The Traumatised Memory – Protection and Resistance: How traumatic stress encrypts itself in the body, behaviour and soul and how to detect it

By Ralf Vogt

Much has already been written about trauma psychotherapeutic methods. However, little research has so far been done on how psychodynamic traumatic incidents are psychologically mapped and coded into symptoms of the body and into mental images – although this topic is extremely exciting!
How is psychological stressful data saved and stored by humans depending on their age, the cruelty level of the incident or the accumulation of terrible events? Which variants of remembrance are available to the body and mind? How can encrypted data be later retrieved and decrypted, so it is therapeutically effective and emotionally acceptable?
This book is a collection of theoretical and practical contributions that can be understood by psychotherapeutic colleagues and affected clients alike. The illustrative case examples are also interesting for anyone who wants to experience the logic and contradictions of the fascinating unconscious.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lehmanns
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9783965430273

Book preview

Ralf Vogt

The Traumatised Memory – Protection and Resistance

How traumatic stress encrypts itself in the body, behaviour and soul

and how to detect it

With contributions by:

Kevin J. Connors

Winja Lutz

Renée P. Marks

Valerie Sinason

Joanne H. Twombly

Irina Vogt

Ralf Vogt

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Image credits:

All images are subject to the copyright law and may not be utilised without a written consent by the authors.

Copyright © 2019 Lehmanns Media GmbH, Berlin, Germany

All rights reserved

Published by Lehmanns Media GmbH, Helmholtzstr. 2-9, 10587 Berlin, Germany

www.lehmanns.de

ISBN 978-3-96543-027-3 

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all those who provided me the possibility to complete this book. Special gratitude goes to the translators for this project. They are; Sabine Budnick, who translated articles 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 4.1, 4.2 and 5.4, Winja Lutz, who translated articles 1.2, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 and Julian Pottier, who translated articles 1.1, 1.4, 3.1 and 5.1.

Furthermore, I would also like to acknowledge with much appreciation the role of Julian Pottier during editing process.

Last but not least, many thanks go to Sylvia Pötzsch for her support, dedication and organisational skills in overseeing this project as well as her hard work compiling the List of References.

Ralf Vogt, November 2018

Note on Beseelbare

The German adjective beseelbare is used because it has no literal equivalent in the English language. Beseelbare describes something that can be ensouled, i.e. endowed with a soul. While ensoulment is an ancient philosophical and religious concept, it is used metaphorically in the context of SPIM and describes how inanimate objects may be ensouled by clients’ transference mechanisms. Objects can elicit feelings, and sometimes actions, in clients because certain characteristics of those objects remind them of situations or significant other persons in their past. These transference processes can be used in therapy.

1  Theoretical Previews

1.1  Zeitgeist and Trauma Memory

Ralf Vogt

The zeitgeist has a great influence on everyday psychological and psychotherapeutic thinking (Vogt, 2012, pp. 13-15; Vogt, 2014, pp. 6-12). In my view, the reason for this is firstly, the state of the relatively young scientific discipline of psychotherapy, in which many contradictory concepts are practiced and the crystallisation of a relatively clear, universally valid, widely accepted doctrine is still a long way off. Secondly, psychotherapy is traditionally considered to be a soft science, as opposed to physics or medicine, although these disciplines have not yet solved the essential problems of their subject matter, such as black holes or cancer treatment. Even a weather forecast, which offers only a rough guide seven days in advance, is trusted by many more people than a psychologist, on top of which, there are even greater demands and human behavioural prognosis with months, if not even years, of validity expectations. Why is that? Most people claim to have sufficient knowledge of their psyche, their inner processes with motives, feelings, thoughts and behaviour. To paraphrase Descartes; I think, therefore I know! Or better still; I suspect, therefore am I! But fun aside, we are entering a minefield. The psyche is a sensitive thing, because no one can say something quickly, this is in contrast to the doctor or scientist, where the people of our time quickly become believers.

In terms of the psyche and its quality characteristics, such as a memory or personality attitude, the personal self-concept of everyone seems more at stake. At the doctor one usually listens to lifestyle criticism quiet easily, such as; Just peel the cucumbers in the future because they are sprayed with pesticide and industrial fertiliser. It’s no problem, the cucumber is essentially preserved. You can live with that, unless you are a guinea pig and you enjoy your bowl of cucumber peel.

