Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives - Softcover

Pendergrast, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006387527 ISBN 13: 9780006387527

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998

Synopsis

‘I doubt whether any book of greater importance will be published in 1997.’ Anthony Storr, The Times.

In March, 1995, a Winchester father is imprisoned for eight years on the uncorroborated oral evidence of his daughter, who had recovered memories of sexual abuse while in psychiatric care; a Yorkshire father is freed, seventeen months after his arrest, when the Prosecution finally admit that his 22-year-old’s allegations against him were entirely false.

Victims of Memory examines the whole terrifying phenomenon of repressed memories: the sudden invention/recollection in adulthood of appalling sexual abuse committed by parents and relatives long, long, before, memories that have lain unnoticed at the back of the victim’s mind for decades, only to be ‘recovered’ by an enterprising analyst. The book uses real cases and real lives, here, in America and in Australia, to present all sides of the story: accusers, the accused, the retractors and the analysts in their own words.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Pendergrast spent over two years writing and researching this book after suddenly being accused by and alienated from his two daughters in 1992. His 1993 history, For God, Country and Coca-Cola, was a Notable Book of the Year for the New York Times.

From the Back Cover

'Victims of Memory' demonstrates how families are being torn apart by a minority of misguided therapists who use dreams, hypnosis and persuasion to bend minds and unintentionally create false memories of terrible events that never occurred. Real cases, real lives are examined and the whole terrifying phenomenon of Recovered Memory is clearly described, as perceived by accused parents, accusing children, retractors and therapists. 'Victims of Memory' made front page news when it was first published in Britain. It is a devastating account of how families can be destroyed by the best of intentions.

”The most detailed exploration of the “False Memory Syndrome” which I have read … I commend Pendergrast’s courage and objectivity, as well as the thoroughness of his research.”
ANDREW STORR, 'The Times'

“Huge, exhaustive, courageous and scary … By the end of 'Victims of Memory' the overwhelming sense is the strangeness of the human imagination – its buckling fantasies, its delusions and deceptions, its extraordinary malleability and range.”
NICCI GERRARD, 'Observer'

”A disturbing read [which] emphasises yet again that when it comes to matters of the mind our current laissez – faire attitude, which permits all manner of charlatans, cranks and crooks to dabble in psychiatry and psychology while demanding stringent qualifications to service our cars, is one of the blinding disgraces of the post-Freudian era.”
ANTHONY CLARE, 'Literary Review'

“Balanced and impressive … Pendergrast has made himself an expert not only on the facts of sexual abuse, but also on psychotherapy, memory and the rules of evidence … [The book] constitutes an awful warning of the continuing power of irrationality in a supposedly science-based world. Families who have suffered through false memories of abuse will find much help here, while some professionals may be shocked into re-examining beliefs which they had uncritically accepted.”
HUGH FREEMAN, 'Daily Telegraph'

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006387527
• ISBN 13: 9780006387527
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 780