Talk:Recovered-memory therapy/Archive 3

POVs/format/content/explanations in article
Do we have consensus on which POVs on RMT are sourced to WP:RS - not necessarily science source - RS showing significant existence of POV? (Can we leave the issues of format/content/explanations/weight aside till POVs are clear - please? ) Utmost brevity and single-minded attention on just listing POVs here will help. SmithBlue (talk) 05:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand your question, would you rephrase it? Sorry if I'm being a bit dense here.... thanks... --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 06:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

NOt dense at all - I was not clear - is there any POV not in the article that we can find a source for or is/are ther POV/s in article which have no RS, are non-significant. PLs list needed changes of this sort here. SmithBlue (talk) 07:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Terrible mess
Ew, what an execrable page. I've removed some sections that looked totally unjustified, disputed, poorly sourced, contradictory and generally icky. From what I've seen of individual sections, this page is a mess. I'll try to go through it more thoroughly in the coming weeks. Oh, archived everything from January 4th or so back. WLU (talk) 21:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I have made an attempt to restore some edited references in a much more scaled down form. I fixed some spelling errors and deleted a double reference.Abuse truth (talk) 02:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, my spelling generally sucks when I'm typing quickly. Thanks for replacing the link to the letter by the ISST, that's a big help, though it'd be nice if they had their own wikipage.  I've removed the quote and reworded a bit, and put a space between the end of the reference and beginning of the next phrase.  I'm not loving my reword, but I'm trying to make it as compact as possible.
 * I don't know what I think about the inclusion of the random British news article - what does it add? I've moved it to a different part and and removed the accompanying text completely.
 * WP:AWW says try to avoid 'some people say' without a reference, I like to avoid 'some people/researchers/commentators/whoever say x' completely - I'd prefer a wikilinked person or corporate entity if they've their own page, otherwise a wording that avoids the 'some people' as it invites the inevitable 'so what, who are these people' question. Further, regards the Whifield reference, since I don't know who the publisher is (Health Communications Inc. doesn't sound like a RS to me, it's not a university press publication) I'd rather have a bit more info on what it says.  I've tried at re-wording but the google books link doesn't seem to give me the page I need.  WLU (talk) 03:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I made a couple of minor changes to make the sentences closer to their references. Whitfield co-edited a book "Misinformation Concerning Child Sexual Abuse" that was co-published simultaneously in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (which is peer reviewed) in 2001.Abuse truth (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Which makes that book more reliable, but not all his books. WLU (talk) 03:19, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Confusing section
The following section I can't fix or even figure out - what is it trying to say? Is it an attempt to compare RMT to the mainstream approach to therapy? I find it incredibly confusing, doesn't seem to have a central point it is trying to prove, even the title is strange. Is it a criticism? Is it a compare and contrast? Is it an attempt to synthesize the literature to come to a conclusion? WLU (talk) 03:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Trauma model of psychopathology

There are disputes among practicing psychotherapists, and among the general population, as to the prevalence of repressed memories and their later recovery. Practicing psychotherapists who believe in the scientifically mainstream trauma model of mental disorders, especially when working with patients diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder often encourage and assist patients in piecing together fragmented memories in order to de-associate behavioral reactions that are habitual but no longer necessary. Some psychotherapists believe that the theory of iatrogenic false memories being generated in a therapeutic setting has not been proven and overstates available facts. It has been stated that the reality of repressed memories is extremely controversial. In the book, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law a reviewed of 43 studies on dissociative amnesia and traumatic memory showed a substantial minority of the traumatized individuals partially or completely forgot the traumatic event they experienced, and later recovered these events. This is contradicted in a 2002 study by Pope. Some believe research shows that trauma survivors can respond to pain by pushing it out of awareness. Some label this phenomenon dissociative amnesia or repression. There are over 100 years of reports and descriptions of corroborated cases of recovered memory, including instances from times of war, torture, bereavement, natural disasters, and concentration camp imprisonment and sexual abuse. The DSM-IV describes disorders that have diagnostic criteria for memory loss, including posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociative amnesia, and dissociative identity disorder.


 * I have edited and re-written the section in question and have given it a new title, attempting to respond to some of the above queries.Abuse truth (talk) 19:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * An excellent re-write AT, it was much clearer what the paragraph was aimed at. Naturally, I still went at it hammer and tongs : )  Still, the re-write made it a lot easier to re-write in summary style and at least 907% clearer than what was there before.  I removed the links to the Leadership Council - in most cases they were links of convenience to book contents, but since they were summaries of the books rather than direct quotations of the contents themselves, I didn't feel they were appropriate.  Instead, I tracked down the ISBNs and used citation templates to link to the books directly.  Also, I don't think the LC is sufficiently notable or reliable to justify a mention in the paragraph as either a stand-alone link or as a justification of any text.  WLU (talk) 03:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the compliment. I made a few minor changes to add accuracy and NPOV. I respectfully disagree with your critique about the Leadership Council. I consider them to be an extremely reliable source. See http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/us/about.html for a list of their board members. These are all top people in the field. Though, it is probably better to cite the book in this case. Abuse truth (talk) 22:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hm. The board members does look pretty notable.  Was there anywhere you thought the link should be added?  We'll have to be careful how it's used but given that level of expertise, it could definitely be used for citing some basic info.  WLU (talk) 02:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I support acceptance of the Leadership Council as a reliable source, after reviewing their site. I agree that it's prefereable to cite the original sources when available. In general, I don't see any reason not to cite Leadership Council when their information is relevant.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Article Is Extremely Biased
Although it may be true that there are 100 corroborated cases of recovered memories-- there are also far more cases where false memories have been proven to have been implanted by bad therapy or by poor criminal investigative techniques.

For the writer who chose to refuse to also mention the extensive docmentation of false memory cases-- this ommision can only be described as violent and grossly irresponsible writing. To be innocent and falsely accused is a horrible thing. It can destroy relationships and families of the innocent. Not something to be sloppy or rash about.

