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The talk page was getting long, so threads dated prior to 2008 have been archived to /Archive 1. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have added these tags, because IMO, it appears that most of the article presents the point of view of the FMSF and affiliated orgs. My hope is that additional data can be added to the article to balance these views. Abuse truth (talk) 02:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This paragraph : The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has speculated that during the 1980s and 1990s, thousands or tens of thousands of therapists attempted to recover memories of early childhood abuse from their clients. The techniques, practices and exercises used in these attempts are often referred to as Recovered Memory Therapy and sometimes resulted in allegations of abuse being made by individuals against family members. Many of these individuals severed all connection with their parents, hundreds of whom were convicted of these crimes and imprisoned. Many of the people convicted on such charges have since been freed, in part due to the efforts of the FMSF and a wider, skeptical reappraisal of RMT and the veracity of individuals' recovered memories. Recovered memory therapy (RMT) on ReligiousTolerance.org
and the section in general appears to be poorly sourced. The above paragraph comes from a self-admittedly POV source, that uses very few references to back up the numbers stated in their article. Many of the statements they make do not appear to be backed up research.
Quote from their webpage on RMT: "Our normal policy is to explain both or all viewpoints that people hold on each issue. However, the extreme harm caused by RMT has now been well documented. The unreliability of RMT has been firmly established. Thus, this series of essays will mainly reflect the beliefs of a near-consensus of therapists in this series of essays: that RMT is a dangerous and irresponsible form of therapy."
Statements like "near-consensus" and "firmly established" appear to be statements of opinion not backed by data or research. I didn't want to delete the paragraph or section without a discussion first. Perhaps there is a way to save the section by bringing in reliable sources to bring in a more balanced perspective.Abuse truth (talk) 22:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
oops, should have read page better Ralphmcd (talk) 18:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. So. False memory syndrome doesn't apply solely to memories of sexual abuse, it applies to...hmm, oh, I know - FALSE MEMORIES. Any sort of false memory can be included under FMS, but this article implies that the realm of FMS stops after sexual abuse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.218.179 (talk) 17:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the 4/1 restoration of the sentence in the opening section. "Not irrelevant, as it implies that he considers them biased." ResearchEditor (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
From all I've heard about FMS, it appears to me to be related to, if not the same as, cryptomnesia, which renowned skeptic Arthur C. Clarke described in one essay as "the incredibly detailed and creative recall of memories under hypnosis" [italics in original]. He was making the point that hypnosis subjects aren't compelled by their state of mind to tell the truth; on the contrary, the tendency of people to say what they believe their listener wants to hear, may actually be boosted by hypnosis.
Also, ISTR reading some years ago about some psychologists (in response to claims that FMS is just a term invented as a cover-up for child abuse) doing an experiment which (they claimed) proved once and for all that there is such a thing as FMS; they subjected volunteers to hypnotherapy sessions, during which they persuaded the subjects that in their childhood they had visited Disneyland and met Bugs Bunny there. A "significant number" of the subjects afterwards "remembered" the encounter; despite the fact that there is no possibility of it actually having taken place, as Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, not Disney.
Perhaps, if good citations can be found for either or both of these, they can be folded into the article. -- 217.171.129.73 (talk) 00:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
After a lot of deliberation, I removed the religioustolerance.org reference and statement, that has been previously discussed several times already.
I read through their material to check the accuracy of the statement and I found that even if the source were reliable, the paragraph would need to be rewritten to correctly relate the information in the source. But rewriting the paraphrase doesn't appear to be appropriate anyway since the reliability of the source has been questioned, and has not been established. It's one person's interpretation of the topic; the author is not a researcher or otherwise recognized authority; and, he states his bias on the topic and is writing to prove his point - not to present the information in a neutral and balanced way. If he were a notable commentator, it might be useful to present his personal views, but in addition to the other problems with the reference, as a self-published advertiser-supported website, again, the source fails WP:V and WP:RS. -Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have deleted this category because this page does not discuss "Crimes that have aspects involving Satanism or the occult." ResearchEditor (talk) 21:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have restored an entire section that was deleted by an anonymous IP address w/o reason. The anon IP also deleted the phrase "so-called." I have added this back as "alleged" which more closely reflects the source and is more NPOV. I have deleted the one sentence history section which was unsourced. I added a line in the header about frequency rate from the Whitfield "Memory and Abuse" source that comes from a section on page 13 of his book, that he backs with four additional sources. I also combined several duplicate references. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have deleted an unrelated link and undid bold on a link to fix undue weight. I propose that the old tags on the top of the article be removed, since they haven't been discussed in a long time. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This page is a travesty. With all due respect, that is.
