been seduced by their father. I was driven to recognize in the end that these reports were untrue and so came to understand that hysterical symptoms are derived from phantasies and not from real occurrences. It was only later that I was able to recognize in this phantasy of being seduced by the father the expression of the typical Oedipus complex in women. (p. 120) One has only to compare the first sentence in this passage with Freuds statements in Aetiology (1896c) that the patients have no feeling of remembering the [sexual] scenes, and that they assured him emphatically of their unbelief (p. 204), to recognize the misleading nature of the quoted paragraph. [7] Another anomaly in the 1933 account is Freuds implication of fathers as the abusers of his female patients during the period in question. As Mollon indicates (p. 46), in one of the earlier of the 1896 papers Freud (1896b) implicated nursemaids, governesses and domestic servants, while teachers . . . figure with regrettable frequency; in addition, children (mostly brothers) slightly older than their infant girl victims were also prominent among the culprits (p. 164). Mollon claims to explain the stark contradiction between this

21
report and later accounts with his assertion that Freud freely admits that in early papers he had played down the role of seduction by fathers because the idea would seem too disturbing (p. 46). He gives no reference at this point, and in fact no such statement is to be found in Freuds writings. As is well known, in footnotes added in 1924 to Studies in Hysteria, Freud acknowledged that in 2 of the cases discussed in that book he had replaced father with uncle. However, as Mollon himself points out, none of the cases in Studies were relevant to the seduction theory. (The 2 cases in question concern attempted sexual assaults after puberty, and the memories had not been repressed [1895, pp. 134, n.2, 170, n.1].) Freud reported in 1924 that he had engaged in the subterfuge in the Studies cases for reasons of discretion, i.e., to conceal the identities of the individuals concerned, as was customary at that time (as now). As Swales (1988, pp. 9496) has shown in the case of Katharina, there is no reason to doubt that this is why Freud represented the father as uncle. (A century later, Swales was able to trace the identities of the individuals in the Katharina case history with the help of the later information.) The fact is that nowhere in his writings did Freud indicate that he played down the role of fathers in the seduction theory papers; he simply changed his story in his later accounts without reference to his original reports (1925, pp. 3334; 1933, p. 120). There is in fact no evidence for the commonly held view that Freud predominantly implicated fathers and that he concealed this in the 1896 papers. The seduction theory required only that there be unconscious memories of infantile sexual abuse; the identities of the abusers were irrelevant, and this is reflected in the supposed culprits listed by Freud at the time, which were in accord with the typical culprits cited in the contemporary literature on child sexual abuse (Makari, 1998, p. 642). It was only after December 1896, when on theoretical grounds he alighted on the notion that fathers were likely to be the abusers (Eissler, 2001, p. 153; Masson, 1985, p. 212), that he first mentioned fathers as the supposed culprits in letters to Fliess (and then only in a minority of cases) (Esterson, 1998, p. 9; Masson, 1985, pp. 220, 224, 238). Several writers have shown that there are cogent grounds for rejecting the notion that the categories cited in the seduction theory papers concealed a preponderance of fathers among the supposed culprits (Eissler, 2001, pp. 151159, 195196; Esterson, 1998, pp. 910; McCullough, 2001, pp. 67; Schimek, 1987, pp. 950951). As for Mollons suggestion that Freud may perhaps have found the idea of fathers as abusers too disturbing, one has only to turn to Freuds letters to Fliess to see that after December 1896 Freud was actively seeking to implicate fathers (Masson, 1985, pp. 212, 220, 249, 286). [8] Mollon contends that Crews and I unjustly maligned Freud when we stated that he retrospectively tailored his seduction theory claims to make his later explanations more plausible. Now in his Aetiology (1896c) paper, Freud described the sexual scenes that were shown in [his] analyses to be at the root of exceedingly common hysterical phenomena: they were, he wrote, very repellent to the feelings of a sexually normal individual; they include all the abuses known to debauched and impotent persons, among whom the buccal cavity and the rectum are misused for sexual purposes. . . . People who have no hesitation in satisfying their sexual desires upon children cannot be expected to jib at finer shades in the methods of obtaining that satisfaction. . . . Where the relation is between two children, the character of the sexual scenes is none the less of the same repulsive sort. . . . (pp. 214215)

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Clearly such horrendous experiences were not in accord with the later story that the patients were, for the most part, conjuring up unconscious wishful phantasies [9] to cover up disturbing memories of infantile masturbation or (in its final form) of infantile Oedipal desires. After his abandonment of the infantile sexual trauma theory, Freud never again referred to the brutal nature of many of his original abuse claims, retrospectively bringing them into closer accord with his new theory by alluding to patients wishfulfilling phantasies of seduction. Then there are the tendentious changes, alluded to above, that occurred with regard to the identities of the supposed abusers. There was no mention of fathers in the first 2 retrospective reports, in which Freud maintained that the putative phantasies of seduction were concealing memories of objectless infantile autoerotic activities (1906, p. 274; 1914, p. 1718), in line with his theories of psychosexual development expounded in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905b, p. 189). The first appearance of fathers in his public reports of the episode was in 1925, when he asserted that they had been implicated in the case of his female patients. And it was then, for the first time in relation to the seduction theory patients, that he used his Oedipal desires explanation for their supposed wishful phantasies (1925, p. 34). There is a more basic problem with the account endorsed by Mollon. He cites (p. 45) Freuds writing that [i]f hysterical subjects trace back their symptoms to traumas that are fictitious, then the new fact which emerges is precisely that they create such scenes in phantasy . . . (1914, p. 17), and comments that this led to Freuds fundamental discoveries concerning childhood sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and the pervasive role of phantasy. But Mollon acknowledges that Freuds coercive clinical procedure at the time was not advisable (pp. 41, 63), and that the Aetiology paper was fundamentally flawed (p. 42). Even Eissler, notoriously reluctant to criticize Freud, writes disparagingly of the seduction theory papers, documenting the contradictions they contain, and concluding that Freuds then clinical procedures reduce the probability of gaining reliable data to zero (Eissler, 2001, pp. 107, 115). Yet Mollon treats Freuds alleged findings (now mostly considered to be patients phantasies) as genuine products of the patients unconscious, i.e., he apparently accepts that many of the highly dubious infantile sexual scenes that Freud claimed to have uncovered were false memories that have a psychodynamic function. But such a fundamentally flawed clinical procedure cannot provide material that can validly be used as evidence for anything, and certainly not for epoch-making discoveries as Freud later claimed (1914, p. 1718; 1925, p. 34 35).
It is likely that skill and intellectual memories are monitored in different parts of the brain. ("Memory (mental process)," 2000)

