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[The following material is from O Timothy magazine, Volume 13, Issue 3, 1996. This material cannot be placed on BBS or Internet sites without express permission from the author. Any articles which are redistributed by e-mail or print must be left intact and nothing must be removed or changed, including these informational headers. Copyright 1995 by David W. Cloud. All rights are reserved by the author. O Timothy is a monthly magazine. Annual subscription is US$20 FOR THE UNITED STATES. Send to Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org. FOR CANADA the subscription is $20 Canadian. Send to Bethel Baptist Church, P.O. Box 9075, London, Ontario N6E 1V0. The Way of Life Internet web site is http://www.wayoflife.org .]

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CASTS DOUBT ON RECOVERED MEMORY

The following is adapted from an Associated Press report, June 16, 1994:

The American Medical Association has proclaimed that recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are often unreliable and should not be assumed to be true. This comes from a new policy statement that criticizes use of the psychological technique.

The association's House of Delegates voted to accept its science council's findings on Tuesday, the third day of its annual five-day meeting.

"The use of recovered memories is fraught with problems of potential misapplication," the policy statement says.

"Few cases in which adults make accusations of childhood sexual abuse based on recovered memories can be proved or disproved," the policy says. "It is not yet known how to distinguish true memories from imagined events in these cases."

The council urged therapists to address the mental and emotional needs of clients apart from the truth or falsity of their claims.

The doctors' group's stance is similar to one adopted six months ago by the board of the American Psychiatric Association. The 38,000-member psychiatrists' group is affiliated with the AMA, which has 294,000 members.

Richard Ofshe, a social psychologist at UC-Berkeley, complained that the AMA's stance was too weak.

"The recovered memory epidemic is the psychological-psychiatric quackery of the 20th century," Ofshe said Wednesday.

He said professional associations have trouble telling the hard truth about such issues because the medical association and the psychological association "have a significant number of members whose careers are at risk because of the mistakes they have made."

Dr. John McGrath, the AMA delegate from the American Psychiatric Association, said that in trying to enhance a person's memory a psychotherapist faces the danger of implanting false memories.