Anyone who would willfully disregard the overwhelming evidence that false memories do happen is an irresponsible and abusive person. Therapy should not have a cult-like dimension-- it should be subjected to rigorous science, and the result of careful science should not be ignored or shouted down. The lives and well being of innocent people depend on it.

24.8.106.182 (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Though you may be correct, in order to add information to the page, it must be verified through the use of reliable sources. WLU (talk) 02:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with WLU above. The research clearly shows that recovered memory is a strong and recurring phenomena. False memory cases and retractions have been questioned for their reliability and accuracy by several sources. False memory theories and data also need to be 'subjected to rigorous science' as well. Abuse truth (talk) 22:13, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

extreme POV
this article is extremely WP:POV and seems to have been hijacked by believers in 'recovered memory', which is not a concept accepted by all or most psychiatrists or scientists who study memory.  Merkinsmum  22:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, the article with its 62 sources has been put together by editors with varying perspectives, according to Wikipedia NPOV and RS policies. RM's existence is accepted by a majority of reseachers. Abuse truth (talk) 03:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, I tend to agree with Merkinsmum, although Abuse truth's most egregious BIAS has been reverted. It's probably true that RM's existence is accepted by a majority of researchers, but I strongly suspect its prevalence has not been.  I, however, don't have access to the journals which AT is misquoting and misinterpreting, so I can't just blindly revert.  A stopped clock is right twice a day.  Please add reliable sources, remove information from unreliable sources, and fix misquoted and misinterpreted "information".  It's all we can do.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 13:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not so much the article being biased, as the term itself was coined by a biased organization with a political and legal agenda. That's why it's so hard to find references. "Recovered memory therapy" is not a recognized form of treatment, and the term "recovered memory" is not a medical term. However, there are reliable sources documenting the fact that memories can become unavailable due to trauma, and that later, those memories can surface. Most often, according to sources, that surfacing does not result from therapeutic intervention but occurs spontaneously or resulting from a triggering event.

This article should be focused on the activist, political, and legal uses of the term, not on the therapeutic aspects, because it's not a form of therapy, it's a term used as a lever in legal cases mostly. This article is not about "recovered memories", it's about the term "recovered memory therapy", that is a construct of activists. The medical/psychological approach to traumatic memories that are repressed or dissociated and later recalled should be addressed in the relevant articles, not in this one.

It might even be appropriate to merge this article with False memory syndrome, another term coined by the same organization, whose core claim is that FMS is caused by RMT. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 18:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The medical ideas about the loss and recovery of memory related to trauma is covered in psychogenic amnesia, but as that is a medical condition and article, WP:MEDRS applies and RMT/RM/FMS should be mentioned only tangentially in that article. The 'official position' on memory loss unrelated to organic trauma is psychogenic amnesia, recovered memory is a fringe position.  The difficulty will be teasing out the two, as while PA appears to cover primarily the loss of memories about personal identity, situation-specific PA looks to be comparable at least on the surface.  I do not look forward to the long, inevitable slog between sources on this one!!  WLU (talk) 19:46, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * In reply to AR, I have not misquoted and misrepresented anything. It is easy to check any of my sources. Their urls are listed clearly. I have attempted to make the page NPOV and accurate.


 * I disagree that "recovered memory is a fringe position."


 * See:
 * Recovered Memory Project
 * Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence: Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory
 * http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/abuse/a/cooroborate.htm
 * http://www.jimhopper.com/memory
 * Recovered memory of childhood sexual trauma: A documented case from a longitudinal study
 * Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence: Summary of Research Examining the Prevalence of Full or Partial Dissociative Amnesia for Traumatic Events
 * Consider This, Skeptics of Recovered Memory
 * Videotaped Discovery of a Reportedly Unrecallable Memory of Child Sexual Abuse: Comparison with a Childhood Interview Videotaped 11 Years Before
 * "Ground Lost: The False Memory/Recovered Memory Therapy Debate," by Alan Scheflin, Psychiatric Times 11/99, Vol. XVI Issue 11
 * [ http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Trauma-Logic-Forgetting-Childhood/dp/067406805X Betrayal Trauma - The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse]
 * Betrayal Trauma: Traumatic Amnesia as an Adaptive Response to Childhood Abuse


 * There are many articles on this topic. And PA and RM may be too closely intertwined to be separated. Abuse truth (talk) 02:48, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Not at all. Psychogenic amnesia is a medical condition discussed by the DSM and ICD classification systems.  Recovered memory, as used by RMT and other organizations, is not.  If RM is used as a synonym for psychogenic amnesia in a medical article, then it should be cited as that.  If it is used in the sense of a deliberately supressed condition of memory which is inaccessible in ways that science can not explore, it's not PA and should not be on that page.  I've received an e-mail from H. Pope with two full text articles by McNally discussing the differences between these conditions, though I've yet time to read them.  Hopefully the clarification can be made on the page. PA could also be brought up as a possible medical collaboration on the medicine wikiproject or for clarification by some of the medically-minded and knowlegeable wiki editors.  Three of those links appear to be medical journals, the remainder are trumped by medical journals and could be used only for cultural aspects.  WLU (talk) 17:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be good to have a reliable source clarify them on the page. I brought this up on another page from a study by Chu.
 * Chu considers his study to be researching amnesia. He is comparing recovered memory and amnesia as connected phenomena when he states "amnesia for abuse memories" and "memory recovery." In the article, Chu states : "Participants who reported a period of complete amnesia for episodes of childhood abuse were asked about the role of suggestion in memory recovery" and "Many of the participants who had complete amnesia had made attempts to corroborate their recovered memories. Nearly all participants who reported physical and sexual abuse and who attempted corroboration were able to find some kind of verification."
 * It may depend on the researcher and their orientation in the RM debate as to the possible connection between the two. Abuse truth (talk) 03:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * WLU, just to note that Pope and McNally are long-standing affiliates of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and their emphasis on the fallibility of memory processes is disproportionate to the evidence. McNally, in particular, continues to promote the notion of "False Memory Syndrome" long after its credibility has been destroyed.
 * "Recovered memories" is just an outdated laypersons term for "forgotten" memories of child abuse. These days it's fairly infrequent in clinical literature, but it does not denote a particular "position" or "organisation". --Biaothanatoi (talk) 05:39, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I moved your comment to the bottom - addressing it to me means no-one will confuse it with AT's comment. More important for me than who said what, is where it is published.  If it's in a reliable source, a peer-reviewed journal of good standing, I don't care what their affiliation and beliefs are - it passes the muster of professionals and therefore represents some section of the mainstream.  WLU (talk) 14:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The function of a reviewer is not to block the publication of views that the reviewer does not hold, but rather to ensure that submissions to a journal conform to standard academic practices, and that the logic of their argument is sound and suitably referenced. I've acted as a reviewer for a few journals, and I've recommended articles for publication that I passionately disagree with, on the basis that they were well argued.
 * Basically, peer-review doesn't mean "mainstream" or "accepted". I keep my critical faculties around when assessing the credibility of any source, particularly when that source is associated with a fringe activist group. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