With psychological feedback on mental processing capacity, the person being addressed quickly becomes sceptical, distant and annoyed – or to put it simply, immediately adopting the opposite opinion because it is just a normal reaction. That means that psychological or psychotherapeutic advice meets a form of half-know-ledge, which often has to be defended immediately and vehemently in the self-image and image of the world. After all, it’s about unconscious processes, and if you do not know what it is about, fear creeps up on you and suddenly you want to drop the entire subject, so as not to experience any unease or inner turmoil. A number of colleagues feel equally stressed when they get the impression that the deserved reputation of the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, could cause objectively incurable damage as a result of modern trauma research.

In the field of technology, such an emotional yearning for stagnation is unimaginable. Who would like to be driving around in Carl Benz’s first automobile at a top speed of 16 km/h today? Which technician would come up with the sad interpretation that when building new cars, we would simply ignore the legacy of Carl Benz, or simply disregard what has traditionally been proven? The zeitgeist in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is sometimes much stronger than the past. The adherence to conservative norms also influences the school of thought in psychotherapy. That in turn, also influences the sluggish adoption of trauma therapeutic concepts. There is, in general, a lack of research in depth psychology-analytic psychotherapy, and so far it has been insufficiently concerned with the investigation of traumatic memory problems and their methodological psychological solution.

The zeitgeist, does not deal with the fear of the unknown traumatic unconscious nor dissociated objects of memory, had been recognised and recorded by Sigmund Freud when, in 1897, after nearly two years of postulating the trauma background hypothesis for severe mental disorders (Freud’s theory of seduction, 1895-1897, see Hirsch, 2004 and Vogt, 2004, pp. 35-39), he turned away from it and put the fantasy hypothesis first and so as a more important explanation for violent, traumatic sexual assaults on children.

Jennifer Freyd (1994) has been investigating the trauma of betrayal for years, this trauma occurs in the victims when violent or compromising abuses by important reference persons and caregivers take places. A summary of this dispute is that the betrayal leaves the deepest emotional scars, especially on endeared people, and this betrayal is also in the area of psychotherapy and university structures a serious factor. This topic has also been tackled by Jeffery Masson (1986) and Vogt (2014, pp. 52-61).

Accordingly, it can be assumed that there should be deeper unconscious / dissociated reasons for the conservative fixation and the non-shaking want to the own self-experience deficit, in addition to all other character blind spots, from both everyday people and in particular, psychotherapists.

The vast media landscape is also not immune here; in our fast-paced world it gains more and more influence as a source of education. For example, within a short period of time the report The deceived memory was aired twice on Scobel, a well-known science programme on the German TV channel ‘3sat’, on 22.09.2016 and on 30.03.2017. The core of this 45-minute programme was one-sided contributions by the representative ,Loftus (USA), of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), as well as arguments by research shooting star Shaw (GB) on memory manipulation research as well as a discussion contribution by Steller (Germany) as an expert witness and court psychologist. The tenor of this highly biased TV report was the intention to provide evidence that human memory is very unreliable and when influenced by investigators, and psychotherapists alike, could be manipulated quickly. A short counter-hypothesis by Ulrich Sachsse had little impact on the overriding direction of the report.

The unscientific studies of the False Memory movement and the inadequate sprawl of court psychology into fields of clinical psychotrauma therapy are also dealt with by Lutz in this book as well as in our research contribution in this book’s later chapters. For me, this section is primarily about the disposition of the journalistic editorial staff, which just commissioned this report unilaterally and then enthusiastically aired the programme twice in just six months. This comparable short-term reairing of a programme is, for me, not so common, especially in the otherwise often sophisticated selection of topics. It must have something to do with the underrunning climate of the broad-based editorial staff.

It is probably more plausible not to believe the content of the memory, which is traumatically fragmented and therapeutically recoverable as vice versa. As I emphasised at the beginning, the victims are betrayed twice by the trauma-sceptical zeitgeist. Firstly, by the lack of protection and assistance of the social environment towards the victims during and after the violent incident/s of the perpetrator/s and secondly due to of the lack of social environmental support in the work-up and the tendential assumption of morbid fantasy, which is allegedly at work, when trauma contents are later therapeutically reconstructed – insinuations by non-psychotraumatology trained professionals and courts in the context of legal processes.

It should not be forgotten that we, in Germany, have been marked transgenerationally by two world wars, not only as victims but also as perpetrators. In addition, psychotrauma therapy has never played a role in the previous generations or was not allowed to play a role in the upbringing or education during the militant period. With my 30 years of professional experience, I see the trivialisation of emotional suffering in others and the vehement dismissal of self-concern as the dominant zeitgeist in our transgenerationally lost mother and dreaded homeland (see Mitscherlich & Mitscherlich, 1977; Moser, 2010 and others).

