Response to Karon and Widener (1997).

Pendergrast, Mark

doi:10.1037/0735-7028.29.5.479

Cited by 4 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…Pendergrast (1998), according to his book and e-mail messages from him to us, comes to this issue honestly. Both his daughters will have nothing to do with him because they believe he has sexually abused them (Pendergrast, 1997, pp. 14, 22).…”

Section: Pendergrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pendergrast returns to his concern that childhood rape cannot be repressed. In e-mail correspondence to Bertram P. Karon, he started with the argument that there is no repression, then he admitted that he has seen evidence of single incidents being forgotten and remembered accurately: “I found cases in which people recalled real incidents of sexual abuse after many years, but it was always of very limited incidents” (M. Pendergrast, personal communication, December 17, 1997).…”

Section: Pendergrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Piper (1998), S. O. Lilienfeld and E. F. Loftus (1998), and M. Pendergrast (1998) deny the existence of repression.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The only way he or she could not see it is by assuming that what patients say are lies. However, this far-fetched assumption of lies is raised by Piper (1998), Lilienfeld and Loftus (1998), Giglio (1998), and Pendergrast (1998). They suggest that the WWII patients who suffered trauma and repression were all malingerers.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Repressed memories: The real story.

Karon

Widener²

1998

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice

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Loftus (1998), andM. Pendergrast (1998) deny the existence of repression. But every psychodynamic therapist regularly observes the phenomenon. Experimental as well as clinical evidence for repression clearly exists; these critics ignore or misrepresent both sources of data. More detailed case history material that shows the phenomena is readily available from current cases. The case in the authors' previous article (B. P. Karon & A. J. Widener, 1997) illustrated the hundreds of cases of WWII veterans who experienced battlefield trauma, repressed the trauma and displayed neurotic symptoms, and experienced alleviation of the symptoms when the trauma was remembered in therapy.In January of 1998, a rape victim whose initial treatment had not been helpful was seen for consultation and referral (to more helpful treatment, it was hoped). She reported having been raped by a man she admired and trusted. She reported initially remembering all the events that occurred the day of the rape, both before and after the rape, but not the rape itself. Rather, for a week after the rape, although she did have symptoms of distress, she did not remember being raped and got angry at anyone who made negative statements about the perpetrator. When she finally remembered the rape, she reported it, and the perpetrator later admitted the crime. Would any serious clinician tell her she is lying because there is no such thing as repression?Our previous article (Karon & Widener, 1997) related to only one fact: Repression obviously exists. Every psychodynamic therapist sees it. The only way he or she could not see it is by assuming that what patients say are lies. However, this farfetched assumption of lies is raised by Piper (1998), Lilienfeld and Loftus (1998), Giglio (1998), andPendergrast (1998). They suggest that the WWII patients who suffered trauma and repression were all malingerers. It would make as much sense to say all of Loftus's experimental participants were liarspossible, but improbable. Even in our illustrative case (Karon & Widener, 1997), one would have to explain why the patient would malinger for years after the war was over when he was seeing neurologists (whose possible interventions can be quite drastic), but 6 months after talking to a psychologist would decide to make up details and tell these details to the therapist BERTRAM P. KARON received his PhD from Princeton University. He is a professor of clinical psychology at Michigan State University, where he has taught since 1962. He is past president of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association and past president of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council.

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Section: Pendergrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pendergrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Piper (1998), S. O. Lilienfeld and E. F. Loftus (1998), and M. Pendergrast (1998) deny the existence of repression.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Repressed memories: The real story.

Karon

Widener²

1998

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice

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“…Finally, although many of these veterans clearly suffered from very real trauma and PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder], it is not clear that they repressed and then recalled traumatic memories. (Pendergrast, 1998, p. 481)…”

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confidence: 99%

Smearing in the name of scholarship.

Pendergrast¹

1999

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice

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Space constraints force us to address only the most crucial issues raised by discussion of the memories of World War II (WWII) veterans.1. Karon and Widener (1998) asserted that we and other critics of their article "suggested] that the WWII patients who suffered trauma and repression were all malingerers" (p. 482). Yet, in our article (Lilienfeld & Loftus, 1998), we stated that "It is possible [italics added], for example, that his [the patient's] symptom represented malingering" (p. 474) and discussed several other explanations for the patient's reported symptoms. Moreover, nowhere did we suggest that the symptoms of other WWII veterans represented malingering. We find it difficult to understand what would motivate Karon and Widener to mischaracterize our statements in such a wholesale manner.2. Although Karon and Widener (1998) claimed that we "talk[ed] about issues never raised in our article: hypnosis as a truth-seeking procedure" (p. 484), this denial is categorically false. In their original article, they asserted that during WWII "there were experimental uses of hypnosis and sodium penthathol interviews to undo the repression and recover the memories in brief therapy" (pp. 338-339).3. We are at a loss to respond to Karon and Widener's (1998) assertion that the Consumer Reports study (Seligman, 1995), which revealed that most individuals who receive therapy report benefits, provides evidence that the lifting of repressions is therapeutically effective. Most forms of psychotherapy do not rely on removing repressions, and Karon and Widener's contention that "any psychotherapy that permits patients to remember more of their

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Trauma and Memory Revisited

Kihlstrom

2006

Memory and Emotion

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Response to Karon and Widener (1997).

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

Repressed memories: The real story.

Repressed memories: The real story.

Smearing in the name of scholarship.

Trauma and Memory Revisited

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