I spent alot of time working on this page and Recovered Memory Therapy last fall before taking a break for my own sanity. Looking at what exists now is simply depressing. I admire the attention and work people have given, but this is far too important a topic to remained mired in b*llsh*t. I am proposing a ground-up re-write. I am not a seasoned WP vet, though WP shouldn't be run by seasoned WP vets anyways, but I wonder if there is any possibility of doing this: for over a year, I have observed these pages serving as battlegrounds for two opposing positions. WOuld it be at all feasible for us to come out and acknowledge this and create a discussion thread where we each state what our intention is and form two groups, then mediate between them? Maybe DreamGuy is going to come along and cite some arcane b*llsh*t explaining why this is in wild violation of something or other, but isn't it the basic problem here? If we could do that and start from the ground up by discussing each substantive change and trying to establish consensus, we might really have something. Just a thought. Start you flaming, snarking.....NOW! West world (talk) 06:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I must support Westworld and ask for a complete rewrite.
Have been, am reading Derren Brown, Irrationality, Kluge and Mistakes were made and the article as written does not begin to approach current thinking in this area. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.12.222.230 (talk) 19:28, 25 September 2008 (UTC) --82.12.222.230 (talk) 19:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, mr comedian Arthur Rubin, let's take it up. First off, please explain your ha-ha comment about "FMS really does exist and should be treated medically" not to mention ":lol:". Mr Rubin, what the f does that mean. This page is propaganda. It treats DID and the predominantly accepted scientific mechanism thereof as a highly contested theory. It does not represent the generally accepted truth of its specialists (that DID is a real diagnosis) and as such is simply a glaring example of WP being ruled by a bunch of silly bullies. I am, again, proposing a mediated ground-up re-write. West world (talk) 04:32, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've a copy of Hammond, D. Corydon; Brown, Daniel P.; Scheflin, Alan W. (1998). Memory, trauma treatment, and the law. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0393702545. for two weeks via the magic of Interlibrary Loan (wikipedia owes me $2 and that's not counting overdue fees). If anyone would like verification of how this source is represented on any of the pages, please let me know in the next two weeks. WLU (talk) 17:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently two potential versions for the theories section. Here are both, before and after. Some comments:
The DMOZ page I added contains all the links that were removed and re-added earlier. I think this pretty much eliminates any need to re-add them or dispute their inclusion. Any dissent? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 14:30, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just a cursory search through Scopus doesn't seem to support that stance that the "memory wars" are somehow over and decided. If anything they seem to emphasize the bitter debate (Knecht, T. 2005, Pfäfflin, F., 2006). But on reflection I wonder that perhaps the wrong sort of thing is being argued about. There is a very good article by Fiona E. Raitt and Suzanne Zeedyk in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry [1] that, while refusing to take a side, emphasizes that which is of concern to people like myself: Collateral damage. Real abusers that go free because of doubt and loss of credibility to the witness, even when they did not undergo any of the snake oil RMT techniques. This loss of credibility to objectively true accusations has hurt many genuine cases. This article points out that it was once forbidden for women and children to testify in courts of law because they were though to be innately unreliable witnesses by virtue of being female or young.
For now, I'll just check this as I have time to. I already have concerns about McHugh, but I need to do some background checking.Legitimus (talk) 19:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Because I'm not familiar with the publisher, I've asked for an opinion on Dana Press, publisher of McHugh's book, here. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The page isn't perfect, but can we remove the tag at the top, or at least some of the issues? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Searching in google books for false.memory.syndrome (I think the periods work like quotations that allow for dashes and other punctuation) between 2006 and 2009 turned up a couple sources:
There's about 380 in total, but the number of hits per book seems to drop off after this. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 14:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For a long time now this article has been misleading readers into thinking there is no scientific basis for the concept of false memories by focusing instead on the term "False Memory Syndrome". FMS is not an official diagnosis, but false memories are well accepted. The people who came up with the original wording involved included some dedicated POV pushers, at least one of whom has been permanently banned from Wikipedia for that activity. It's long past time the wording was changed to reflect reality instead of focusing on a what amounted to a dirty trick of rhetorics, so I fixed things.
Some of the other pro-recovered memories bias is still present in the article, but at least the worst and most obvious example of POV pushing is taken care of. DreamGuy (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Scolarpedia has a long list of sources on it's page: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/False_memory DreamGuy (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This subject is currently being worked on in three different places. This is not working. If want to improve the quality we need to join our forces in one centralized article.
If you read the Recovered memory and Repressed memory articles you'll notice that there is a lot of other information there that could improve this article and visa versa, but it'd be a waste of time to copy and paste sources back and forth between articles that largely deal with the same subject.
Please respond on the topic of merging on the talk page of Repressed memory. JGM73 (talk) 00:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Articles with overlapping content and their respective sections:
Legal issues/Medico-legal issues/Court cases
Controversy/Authenticity (of recovered memories)/Research (about recovered memories)
Evidence for (the existence of false memories in general)/Neurological basis of memory
Hypothesis/Effects of trauma on memory
If you I missed a significant overlap, please create a new discussion topic to discuss this there.
To keep things central, please cast your vote at Talk:Repressed memory#An oversight of the mess.
