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From: viggo.andersen@post3.tele.dk (Andersen, Viggo)
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 16:30:55 +0100
Fwd Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 05:53:10 -0400
Subject: Re: Scientific American 'Explains' Abductions

>From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net>
>To: "'UFO UpDates - Toronto'" <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: RE: UFO UpDate: Re: Scientific American 'Explains' Abductions
>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 17:58:21 -0400

<snip>

>And Viggo notes:

>> That's normal forgetting and remembering, not repressed
>> and recovered memory. I hardly think that Loftus has ever
>> denied that there is such a thing as normal forgetting and
>> remembering.


>Nope. But her Scientific American article struck me as a good deal
>more moderate than her book. She never rejected normal forgetting and
>remembering, but she more or less slid around it. She argued against
>the idea of true traumatic memories suddenly coming to light. She
>said, in effect, that there's no theoretical basis for believing that
>there COULD be any such thing as buried traumatic memories. And she
>did so with such vigor that it's reasonable to object: "But Dr. L,
>isn't what you're talking about in the end just an ordinary, everyday
>phenomenon?"

Unfortunately I haven't read the book, and I'm of course no
expert, but still, without therapy no memory recovery,
because then it's just normal remembering. Ordinary everyday
forgetting and remembering undramatic previous events (putting
a key somewhere and forgetting all about it, for instance)
would never cause controversy and even less a "Memory War"
or a "Witchhunt" on alleged child sex abusers (parents! mind
you) many years after the alleged fact.

Some years ago I learned to know a woman in her late 40s,
who had escaped from a marriage with a man who had sexually
abused their daughter from the age of 7 to 14. The daughter
was 22 when I learned to know them. They never forgot, and
frankly, I don't believe it is possible to forget or repress
something when it is going on for years, since my common
sense tells me that repetition will strengthen memory, not
weaken it. In short, it will work against repression.

Needless to say, I wasn't there, I only know what they told
me, and that I have no reason to doubt them. BUT, when it
comes to something which can send people in jail we need
PROOF, and nothing else matters. Because, after all, we
have decided that the most important job of our court
systems is to keep innocent people out of jail, which is why
we have the judicial principle "innocent until proven guilty."
Some people (many, perhaps?) erroneously think that the
most important job of our court systems is to keep criminals
off the street, but they obviously don't realize that if we didn't
emphasize our duty to keep innocents out of jail we wouldn't
need courts in the first place and could just jail everybody
ever accused of anything. This puts the burden of proof on
proponents of repressed memory therapy and nowhere else,
legally as well as scientifically.

BTW, which SciAm article is supposed to contain anything
about abduction? There's nothing about it in Loftus' Sept.
article, and that's the only one I know about.

Viggo.