recent edit - fixing ref and deleting OR
I have wikified a ref and fixed the url, deleting OR from the ref on "The reality of recovered memories." ResearchEditor (talk) 03:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Australian para deleted
The section on RMT in Australia is factually incorrect and misleading, and it's been deleted.

No source is provided for the statement "In Australia, the term has been in use among professionals for some years".

The Australian Counselling Association is inaccurately described as a "psychotherapists' peak body", and records of parliamentary debates in NSW and Queensland are inaccurately described as "government documents".

Meanwhile, a Victorian inquiry into the claims of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation vis a vis RMT is used as a source to support the statement that the term RMT is being used by professionals. In fact, the inquiry concludes the precise opposite - it states that there is no evidence that RMT is a form of therapy being practiced in the state of Victoria, if it exists at all.

The section also cites the statements of a plaintiff to support the claim that the term "repressed memory technique" is used within the Australian legal system. The term was, in fact, never used by a member of the judiciary in that particular case.

This entire section is false, misleading and POV, and it's gone. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 04:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

COATRACK
Debates over recoverd memories and traumatic amnesia completely dominate this article. Whilst some acknowledgement of the controversy is relevant here, the fact that it takes up most of the article makes this a big WP:COATRACK. Debates over memory and child abuse are for other articles. This article needs to be specifically focused on the term "recovered memory therapy" - it's origins, it's history, it's uses.

I propose that most material not specifically relating to RMT, as a concept, be removed. The article can touch on the debates over recovered memories without getting completley overwhelmed by it. Moreover, the coatracking material is of a very poor quality. Journalistic sources are inappropriately used to support scientific propositions, whilst some sources simply have no relationship with the statements they footnote. The "legal issues" section appears to have been written by editors with no grasp of the legal issues regarding recovered memory evidence, mashing together criminal and civil law, and leaping between countries and jurisdictions.

Leave your thoughts here. We can talk it through and then look to reform this article, which, I think everyone would agree, is currently in pretty bad shape. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 05:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I made some big changes which are likely to get people's backs up, but I reviewed the existing material in the article, and it was mostly useless, poor quality coatracking about recovered memories. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree that most of it is useless, but the history of RMT section needs to remain, and the last two sentences of your lead each constitute a BLP violation unless sourced. Also, DSM-IV doesn't have procedure codes.  RMT would be a non-recognized procedure, rather than a non-recognized diagnosis.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin  (talk) 01:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have added a line from the Water's source to better balance the source. IMO, some discussion of recovered memories needs to stay, since the article is about RMT and the concept of RMT is largely based on RM and their accuracy rate. How much should stay would be a good topic of discussion here. ResearchEditor (talk) 14:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I've removed waters - it was an unpublished conference paper. If "By 2007, most psychological and psychiatric professional bodies had issued guidelines that outline a lack of scientific evidence for the concept of repressed memory, usually coupled with a caution against leading or 'persuasive' questioning designed to produce evidence of forgotten abuse", then the individual bodies should be cited specifically.  I've found 4, in the professional guidelines section.  It also placed statements in 'history' that should more accurately be placed in 'research', and adequately sourced.  The debate is huge I believe, and extends to scientific literature, so journal articles should be used, not unpublished conference papers, particularly papers that cite no references and is from a conference on law, not psychology, psychiatry or memory research.  WLU (talk) 19:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Overall, good edits. I have re-added the Crook courtesy link to the reference, fixed spelling and spacing issues, added one strong EL to attempt to balance the EL section, deleted two see also's not mentioned in the article, and deleted the adjective "feminist" from a reference as the word "chauvinist" or other descriptors are not used with other references. I propose that we delete the tag at the top of the page. ResearchEditor (talk) 16:33, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It's difficult to track, as feminista.com has apparently not paid their registration fees, but the founder, and editor-in-chief of the site should be referred to as a feminist while quoting an article on that site. I cannot find "anti-porography".  (The article should also be considered self-published, and not necessarily a WP:RS, but I haven't researched that completely, and I'm not sure a verify credibility tag is really appropriate yet.)  &mdash; Arthur Rubin  (talk) 17:50, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This isn't the first time that a Wikipedia editor has suggested that a feminist source must be explicitly identifed as "feminist".
 * I'm curious about this position. As RE notes, we don't identify sexist sources as "sexist". Nor do we identify left-wing sources as "left-wing", postmodern source as "post-modern. So why should a feminist source be treated differently from every other source? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Because it would be relevant that the site is a *feminist* *anti-pornography* site, as they have — interesting — biases. &mdash; Arthur Rubin  (talk) 00:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * So feminism is a "bias", but other political orientations are not? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Brain stains
I've removed the 'brain stains' SCIAM paper, it's mostly a single-person account, with vague statements about memory and recovered memory, and the main focus is on how apparently false memories can have actual effects. There's a spot for it I think, but better re-inserted once the page has been cleaned up (and better if similar information can be sourced to a peer-reviewed journal). It's here, and here is the rebuttal from ISSTD, though it's mostly about DID with only one mention of RMT. WLU (talk) 19:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Undue emphasis on controversy
References to "repressed memories" as "extremely controversial" contain five references, three to the same author, Richard McNally, who is a long-standing proponent of "false memory syndrome". Two of the other references go to authors who support the notion of repressed memories, but who have written articles detailing the activities of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

The emphasis of this article on controversy is undue, and an example of coatracking. I'm going to try and prune it back. The article does not reflect the state of the research evidence, but rather a set of media controversies from ten years ago stirred by the the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and it's affiliates.

--Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:11, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps. But there is controversy, and there should be something on it.  (In fact, this article should only be about the controversy.)  &mdash; Arthur Rubin  (talk) 00:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed that we should talk about the controversy, as I've said previously on this page. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:21, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * There are also a lot of weasel words in this article that I've trued to prune back e.g. conclusive statements that research studies have "found" that false memories of sexual abuse can be implanted iatrogenically, linked back to studies that do not find this in any conclusive way. I've tried to reform these as well. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That isn't a sufficient explanation for this mass deletion of sourced material. Please be more specific. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 00:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that this was excessive. I have reverted the edit, and hopefully there will be consensus to keep most of that material. forestPIG 17:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I've written extensively on this over the last few weeks, but if you want a point by point blow, let's start from the top:


 * - The intro repeats itself in relation to the role of the FMSF in inventing the term, and then segues quickly into research evidence on recovered memories. I've relocated this research evidence under the "history" section, since it's relevant, but not in the intro.


 * - Deleted first para in "history" section. It restates (for the third time in six sentences) the role of the FMSF in inventing the term. I've shifted the second sentence into the intro, since it's a reasonable and accurate summary of the manner in which RMT has featured in the literature.


 * - I've deleted the reference to Courage to Heal. This book has featured prominently in FMSF literature as being somehow responsible for large numbers of false allegations of child abuse. There is no empirical evidence that this is the case. This is the first of a number of examples where the speculations of the FMSF are being reproduced in this article as fact.


 * - I've deleted the references to the Time article and the Feminista article. There are, literally, hundreds of newspaper articles that use the term RMT, so why have these two been singled out? They are both over a decade old. It is worth noting that mentions of RMT in the popular and academic press have dropped below the radar over the last ten years.


 * - I've stated above why the statements about "repressed memories" being "controversial" is poorly sourced, inaccurate and an exmaple of undue weight. It was controversial in the media for a period in the 1990s, but it is not a subject of particular controversy today, and there is a very substantial body of evidence supporting traumatic amnesia for sexual abuse.


 * - I've also deleted various weasel words - claims that repressed memories are "pseudo-science", references to psychotherapists practicing RMT when the article has previously stated that there is no such practice, references to "false memories" as conclusively proven when the research evidence is highly speculative.


 * - In general, this article has given undue weight to the very small number of researchers who have aligned themselves with the FMSF. FMSF founding member Richard Ofshe invented the term RMT, and he actually lies in his original work, claiming that RMT is a recognised term in psychology when he invented the term. Using this term as any kind of segueway into the debate on recovered memories is an example of coatracking and should be discouraged.

Hope that is detailed enough. If you disagree some of these changes, then please revert those, rather then the whole thing. This article is in need of serious overhaul, and we need to take a fairly broad brush to it before we can refine it back to something vaguely approaching a balanced and reasonable overview. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Overall, I agree with the recent edit made by Biaothanatoi. IMO, speculations should not be presented as fact and we need to be sure we do not provide undue weight to minority views. ResearchEditor (talk) 03:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I have deleted the following phrase, which is not sourced and OR. "It has frequently been used by those who believe that recovered, dormant and repressed memories are not reliable, potentially dangerous and very likely to be iatrogenic false memories created by psychotherapists. Many skeptics believe the underlying science of these phenomena is pseudoscientific." ResearchEditor (talk) 02:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

As it stands, I think that the "controversy" section is, in fact, underdeveloped, without nearly enough attention being paid to actually setting up the various viewpoints in a neutral manner. It is, for instance, inconceivable to me that any discussion of recovered memories would leave out the Kern County and McMartin cases, which are some of the most important actual test cases of the tricky waters of retrieving "repressed memories." By focusing on a "he said/she said" tit for tat approach instead of trying to get a NPOV view from a distance that actually summarizes major facets of the controversy instead of coatracking and quote farming, the heart of the issue is getting lost. Phil Sandifer (talk) 04:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are getting confused between the controversies over child suggestibility and controversies over traumatic amnesia. "Repressed memory" evidence was not proferred in court in either the McMartin nor Kern County cases. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 06:59, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there's too much emphasis on controversy. Most of the interest in the topic is actually about the controversy between two irreconcilable positions:
 * 1) that some people were sexually (or otherwise) abused and without physical trauma to the head somehow "repressed" the memory of the event and with the help of a therapist they can recover these memories and they can gain emotional healing from this and they can use the recovered memory as evidence in a law suit or criminal prosecution
 * 2) that far too many instances of supposed repressed memory are either confabulation or lies and that official endorsement of the theory would lead to an abuse of the legal system as bad as (or worse than) whatever amount of real abuse that goes on

However, this article (as currently named: recovered memory therapy) is not the best place to cover this dispute. Something like Repressed memory controversy would be a better.

There are arguments on both side, but it's not our place as Wikipedia contributors to assert that either side is right. Readers ought to be able to come here to find out what the controversy is about; after that they can make up their own minds. --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:54, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Those are interesting points, but they're about a different topic. The controversy about  repressed memory can be addressed in that article - or as you suggested in a new article about that topic. This article is not about that dispute, and it's not about the science.  This article is about a term,  recovered memory therapy, coined by an activist organization with a political and legal agenda. According to the sources, the term "recovered memory therapy" is not a recognized form of treatment, and "recovered memory" is not a medical or scientific term.   That's not a POV or a dispute, and is completely separate from the science of repressed memories (that is controversial as discussed in the other article).


