Cultural psychopathology and the "false memory syndrome" debates: a view from psychoanalysis

An unquestioned assumption underlying the false memory syndrome debates is that for therapeutic and certain other practical reasons it is necessary to establish whether a memory of abuse recalled in psychotherapy by a patient is true-the veridicality question. This assumption was challenged; an analytic persepective was brought to bear on the issues it raises, to demonstrate that question's fallacies and weaknesses. First, three different analytic views pertaining to recalled memories were outlined. Subsequently, the notion of an ubiquitous cultural psychopathology, a pathology of the "normal," was introduced and its relevance for the debates was explored. It was then argued that a psychoanalytic perspective can illuminate the pathological aspects of the veridicality question. Examples were given to illustrate how the narrow, often fanatical focus on veridicality supports simplistic conceptions of psychopathology and of psychotherapy, leads to impoverished ideas about the nature of the relationship to one's self and to others, and obscures less obvious but nevertheless equally destructive other kinds of family or parental pathology.