originally published 5/1/1997

Reinder Van Til, author of Lost Daughters: Recovered Memory Therapy & the People It Hurts (W. B. Eerdmans, 1997), speaks about his own experiences and the experiences of others who were unjustly accused of abuse during the heyday of the psychotherapy movement known as Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT). Til explains how children and adults were guided through various techniques to resurface supposed repressed memories of abuse and trauma. He discusses the high-profile media cases and coverage at the height of the movement. RMT quickly became controversial, however, as accusations relied not on any evidence of abuse, but solely on these “recovered” memories by patients, some of whom were shown by video recording to have been heavily coached. Til describes the RMT phenomenon occurring in a cultural context of alienation from rationality that prioritizes feeling over thinking.

12 minutes

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