 * This article should stay focused on the activist, political, and legal uses of the coined-term, not on the therapeutic aspects, because it's not a form of therapy and it's use is not related to the science of "repressed memory". Even supporters of the idea of repressed memory do not advise or support any form of therapy such as the one described by the activists who coined the term, and no such form of therapy is recognized by any medical or professional organizations.   The medical/psychological theories of traumatic memories that may be repressed or dissociated and later recalled should be addressed in the repressed memory article, not in this one, other than in passing as needed to explain the activist use of the term that is the subject of this article.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 16:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, Uncle Ed, it's a cornerstone of NPOV policy that the topic be covered fairly in the main article. Moving controversy to a separate article ghettofies the information and automatically pushes a POV that it's not to be trusted. Considering that science is very clearly far and away in support of the idea that recovered memory therapy is dangerous and unreliable, it not only needs to be mentioned here, but it needs to be the primary focus. To do otherwise is to mislead our readers. I know that that's exactly what some of the editors here have been trying to do, as they've been editing this and many other related articles with an obvious agenda to try to make snake oil salesman sound like the prevailing scientific thought, but that should not be how articles at Wikipedia work. Considering how dedicated the POV-pushers have been, it may take a project with devoted people to get things back on track. DreamGuy (talk) 19:28, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Jack and DreamGuy, do you both agree that the article fairly describes both the Mainstream Science view and the Activist view?


 * Are there any Wikipedians who contest this? --Uncle Ed (talk) 20:04, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I would concur with JAR above that the concept of RM as a proven scientific concept should be discussed in the RM article and this article should discuss RMT. I believe that the article as it stands fairly describes the mainstream science view that RM exists and the activist minority view (extreme minority view in the literature) that RMT exists and is practiced. ResearchEditor (talk) 02:59, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Seriously, Ed, did you even read my comment? This article absolutely does not fairly describe mainstream science view... and I don't know what you mean by the activist view, as I don't know what side you think are "activists", but certainly the skeptical viewpoint is criminally underrepresented (two short paragraphs, with loaded wording to boot). DreamGuy (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like User:Abuse truth is trying to make you think the skeptics are mere activists and not scientists... despite the fact that an extremely well-respected scientist who is considered the expert on the topic of memory has been marginalized by citing someone who was not a scientist and just someone who had personal reasons for wanting to believe in recovered memories (so she didn't look foolish for making accusations that were false). DreamGuy (talk) 18:33, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Please remember WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. If Loftus' is cited, then a peer reviewed journal critiquing her work should also be cited. And Crook won her case in court. ResearchEditor (talk) 14:19, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but accurately describing the activities of someone pushing a POV is not a personal attack and is not being uncivil... to claim otherwise is to suggest anyone should be able to get away with violating WP:NPOV policy because nobody is allowed to point it out. Loftus is a scientist, discussing scientific things. Crook was suing for something completely unrelated to any scientific principles and won that lawsuit based upon minor discrepancies in descriptions of what Crook said. The lawsuit did NOT uphold the idea that the study was misapplied, and even if some judge somewhere had said that, that judge would only be a reliable source for legal matters, not scientific research. A journal about philosophical statements about ethics is in no way is a reliable source about scientific discoveries. The fact that you are even trying to make these arguments shows massive misunderstanding of what WP:RS is about, and appears to be a calculated attempt to misrepresent facts to give an entirely different slant on reality than what actually happened. Your personal rationalizations of why Loftus should be ignored have no basis in science, violate WP:OR and are not upheld by any reliable source. DreamGuy (talk) 15:03, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

DG, I'm sorry that I didn't understand your comment. Perhaps terms like "mainstream view" and "activist view" are too loaded. Maybe we better first identify the views themselves. Then, later, we can try to catalog the various people and organizations which espouse or denounce those views.

Sometimes it helps to make a table, like this:

Does this help? --Uncle Ed (talk) 20:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a bit more complicated than that. I don't think anyone disputes that long-forgotten memories can be recovered. Some do occasionally pop back into consciousness based upon something that causes someone to recall them. Nobody keeps all memories in active thought.


 * The disputes are:


 * The existence of repressed memories of the type where normal attempts to recall them are blocked for some reason. Some of the editors of this article have cited studies on amnesia in general, which is *any* type of situation where memories are lost temporarily or permanently in *physically* traumatic head injuries or otherwise, as proof of the existence of repressed memories due to *psychological* trauma. They are confusing the issue to try to make something which is thought to be at best extremely rare sound like it's common.


 * Whether the practices that have been called "recovered memory therapy" by various sources to differentiate the methods from other techniques in therapy have any reliable ability to recover these allegedly repressed psychologically traumatic memories or whether these therapies instead are far more likely to convince the patients that they remember things that never really happened thanks to questionable techniques like hypnosis (suggestible states), loaded questions that presuppose and expect certain answers, and the patients' desires to please the therapist and find some outside excuse for depression or other ails. I don't think people consider these false memories to be lies in the normal sense, as the patient doesn't know them to be false, which is kind of the point.


 * And here's an area completely underrepresented in the article: the various activities used by activists (for example, feminists and Satanic conspiracy theorists who want to believe in rampant victimization of children either individually or as part of a secret cult and use these "recovered memories" of sexual abuse in some patients to back up their worldviews) and psychologists who use recovered memory techniques and who don't want to be open to lawsuits who then lashed out at the scientists and organizations affiliated with them to try to harass, intimidate and destory their reputations through petty lawsuits, misleading publicity, misrepresentation of claims, etc.


 * This whole article as it currently stands only presents the view that these memories are real, doing so through extremely calculated selection of specific sources that they can get on record as being reliable but which they try to use in such a way as to lead the readers to belief they mean something other than what they really mean. The only attempt to show the side of the controversy they disagree with (which is the prevailing view, both scientifically and legally based upon countless lawsuits of disgruntled patients suing over being led to believe they had memories of abuse they know to be false) at all was a minor couple of sentences in which Loftus's lifetime of studies was reduced to a single cite, the nature of which was misrepresented and was also attempted to be dismissed by another journal article which was really just a non-scientist with a known axe to grind.