The Cerebellum
The cerebellum is likely where procedural memories are maintained. ("Memory (mental process)," 2000)

The Limbic System The hippocampus Hippocampus is Greek for "seahorse." This is the shape of this structure of the brain. The hippocampus is involved in transferring memories from short term to long term

23 memory. Some of this process is thought to occur while the person is sleeping . (Squire & Zola-Morgan, 1991) (Drachman & arbit, 1966; Squire, 1982) (Benjamin, Hopkins, & Nation, 1994, p.284) The hippocampus, in combination with the thalamus, is also thought to be involved in spatial memories, such as recognizing a road route. [Cardoso., 2000 .p.1]. ("Memory (mental process)," 2000). The Thalamus
The thalamus, in combination with the hippocampus, is thought to be involved in spatial memories. ("Memory (mental process)," 2000). In combination with the amygdala, it is thought to be involved in emotional memories. It also may be involved in actually forming the original memory before encoding takes place.

Amygdala
The Greek for "almond" describes shape of this structure of the brain. The amygdala is in charge of strong emotions. Because of this, it is also closely tied to memory. The degree and type of emotional impact of an event has a great influence on an event being stored in memory. If a person experiences something extremely emotional, the amygdala will activate connections with the hippocampus so that the event will be more memorable. [Cardoso, 1997.p.1]

Brainstem - The lower extension of the brain where it connects to the spinal cord. Neurological functions located in the brainstem include those necessary for survival (breathing, digestion, heart rate, blood pressure) and for arousal (being awake and alert). Most of the cranial nerves come from the brainstem. The brainstem is the pathway for all fiber tracts passing up and down from peripheral nerves and spinal cord to the highest parts of the brain. Click Here To Return To Diagram Click Here For Diagram of The Brainstem Cerebellum - The portion of the brain (located at the back) which helps coordinate movement (balance and muscle coordination). Damage may result in ataxia which is a problem of muscle coordination. This can interfere with a person's ability to walk, talk, eat, and to perform other self care tasks. Click Here
To Return To Diagram

Frontal Lobe - Front part of the brain; involved in planning, organizing, problem solving, selective attention, personality and a variety of "higher

24

cognitive functions" including behavior and emotions. Click Here for a Diagram of the Frontal Lobe The anterior (front) portion of the frontal lobe is called the prefrontal cortex. It is very important for the "higher cognitive functions" and the determination of the personality. The posterior (back) of the frontal lobe consists of the premotor and motor areas. Nerve cells that produce movement are located in the motor areas. The premotor areas serve to modify movements. The frontal lobe is divided from the parietal lobe by the central culcus. Click
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Occipital Lobe - Region in the back of the brain which processes visual information. Not only is the occipital lobe mainly responsible for visual reception, it also contains association areas that help in the visual recognition of shapes and colors. Damage to this lobe can cause visual deficits. Click Here To
Return To Diagram

Parietal Lobe - One of the two parietal lobes of the brain located behind the frontal lobe at the top of the brain. Parietal Lobe, Right - Damage to this area can cause visuo-spatial deficits (e.g., the patient may have difficulty finding their way around new, or even familiar, places). Parietal Lobe, Left - Damage to this area may disrupt a patient's ability to understand spoken and/or written language. The parietal lobes contain the primary sensory cortex which controls sensation (touch, pressure). Behind the primary sensory cortex is a large association area that controls fine sensation (judgment of texture, weight, size, shape).Click Here
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Temporal Lobe - There are two temporal lobes, one on each side of the brain located at about the level of the ears. These lobes allow a person to tell one smell from another and one sound from another. They also help in sorting new information and are believed to be responsible for short-term memory.

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Right Lobe - Mainly involved in visual memory (i.e., memory for pictures and faces). Left Lobe - Mainly involved in verbal memory (i.e., memory for words and names). Click Here To Return To Diagram

Below:

Hippocampus

and

Amygdala

shown.

Reprinted from: Neuroanatomy: An Illustrated Colour Text by A.R. Crossman & D. Neary, page 104. c. 1998, by permission of the publisher Churchill Livingstone. Do not reproduce without permission. http://www.harcourt-international.com

The Temporal Lobes

The deep temporal lobes are very important in the storage of past events. ("Brain," 2000)[Cardoso, 1997.p.1] Wernicke's area , an area related to understanding language, is located in the temporal lobes ("Brain," 2000)

The Frontal lobes

Broca's Area , an area of the brain related to speech, is located in the frontal lobes. Damage to this area in the brain can result in aphasia . ("Brain," 2000)