October 12, 2012.
Recovered Memory Revisited:
What We Know Today About Trauma and Memory
Since the early 1990’s, the question of how people remember trauma, particularly complex childhood trauma, has been a topic of discussion, and at times debate, among psychotherapists and psychological scientists. At times the debate has been extremely polarized, with persons on either side of the divide asserting radical positions that are not well supported, either clinically or scientifically. Yet because some therapists have faced complaints and litigation following on work with a client who was believed to be remembering childhood trauma, anxiety remains for therapists working with trauma survivors.
This workshop will review what psychological science knows today about trauma and memory and will map this onto the work that occurs clinically with adults who are in various stages of knowing/remembering childhood traumatic experiences. Strategies for protecting the therapy and integrating science into practice will be discussed. Balancing risk management with empathic engagement will be a conceptual framework for the day.
Questioning Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personalities, and Plurals 
avalon111
/ 09/20/2012Note that Dr. Brown, in a desperate effort to explain why so many ‘recovered’ memories of satanic abuse are prevalent in the industry, decides to fall into formulating a conspiracy theory;
‘“Who knows what pedophiles have done that gets reported out later as satanic rituals and cannibalistic orgies?”’
Here she, probably inadvertantly agrees that false memories can be created – in this case she decides that ‘pedophiles’ are doing it.
So if they can induce false memories, surely then a trained therapist/psychologist/psychotherapist can do the same?
Ho hum!
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Jeanette Bartha
/ 09/20/2012What Dr. Laura Brown should be charged with is conspiracy to convict innocent people to prison terms for events that never occurred.
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avalon111
/ 09/19/2012Would this be Dr. Laura S. Brown Phd?
A noted member of the ISSTD? That organisation co-founded by Bennett B. Braun?
A member of its Editorial Board, for the ISSTD journal? Together with Cory D. Hammond, Jean Goodwin, Colin A Ross, Judith Herman, Kathy Steele? (http://www.isst-d.org/jtd/journal-trauma-dissociation-editorial-board.htm)
Co-author with Kenneth Pope of the 1996 book, Recovered Memories of Abuse: Assessment, Therapy, Forensics, efficiently ripped to shreds by Ralph Underwager (http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume8/j8_3_8.htm)? Though naturally many RMT/DID-MPD enthusiasts would determine Dr. Underwager to be a pedophile/CIA operative/alien…
Who has an unusual view of those repressed memories of satanic abuse;
‘Laura Brown, for example, a Seattle psychologist in the forefront of RMT says that fantastic memories are “perhaps coded or symbolic versions of what really happened.” What really happened, she’s sure, was sexual abuse in childhood. “Who knows what pedophiles have done that gets reported out later as satanic rituals and cannibalistic orgies?” asks Dr. Brown (Hallinan 1997).’
(http://www.skepdic.com/repress.html)
Was panned in Richard McNally’s ‘Remembering Trauma’
‘Then in 1996 the APA published and conspicuously endorsed another book, Recovered Memories of Abuse, aimed at equipping memory therapists and their expert witnesses with every argument and precaution that could thwart malpractice suits. The book’s co-authors were well-known advocates of recovered memory treatment, and one of them, Laura S. Brown, was actually serving at the time on the deadlocked task force. She had also supplied a foreword to Lenore Walker’s bumbling Abused Women and Survivor Therapy, calling it “invaluable and long overdue” (p. vii). Unsurprisingly, then, Recovered Memories of Abuse characterized false memory as an overrated problem and drew uncritically on much of the research whose weaknesses Richard McNally has now exposed. The APA’s unabated promotion of that book, even today, suggests that the organization remains more concerned with shielding its most wayward members than with warning the public against therapeutic snake oil.’
( New York Review of Books review of Richard J. McNally REMEMBERING TRAUMA – 2004) by Frederick Crews
And includes a recommendation for ‘The COurage To Heal’ on her Links page (http://www.drlaurabrown.com/resources/)?
So I guess an unbiased workshop is out-of-the-question.
Dr. Brown is neck deep in the RMT/DID-MPD/SRA Myth claptrap and has a well-established history of it. Any professional credibility she thought she had expired over a decade-and-a-half ago.
Pity the advert from the ‘Nashville Psychotherapy Institute’ wasn’t able to mention any of that history, though perhaps the money that flows in from whatever goofy ‘professionals’ who do turn up might be enough to put a deposit down on a new Merc.
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Jeanette Bartha
/ 09/19/2012It’s our job to educate Nashville Psychotherapy Institues if they can’t do it themselves. I think organizations like this get a bit star struck by the credentials of those willing to workshops at their place. Maybe people like Laura Brown have fewer and fewer places to go as years pass and the general public becomes savvy and smell b.s.
No matter how many times workshops and books published about satanic ritual abuse, popularized in the 1980s, get billing I am amazed. There are a few therapists and researchers who have dropped out and slitthered into the shadows where they should be. But most plow ahead refusing to correct their mistakes, take ownership for it, and make sense out of their past.
What do you think stops them? Fear of lawsuits. Lawsuits should scare them – especially for the large numbers of people who they have directly or indirectly injured.
I’ll say No pity on the Nashville Psychotherapy Institute.
I say: Shame on you Nashville Psychotherapy Institues, your behavior is beyond stupidity.
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