 * Based upon his edit history ResearchEditor has been shown to be a supporter of Satanic conspiracies in which there is a massive secret cult of Satanists abusing and killing children, of which the only evidence of existence has been recovered memories. His old username name was WP:Abuse truth, and he had been put on restrictions preventing him from editing any articles about satanic abuse, etc., because of a history of blatant POV-pushing. All our warnings to him about NPOV policy have done is made him more calculated in how he pushes his POV. Jack-A-Roe's contributions display a similar obsession with sexual abuse topics and a similar calculated attempt to misleadingly cite sources both to try to support something they don't and all out of proportion to how the field in question views the topic. DreamGuy (talk) 15:03, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Ongoing POV-pushing problems
I don't know if we'll ever get over the hump here, but as multiple people have pointed out above, the current version of this article (and how it's been for a while now) was clearly and undeniably written by people who are extremely pro-recovered memory therapy. It's so off the deep end to one side that it's not even funny. The same small number of pro-recovered memory researchers are cited over and over, while the other side is only represented in the smallest of skeptic sections and where, up until I removed it, a scientist with well respected famous studies on memory was dismissed entirely by the claim that she did something improper, when the person cited as making the crime was a pro-recovered memory activist (someone who had accused her family of abuse and was upset when the science opposed her) and not a scientist or anyone of any note. That's a huge WP:UNDUE weight problem. The editors also systematically went through and removed a number of sources that they disagree with with the flimsiest of excuses, like "This text is not supported by the reference. The court did not decide the case, it was an out-of-court settlement, with no admission of guilt by the hospital." So instead of merely changing the wording slightly to indicate that the person suing made the claims, the whole mention of the incident was totally removed, and it's happened over and over and over. That's such clear bias that I can't believe they think they can get away with it. User:ResearchEditor (who, under his old name of User:Abuse truth was on restrictions prohibiting him from editing many of these articles for ongoing POV-pushing) and User:Jack-A-Roe are the main offenders. Unfortunately people with agendas in mind have all the time in the world to revert good edits and install their own to slant the articles to say what they want them to say. DreamGuy (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that the page is very far from dealing with the RMT issue in a serious way, and places insufficient emphasis on the controversy and disagreements. From what I've read of the satanic ritual abuse phenomenon, which ropes in RM and RMT quite heavily, there's a lot of controversy and it's really, really bitter.  I would suggest however, that a better way forward would be to expand the criticisms with the appropriate reliable sources.  You really can't argue with a reliable source, and it makes the page more credible to readers.  The skeptical side is required to balance out the 'believe the children' side that's emphasized, but the best way is to include the best counter-sources.  Like many of the disputed pages on wiki, the best way to resolve is the unforgiving slog of documenting and sourcing. WLU (talk) 18:38, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately that whole strategy is one that dedicated POV-pushers will eventually win. A reliable source is only a reliable source for whatever it is making a claim about. A long list of reliable sources from one side and the removal of reliable sources from the other side for capricious reasons, will end up slanting the article, and the strategy here by these editors has clearly been a war of attrition. I can add anything I want, but they'll just come along and find an excuse to remove it, reliable source or not. Also the way the reliable sources are handled in descriptions can push POV. These editors phrase things to insinuate that what one researcher concluded was fact, and that multiple reports from the same researchers in different journals somehow establishes it as unassailable, while at the same time minimizing the other side. And we can see in the edits exactly how they are doing it: by disputing small niggling detail in the way something was phrased they'll just delete the whole thing instead of improve it. I suspect, especially with how long Abuse truth/Research Editor has been doing this, that we won't make any headway without a whole group of editors to babysit all the affected articles constantly or having him put on restrictions to prevent his POV-pushing again (which probably won't prevent him from just coming back later). DreamGuy (talk) 18:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't disagree with you. See the SRA talk page - it's an exhausting process but one that I've found to result in only the best sources being represented.  Adhering to a WP:MEDMOS-level and -type of sourcing has resulted in most of the poorer sources being pulled and the newspaper sources also being deleted.  I don't know if this is a special case or not, but enough attention was paid to SRA that it allowed a heavy emphasis on scholarly texts.  RMT may not have the same degree of attention.  WLU (talk) 19:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The SRA page, which was actually balanced for a brief while, has now become a skeptical soapbox, with edits deleting reliable sources against the extreme skeptical viewpoint on this topic. I have added reliable sources to pages following wikipolicy. Please stop personally attacking me. The skeptical side in the reliable sources is the minority view on this topic and should be treated as such on the page as per WP:UNDUE. Furthermore, my prior restrictions were not on articles about memory.ResearchEditor (talk) 14:25, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Undue weight is easy to address by taking the best and most recent sources on the subject, in the highest impact journals, and summarizing them accurately. To say that RMT is complete bunk and was just an over-reaction ignores the fact that there was a debate and that there were two sides.  DreamGuy, please comment on the content, not contributor.  WLU (talk) 14:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * WLU, the content comes from the contributor. The basic problem here is the assumption that someone who came here to advocate a person belief system and got into trouble for it will suddenly start making objective edits once it's been explained to him. All we are doing is coaching him and people like him on methods to give biased edits the false appearance of objectivity. There is no reasonable expectation that this editor will ever edit these articles in a way consistent with Wikipedia policy. In order to see what he's doing and how to prevent it we have to acknowledge the strategy involved. Journals about philosophical topics are being presented as if they are scientific journals. Any minor complaint they have in the wording of a section providing reliable sources backing up facts they don't like is used as an excuse to remove the whole section entirely instead of fixing the wording. There are so many content problems in this article that detailing them all would be a full time job, and we're losing site of the forest for the trees. We cannot let people with such obvious agendas take over articles in this way. DreamGuy (talk) 15:14, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd love to be of service to help arbitrate, but I'm having difficulty even following who's saying what on this general subject matter (which, as noted, spans several articles). I must say a great deal of this subject has a completely different approach to these situations than I would even think of in the context of giving therapy.  i.e. a person who discloses abuse under whatever circumstances is typically not given orders by their doctor to run crying to the nearest newspaper or file a huge lawsuit.  Know what I mean?  Further, even if a confabulation occurs, there is always reason for it, in my experience.Legitimus (talk) 15:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