1.2            The Reality of False Memories

Winja Lutz

The History of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

The story of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) begins ironically with one of the most important trauma researchers, Prof. Dr. Jennifer J. Freyd. Freyd is professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Oregon. She developed the Betrayal Trauma Theory (Freyd, 1991, 1996) and has done extensive research to investigate the influence of betrayal on the effects of trauma. Traditionally fear and terror were seen as the only severity factors in trauma, Freyd and her research team were able to prove that betrayal is at least as influential. The extent of betrayal, for example, influences the severity of the consequences of trauma. If trauma is caused by a perpetrator close to the victim, the victim suffers from more pronounced and long-term follow-up symptoms (Edwards et al, 2012; Goldsmith, Freyd & DePrince, 2012; Kelley et al, 2012).

Moreover, in the case of traumatic betrayal by loved ones, blindness for the betrayal occurs, which Freyd calls betrayal blindness. If the victim cannot deal with the betrayal by either confronting the perpetrator or breaking off contact, they cannot afford to recognize the betrayal. This is also where Freyd and her research team see gaps in consciousness and perception. Due to the absolute dependence of children, betrayal blindness is particularly pronounced in childhood traumatization within the family. It helps to split off (forget) the traumatic experiences in order to maintain the vital relationship with the perpetrator (DePrince et al, 2012; Bernstein & Freyd, 2014).

In the course of her research, Freyd also developed the DARVO concept (Freyd, 1997), with which she describes a frequent perpetrator-victim dynamic. DARVO stands for:

D – Deny

A – Attack

R – Reverse

V – Victim

O – Offender

If the victim confronts the offender with the committed acts, then the offender denies what they have done, attacks the victim with accusations and presents themself as a victim (e.g. of slander) and the victim as the aggressor. This results is a role reversal of victim and perpetrator, with which the perpetrator tries to evade their responsibility.

In December 1990 Jennifer J. Freyd privately confronted her parents with the sexual abuse her father had subjected her to in childhood. Within 14 months her parents founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). In June 1991 (six months after the confrontation) Pamela Freyd published the article How could this happen? Coping with a false accusation of incest and rape (Doe, 1991), in which she made many personal details public aimed at discrediting Jennifer J. Freyd. Pamela Freyd had already contacted a number of Jennifer’s colleagues passing the article on to them so that it quickly became public who the article was about. This happened right at the time when Jennifer J. Freyd was up for tenure as a professor. In the article, Pamela Freyd describes her daughter as being manipulated by her therapist with the help of revealing therapeutic techniques to develop false memories of her father’s sexual trauma. Although Pamela Freyd generously distributed the article, the media did not immediately take up the subject. Pamela Freyd turned to Howard Lief, her longtime psychiatrist and friend of the family, and asked him for help. Lief organized an interview with Darrell Sifford, an international reporter, for the Freyd parents along with Hollida Wakefield. In this interview numerous false allegations were made, as Pamela claimed the therapist had specifically given her daughter the book The courage to heal in the third session. Lief told the reporter the therapist had also worked with hypnosis and Hollida Wakefield claimed that memories of sexual trauma were mostly a practical but false explanation anyway. Women would use them to have an excuse for their mental problems. Darrell Sifford published his column Accusations of sex abuse, years later in various newspapers throughout the country in November 1991.

In 1992, Freyd’s parents established the False Memory Syndrome Foundation for parents who were falsely accused of sexual abuse by their children. In early 1992, Pamela and Peter Freyd seriously invited their daughter to join the scientific advisory board of the FMSF. Jennifer J. Freyd refused. Her father wrote to her that he was sorry she resented the extent to which he and his wife had gone public. She should have known that it was one of his few predictable actions. He had asked her to join the advisory board because he assumed she would want to, at least to be informed and to be able to influence the content: I still insist on thinking of our Newsletter, indeed the whole project, as being primarily a way of communicating with our daughters, [...] (Freyd, 1993). Jennifer J. Freyd says: What sort of absolutely bizarre boundary violation would it have been had I accepted their offer to join the FMSF board, a foundation apparently intent on denying my reality: An organization run by my own parents? (Freyd, 1993).

