Elvira Promises Future Memories Concerning What She Does Not Recall Today

It is normal for people to forget things temporarily, and to be certain of being able to recall this information within a short period of time. Even a skilled musician may momentarily forget Mozart's first names.

But such examples are irrelevant in the Elvira case. It is quite another matter if a soldier who had spent the last five years at an active war front, forgets that he had ever been a soldier two months after his return. Similarly, we have a quite different situation if Elvira had been continually abused for about seven years, by innumerable known and unknown people, but had completely forgotten each and every assault only two months after they stopped.

Numerous reputable scholars have by now established that repression and lifted repression with re-entry of hitherto unconscious recollections do not exist. The postulation of many psychoanalysts that they regularly observe such phenomena is fraudulent and deliberate fabrications. A large body of documentation concerning the errors of psychoanalysis can be mentioned here: Bénesteau (2002), Crews (1995, 1998, 2006), Esterson (1993), Eysenck (1985), Israëls (1993, 1999), Israëls & Schatzman (1993), Macmillan (1991, 1997), Mahony (1984), Scharnberg (1993), Sulloway (1979), Timpanaro (1976), Wilcocks (1994, 2000). But it should also be noted that nowhere in Freud's Gesammelte Werke can we find one single example of a patient who has recollected an event after the treatment, which he or she did not recall before the treatment. And the same is true of all later psychoanalysts. The only exceptions are those who have become recovered memory therapists.

Some experimental psychologists (e.g., Loftus & Ketcham, 1994) have also noted the absence of recollections in the scientific literature.

The most comprehensive and exhaustive book on amnesia and subsequent recall is Remembering Trauma by Richard J. McNally (2003). Chapter 7 in particular should be consulted. The existence of amnesia after a head injury, later followed by recall, was known even before psychoanalysis was invented.

Rare cases of amnesia occurring after severe psychic pain or shock have, however, been documented. But if memory is later regained, it will come back suddenly and in complete form. By contrast, in patients undergoing recovered memory therapy we almost always observe (a) a gradual return in the form of small fragment, (b) a gradual transition from foggy to clear images, and (c) a gradual change from conceiving of the events as fantasies to experiencing them as authentic memories. – And, as McNally has shown, such patterns have never been observed when genuine amnesia was involved, but only as a result of indoctrination.

Elvira reveals all the signs of a patient who has been indoctrinated by a therapist. She even repeatedly promises future recollections of events she cannot currently remember and is not aware of having ever remembered. I have selected some quotations taken from different police interrogations. I could easily provide many more quotations of the same kind.

		"All the time things come up, you know / The longer time it takes, the more will turn up / I'll train on the steps and the door / It will appear because it doesn't leave me alone / I'll to do it at home / Could you tell me, well, what I shall look for, because I think, if there's something that you, because I, it is much easier to look when you know exactly what to look for." (1992-05-04) [bolds and italics by MS] [Q-17:1] "When I see those images I can see one thing very clearly and then the next second almost not at all and a second [later] almost not at all, but it is very difficult to connect them. / And then everything ends just because you're afraid, cause you won't go any further, then you must wait a few days, and then you may dive down again or an hour or until you are ready to go down / I can't see it / but it will come, all of it / I don't know, you distract me all the time so I need a few days to think, you know / no, I'm closed, well, there's nothing there right now / I feel I must go home and work at it." (Elvira 1992-06-04) [bolds and italics by MS] [Q-17:2] "You must know that there is a lot more inside me, but I want to test it at home first. / I'm busy working up an image about a fellow whose name is Bertrand who mummy used to go out with, but I don?t really have it, it's hidden among all that other stuff just now." (1992-06-09) [bolds and italics by MS] [Q-17:3] "I don't recall more right now, but it will come / You mustn't rush me." (1992-12-11) [bolds and italics by MS] [Q-17:4] "It turns up in bit by bit. / The images grow inside me a little at a time." (1992-12-22) [layout by MS] [Q-17:5]

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Uppdaterad: 2009-11-19

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