{undent} I agree with DreamGuy. In fact, PelleSmith has just quitted WP out of frustration for dealing with AT/RE in a SRA subpage article. However, WP is built in such a way that we can only follow WLU's example in SRA article. I recommend taking a look at how he and Arthur Rubin have dealt with AT/RE in these articles. Yes: it's a full time job and very few editors may be willing to follow this path. Meanwhile we should keep the pov tag here until an editor willing to spend the time comes to this article. —Cesar Tort 15:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * One thing that may be missed here - there are two sides, if not more, to the debate. One side will not like, or agree with anything the other says.  However, we are required to report both.  In part I report the skeptical side because it makes the most sense to me and that's where I've focussed my research.  In addition to this, the non-skeptical position has been assumed by other editors.  The result is that rather than doing our proper job as wikipedia editors (each of us representing each side equally per it's mainstream acceptance) each side is pushing very hard for only their own position.  It's not how editing should be done, but in many cases that's how it is done.  It is not a bad thing if each side edits hard towards a specific point of view, as long as both end up on the page.  It's as inappropriate to portray RMT solely as a horrible injustice brought about by incompetence and credulous therapists as it is to portray it as something totally unproven overblown and unethical and all abuse is true.  That is the debate in the scholarly community.  So find a source that supports your POV, make sure it's reliable, add it to the page and summarize it properly.  Doubtless the other POV will get pissed off and add a countering source.  That's also fine.  As long as the sources are reliable and properly summarized, the page gets better .  It's only a problem when one side is represented more than how it is accepted in the mainstream scholarly community.  Fortunately we can find this out by using the best, most recent and most reliable sources.  WLU (talk) 16:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. But let me say that, though I have a very definite pov on SRA, I have none on recovered memory. You know child abuse is my pet subject. RM is so controversial that I rather suspend judgement. However, this is beside the issue that concerns DreamGuy. AT/RE always edits towards one side of the controversy. I for one have "written for the enemy", especially in psychohistory. AT/RE's approach to WP is simple: Thou Shalt Push a Specific Pov. This hasn't been solved in spite of the fact that s/he has been told dozens of times how to grasp WP policy. Are we condemned to discuss with him/her ad infinitum? We have tolerated this pov pushing for quite a long time now and s/he doesn't seem to get it. —Cesar Tort 16:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * WLU seems to be suggesting that there is POV pushing going on both sides. I do not see that happening here. If my edits lately have tended to support one side it's only because the other side is so incredibly overrepresented that there wouldn't be anything of any note from that side for me to add. I have on several occasions edited against positions I disagree with to get the encyclopedia to the objective standards ir requires, and would do so on these articles if the opportunity arose. I certainly have no opposition to properly citing research that might support the idea of repressed psychologically traumatic memories that have returned later and so forth, but the crucial point there is present it accurately and in context, which has not been happening, not even in the slightest. Evidence of amnesia in general is not evidence of repressed memories, documentation that some of the recovered memories may be accurate in no way substantiates all of them or even anything like a majority of them, and removing all mention of notorious cases in which people "recovered" memories of completely impossible things (especially concerning rampant Satanic human sacrifice, etc.) or things that were objectively disproved and all of the resulting successful lawsuits does not make them go away. WLU seems to think it'll be easy to fix using "best, most recent and most reliable sources" but good luck getting people who want to believe their side is right no matter what and came here to advance that cause to admit that there sources aren't the best and that others are. We've seen it in the editing recently, with hugely misleading claims, putting words into a scientist's mouth when she says exactly the opposite, people being cited as experts who aren't anything but vocal, and so forth. DreamGuy (talk) 17:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Something that's needed in the article is a description of RMT, as it is supposedly practiced. Right now, I'm not clear what specific practice their even talking about.  If we knew what treatment modalities are being called RMT, maybe it would be easier to find neutral sources.Legitimus (talk) 17:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the current article is really messed up. One of the strategies of the supporters of these methods seems to be to deny that the term has any valid definition at all. They frame it as something invented up by an activist group (true) but ignored by all other sources (false) and then totally drag that activist group through the mud (see the article about them, wow, that's a major hack piece) to try to make the criticisms seem marginalized. That's why the article looks like it does now. Digging through old versions of this article (before User:Abuse truth first joined) might be helpful, but more importantly we need reliable sources for the definition in the first place (which certainly do exist) and then can go from there. DreamGuy (talk) 17:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "putting words into a scientist's mouth when she says exactly the opposite."


 * This seems to be one of the specialties by AbuseTruth/ResearchEditor. He did something similar in the SRA subpage (before PelleSmith got tired and left Wikiland). I cannot imagine how to deal with such a massive pushing behavior except, as I pointed out above, a full-time balancing of this article. The alternative of course is to take again the case of AT/RE to the boards and the blocking admins in the hope that further action be taken. —Cesar Tort 17:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's please not make this personal. We need to stick to the content, not the editors.Legitimus (talk) 18:22, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * How did the content get here, if not by an editor? Has this editor provided anything other than that kind of content? Not from what I've seen, and I've seen no indications that he would ever provide anything but that kind of content. That's the sort of thing people get banned for, and for good reason -- they are just a drain on the good editors and never contribute anything positive. DreamGuy (talk) 20:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * This article is not the creation of one editor. The history shows that around a dozen people have contributed around 400 edits to this article since last December. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 21:59, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The version cited above seems more objective, but maybe that's because it leans toward the anti-RM position. It's nice to see the pendulum swinging the other way, but I'm hoping we can avoid trying to settle the dispute. Let's just outline it.