JGM73 (talk) 01:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In the largest false memory study to date, 5,269 participants were asked about their memories for three true and one of five fabricated political events. Each fabricated event was accompanied by a photographic image purportedly depicting that event. Approximately half the participants falsely remembered that the false event happened, with 27% remembering that they saw the events happen on the news. Political orientation appeared to influence the formation of false memories... — C M B J 11:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An editor proposed that a number of classifications be removed, including the McMartin Preschool fiasco and alien abductions classification and others. I restored that proposed removal which an editor reverted which I restored so let's discuss this here, please.
I worked on the McMartin Preschool case, and I worked with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and I maintain a Skeptics web site which has half a million pages which cover the phenomena of False memory Syndrome, a phenomena which includes Satanic Ritual Abuse and numerous other mental conditions (some of which may be found At The Skeptic Tank Here.)
The classifications that were removed should not have been, False Memory Syndrome is responsible for all of the phenomena in the classifications that was proposed to be removed albeit not all incidents of said phenomena is caused by FMS, narcotics, alcohol, and legitimate mental difficulties as well as hypnopompic and hypnagogic sleep-induced hallucinatory events also account for some of the phenomena described in the classifications.
Thanks! Damotclese (talk) 15:45, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This appears to be fringe, although hypnotherapy itself is characterized as pseudoscience. Please also review recent edits at Jane Doe case. I noticed this in relation to this edit (reverted by another editor). Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 02:21, 9 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The style is bad, bordering on childish metaphors:
How traumatic memories hide in the brainEdit Memories of traumatic experiences hide deep in the brain, causing psychiatric problems. ...
-》 let us remove all of these non-RS
Zezen (talk) 09:07, 9 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: https://neurosciencenews.com/unconscious-forgetting-5725/ http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/dallam/6.html. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)
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While the concept of false memories is broadly accepted, there is much less agreement that it is a disease or something like that. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:43, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why is false memory & recovered memory used almost interchangeably? Drocj (talk) 08:55, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi FMS talk page!
This page needs some significant cleanup. It has become a WP:COATRACK article. I am proposing some changes that I think will clear up confusion for a reader with no context on this issue.
Some general context (not to be added, just for anybody interested): False memory syndrome (FMS) was a proposed condition when, at the advent of the popularity of recovered memory therapy, psychologists were seeking to understand how and why multitudes of people were remembering erroneous events and not lying about remembering them. In the beginning, this WAS attributed to a syndrome, but this concept as a syndrome was dropped and the idea of false memories was more widely accepted as a general concept that happens to all of us, without it being a syndrome. This did not come without major contention and FMS was a stepping stone to understanding false memories. The proposed "syndrome" was in reference to the situation when an individual comes out of recovered memory therapy with new, false memories.
So, my immediate proposal for this page:
Change intro sentence in this way:
Inpsychology, false memory syndrome (FMS) iswas a proposed condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by what are believed to be false memoriesofpsychological trauma, recollections which are strongly believed but factually contested by the accused
Remove this entire paragraph:
False memory syndrome is argued to be the result of recovered memory therapy, a highly contested term defined by the FMSF in the early 1990s which is not widely accepted among psychologists or psychiatrists, that groups together a wide range of commonplace therapeutic practices with fringe therapy methods, all of which FMS proponents argue are prone to creating confabulations.[citation needed] The most influential figure in the genesis of the theory is psychologist Elizabeth Loftus.
Recovered memory therapy (RMT) is not a contested term, it is a catch-all term to define any sort of therapy that has the intention to recover a memory in any sort of way. Arguing the semantics of RMT is a common method of proponents to loosely defend discredited practices.
Remove this paragraph:
That such techniques have been used in the past is undeniable. However, both the appropriateness of some of the techniques and the extent to which they caused a supposed epidemic of false memories is highly contested.
It is unsourced and quite "mistakes were made"-y.
So, that said. Those are my immediate proposals for this page, which I do not believe are too contentious.
Now for the nitty gritty... almost everything from here down is tangential. Here are my thoughts. In my opinion, most of the content is completely WP:OOS. The article is on False memory syndrome, a once proposed condition. If anything, it should explain the history of why this disorder was proposed, the criteria for the disorder (I have a source of its original proposed criteria). This section would be more suited to be anywhere here.
I have no idea why this is here. It has nothing to do with the once proposed diagnosis of false memory syndrome and reads like a bothsideism of arguing the legitimacy of false memory in sexual abuse cases. This is not appropriate for the article page.
Regarding this, I suggest integrating some of this somehow into the history of why the disorder was originally proposed. It provides context. Regarding this, I think the Gary Ramona part is a little long. It could probably be trimmed down to 3-5 sentences as a key legal case, if included at all. I think the last paragraph is fine, but could use more sources as it already mentions, which I would add.
If anybody has disagreements or thoughts, I am all ears! I certainly am not proposing that the above deletion suggestions means the info does not belong anywhere on Wikipedia, just that this article has become extremely cluttered with additional subject matter. ← LeftHandedLion 04:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]