Trauma, Memory, and Law: Lectures on Repressed Memories, Memory Distortions, and Trauma

This book is comprised of enhanced lectures and additional writings. It is aimed at an undergraduate level audience, but may be useful to graduate students, or any audience that has not yet become an expert in false memories and the repressed memory controversy. Experts in the trauma and false memory field may find a few things they did not know about, or new connections. Most of the book should be readable by the lay public and legal professionals too.

Dr Patihis discusses the pseudoscientific origins of repressed memory and dissociative amnesia, and includes some legal case studies in the first part of the book. These false accusations appeared to be due to false memory creation in therapy, and this tragedy in clinical psychology, society, and the law, motivates a deep dive into several fields of memory science in the remainder on the book.

Early chapters discuss the history of false memories in therapy both before 1980 and afterwards, before outlining research on false memories.

In the middle chapters, the book debunks catharsis theory and introduces readers to the appraisal theory of emotions, explains how memories of emotion can change and be distorted--including memories of emotion from childhood.

In the latter chapters, Dr Patihis discusses dubious aspects of trauma dissociation theory, dissociative amnesia, and dissociative identity disorder. He also explains how infantile and childhood amnesia are not caused by trauma, debunks the idea of body memories, and discusses new research in false memories and trauma broadening.