There are various aspects of the topic where there are opposing viewpoints. Can we list this viewpoints, with sources? I'd like to know which memory researchers believe what (scientific aspect). Also, who has sued whom, and with what results (legal aspect)? --Uncle Ed (talk) 00:31, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Older version of article
Those of you having trouble understanding what this whole thing is about can check out this older version of the article. This version, which admittedly has problems (most notably in sourcing), at least explains what the topic is, explains what the science is, explains what the methods used in the therapies are (by name, if not by detail), and so forth. Contrast that to the current article which is so full of citations to largely unrelated articles that no sense can be made out of it. The general conclusions of the old version of the article are in balance much more accurate than the current version: these therapies were used more then than now, many therapists assumed abuse in the past and wanted patients to remember it, patients remembered it, accused parents and others of abuse, families split, big huge dispute, many of the cases tied to allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse, also claims of multiple personalities arising thanks to the alleged abuse (including famously a woman who supposedly had hundreds of "alters" including a duck), activists lashing out ("How dare you support child abusers?"), lawsuits both ways... but the current end result is that these techniques are know almost universally seen as being useless at best (unable to determine false memories from real ones with outside proof, and if you have outside proof what good what the recovered memory?) and horribly crippling at worst (people who thought they cannibalized babies as kids, lots of people falsely accused of rape and torture, therapists recommending patients speak out in public, etc.).

I'm almost tempted to poke around the history of the article at that time and just revert back to the best one there. A bunch of misleading cites stacked together to give a false conclusion and confuse what the topic is even about can't be better than a generally fair summary that needs more citations and some rewording. DreamGuy (talk) 17:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That was a little helpful. My primary concern was that this label would be applied too liberally to psychotherapy in general, and to supported mainstream techniques.  Frankly if a patient says "Well, I've never spoken of this before out loud, but when I was 6 my step-father did X," that's not RMT.  I'm not evoking this or forcing that out of them, they are just saying it now for the first time.  We don't wave gold pocket watches a people, yet I feel like that's what's being implied by groups like FMSF.Legitimus (talk) 18:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That version reads much more closely to what I believe the state of the current debate in psychotherapy actually is. I don't know if a wholesale revert is better than an attempt to merge the two, but that material should be better represented (and sourced of course).  WLU (talk) 18:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * A wholesale revert would certainly not be the best choice. Some of the historical content could be merged in, when sources can be found, and some off-topic information could be removed.  However, it's an important point for the article that the term itself was invented by the FMSF and there never was any form of therapy performed by therapists under the title RMT.  Some therapists did do memory-recall work, hypnosis or whatever - which was a bad idea, and has been discredited and is not currently practiced.  But it was done as ad-hoc combinations of techniques, by various types of therapists on their own, not under any umbrella term like RMT.  Applying that term retroactively to those ad-hoc methods would be  a synthesis. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 18:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it might be worth mentioning that the term was created by FMSF and wasn't pre-existing, but the current way of doing mentions it twice and considers it so important that it's the main lead, when in reality it's almost trivial to what the REAL topic is. The term has been applied to countless techniques and that certainly is not debatable. Mentioning what they are is certainly NOT a synthesis on our part by any STRETCH of the imagination... and that whole line of argument coming from you is ridiculous considering that you have outright taken bits and pieces of cites and tried to present them in the article in such a way to change what those sources really said. This shows me that you are aware of the concept are are doing it anyway. That's not good at all. DreamGuy (talk) 19:22, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Why not wholesale revert first and then do the modifications proposed by JAR —with consensus in talk? —Cesar Tort 18:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Because the current version is more accurate and has more citations that directly apply. If there is off-topic content that needs to be removed, let's look at that and remove what is actually off-topic.  If there are extra off-topic citations as another editor above stated, those can be removed - after confirming they are off-topic.  If there is historical information to be added, let's add it, with references.  There is no reason to revert to a version from almost a year ago. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:06, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It certainly is not more accurate, and not by a long shot. There was no encyclopedic reason for this article to have taken such a drastic turn away from Wikipedia standards a year ago, so reverting to a year ago and then applying anything salvageable from the current version is a good way to go. DreamGuy (talk) 19:22, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

{bing!}One aspect of the current version that needs work is the lead - right now it's hugely unbalanced to the rest of the page, like someone found whatever citations they could dig up and threw them right in; this gives undue weight to those opinions without being dealt with in teh body. The lead should summarize the material below, so if it's not in the body it shouldn't be on top. The body is a whole lot more skeptical than the lead.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is the overall discussion of the memory wars - there was a huge battle in the scholarly and popular press over whether memories could be repressed by trauma and/or created by certain therapeutic techniques. This page is ostensibly a discussion of the term; realistically, that's a subsection of the recovered memory as wikipedia is not a dictionary and the present version invites content forking. WLU (talk) 20:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's not be hasty. I don't think a revert so long ago is called for.  Its seems like such a waste and the old version was rather crude.  We can do some trimming of the current one.Legitimus (talk) 20:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Mere trimming is not going to do it. The basic thrust of what an article is supposed to do isn't currently here. The "basic overall discussion of the memory wars" that WLU mentions was in the old one but not the current one. Now how the article gets improved is debatable, but in the end it needs to look more like it did a year ago than it looks like now... whether we make changes to this one to make it look more like the other one (or preferably better) or whether we go to the old one and incorporate anything worth saving from here ends up the same in the long run. We just need to get there from here, how we go about doing it should be based upon whichever way causes the least work. DreamGuy (talk) 20:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Agree with Jack-A-Roe above. The article is much better than it was a year ago. It is more accurate. If we do make changes, lets discuss them here first and if needed develop a consensus version. ResearchEditor (talk) 15:07, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, of course you do, because the two of you are advocating the same POV and have been rewriting the article over the last year or so to reflect that view instead of reality. DreamGuy (talk) 23:09, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've made some early rearrangements of the article in order to make it more coherent, as my first concern was that it was very difficult to read. This was more to change the order and position of paragraphs, and avoiding any deletions at present. I did make an addition of two sources, to indicated what RMT is supposed to be, since it's not a treatment model by itself.  I have more reading to do, and I will try to work as I go in order to make a balanced article.  Just give me a shot, I'm trying.Legitimus (talk) 01:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)