The Abuse Of Memory; Divided Memories; Victims Of Memory

One of the mostly hotly debated social issues of our time, the uncovering in therapy of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse has pitted child against parent, parent against therapist, and therapist against other colleagues. Now that Roseanne Barr remembers being abused at the age of 6 months, and the talk shows have turned the topic into a three-ring circus, the public is hungry for more. Three new programs each misses the boat in its own way, but all have particular strengths and given the controversy surrounding the subject would be good additions. The least user-friendly is The Abuse of Memory, which follows the case of Rachel Downing, a woman originally diagnosed with MPD, or Multiple Personality Disorder. In order to get at the root of Downing's problem, her therapist used suggestion to help her dredge up memories from her past. A veritable roll call of horrors detailing extensive sexual abuse emerged, culminating with the patient's claim that her father (now deceased) took her somewhere to watch children being tortured and murdered. In the second half of the film, profiles of other cases and an examination of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation reveal the wide extent of this phenomenon. People who want their narratives straightforward may be a little confused by the lack of a narrator, and there's no question that the video's shift from MPD to "repressed memories" is somewhat disorienting. Still, I liked the way the program emerged as a bizarre odyssey from the sort-of-understandable to the real fringes of current pop psychology. Recommended.Divided Memories, by contrast, leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination and offers tantalizingly brief pools of intellectual stimuli in an ocean of very similar and extremely repetitive (not to mention sensationalized) case studies. A bloated juggernaut of a film (nearly four hours), this Frontline 2-parter interviews patients, parents, and therapists ad infinitum in an endlessly circular pattern trying to present all sides. The pattern is virtually identical: an adult child who is having emotional and/or marital problems enters therapy, the therapist does suggestive memory work with the patient, memories of childhood sexual abuse are uncovered, the adult child accuses and then cuts off contact with the parent, and the therapist continues working with the patient for years. While there's no question that childhood sexual abuse is an important issue, which was long kept in the shadows, Divided Memories makes it clear that there are a lot of families out there who are being broken apart; some of them by clearly false accusations (the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has been contacted by some 15,000 families). Stories of satanic rituals and group sex crop up routinely, and both parents and other siblings are flabbergasted by the accuser's tale. What's extremely irritating is that the Frontline crew often has these meticulously coifed and cosmeticized therapy patients pose with pensive or tragic expressions while the voice-over of their story plays on the soundtrack. Also maddening are the therapy scenes, where we watch people scream and cry and then have a revelation that their trauma dated from the time when the egg was stuck in the Fallopian tubes (seriously); these scenes could have been shortened or summarized or simply cut and handed over as a present to Donahue. In between these attempts to grab a higher rating share, however, are some genuinely interesting (and disturbing) arguments advanced by therapists and researchers on both sides of this very divisive issue. So, ultimately viewers will get a good overview of the topic (and a lot of cheap thrills). Recommended.Lastly, Victims of Memory is a video interview with Mark Pendergrast, author of the book of the same name. Pendergrast, a writer who was accused by his adult daughters of abusing them sexually as children, interviewed accusers, parents, and therapists in an effort to learn more about the "repressed memory" phenomenon. He shares his own personal experience, chronicles the rise of the movement (sparked by the 1988 book The Courage to Heal), and blasts what he sees as irresponsible psychotherapy (in many states, you don't need any kind of degree to start a business as a psychotherapist). On the down side, the program is entirely a talking-head interview, the sound quality sometimes varies, and Pendergrast repeatedly says of topics "I talk about that in the book." Still, the interest, as well as Pendergrast's powerful testimony, make this a strong optional purchase. (R. Pitman)