Other founding members of the FMSF besides Jennifer J. Freyd’s mother Pamela Freyd and her father Peter Freyd, were Martin T. Orne, Elisabeth Loftus and the Underwager / Wakefield couple. Ralph Underwager coined the term False Memory Syndrome, which made the FMSF appear more scientific. It is important to note that no research exists that would prove the existence of a False Memory Syndrome. There is no recognized syndrome of this kind in any medical society. False Memory Syndrome also does not exist in any classification system of mental disorders nor has it ever. In 2016, Julia Shaw minimized this move by urging people in her blog to stop using the term, saying it is an ill-conceived term ’false memory syndrome’ may have been uttered once or twice in the 1990s, but science is totally over it.

Prof. Ross Cheit, founder of the Recovered Memory Project, a case archive on corroborated cases of recovered memories, corrected this by pointing out that the term was political, no accidental jargon, and called Shaw’s statement a colossal misstatement, since the term is still completely common in current research (Cheit, 2016).

In 1993 Ralph Underwager stated in an interview with the Dutch magazine Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia that pedophilia could be considered a responsible decision, that sex with children should be understood as part of God’s will (Geraci, 1993, p. 3, Craft, o.D.). Paedophiles are too defensive [...]. What I think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, I believe this [is] in fact part of God’s will. At the same time, Underwager was one of the most active expert witnesses in court proceedings against perpetrators accused of sexual abuse of children. He often argued that most allegations of sexual abuse were due to faulty therapeutic procedures that led to false memories, not actual sexual abuse.

Martin T. Orne, also a founding member of the FMSF, worked as a psychologist and psychiatrist for the CIA on top secret research such as the MK Ultra program in which mind control experiments were conducted. According to the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Ross studied the participation of psychologists and psychiatrists in CIA mind control experiments. He published Dr. Orne’s participation in various CIA mind control experiments in which he experimented with training Manchurian candidates (people with deliberately conditioned multiple personalities) (Ross, 2006).

Elisabeth Loftus has been a member of the FMSF advisory board from the very beginning. As early as 1991, she described recovered memories as suspicious and questioned whether memories of abuse were real memories or imagination driven by hatred and revenge (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991). Loftus was the one who brought the idea of (unintentionally) implanted memories to the media: An overly zealous psychologist could unwittingly use his or her influence over a vulnerable patient to plant the seeds of a ’memory’ that is actually a fantasy (Thompson, 1991). Loftus refers to a concept of fantasy in this quote that is based on a very similar denial dynamic in its origins. In 1896 Freud presented his Seduction Theory before an audience of medical colleagues. According to his new theory the symptoms of his hysterical patients were a result of real sexual traumatizations. Freud’s presentation was answered with icy silence and he was criticized and ostracized professionally. The idea of accusing the family and their patriarchs was even more unthinkable in the Victorian era than it is today. In 1905 Freud publicly recanted his theory and presented the Oedipus complex, a relieving theory that the patients’ memories were in fact only childhood fantasies which, in conflict with the person’s superego demands, would lead to hysterical symptoms. Freud bowed to pressure from public opinion; people did not want to know about real sexual abuse of children because they did not want to face the responsibility and the consequences (cf. Masson, 1984; Vogt, 2014). Where Freud at least made the honorable attempt to oppose social denial, Loftus anticipated it and purposefully promoted the concept of false memories. Subsequently, false memories called implanted by Loftus became a major topic in the media and psychotherapists were the new bad guys. So-called implanted memories were presented as gross malpractice and thus open to legal proceedings. In the 1990s psychotherapists were accused and sentenced in hundreds of court cases. Even more often court cases failed to convict the accused because of the victim’s memories categorized as false.

It may make sense to embed these developments historically and to ask oneself why such a conspicuously high level of activity was observed at this time in particular. Without being able to determine the factual effect this had, it can be observed that in the US up until 1988 childhood sexual abuse crimes became statute-barred when the victim reached the age of majority. Since 1988, this legal situation has changed in more and more states, extending the statute of limitations beyond the age of majority.

Perhaps the extremely vehement reaction of Freyd’s parents and their comrades-in-arms is just coincidence, but Jennifer J. Freyd points out very accurately that it would be a trap if we assumed: [...] that this debate is merely about memory: memory research, memory veracity, memory fallibility. If there is anything my story can demonstrate, it is that the FMSF is not just about memory research, it is at least partly about a family in pain [...] (Freyd, 1993).

Research paradigms

Our memory is undeniably fallible. Memory research is extremely interesting and varied while only a small branch is dealing with