Not trying to 'hog the board' but I do think this is important for therapists... and PARTICULARLY hypnotherapists to understand:

Elizabeth Loftus

University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is an accomplished researcher with expertise in eyewitness testimony, particularly how the memories of crime witnesses can be distorted by post-event questioning. Loftus is a prominent spokesperson for the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and her views have by and large been very well received by the mass media in the United States. Loftus also testifies as an expert witness on the behalf of people accused of child abuse on the basis of recovered memories. She has co-authored a book entitled The Myth of Repressed Memory.
You've probably heard of Dr. Loftus, and seen her quoted approvingly and uncritically in the popular media. No doubt, as reported in the media, she has prevented some wrongly accused people from being unjustly convicted. She has also played a valuable role by bringing attention and accountability to bear on some irresponsible practices by some incompetent therapists. Yet Dr. Loftus has also claimed that recovered memory is a "myth," and that the majority of such memories are false and implanted by therapists.
Unfortunately, thus far reporters and journalists have almost completely failed to critically evaluate her claims. Nor have they addressed three crucial facts about her work:

1. Loftus herself conducted and published a study in which nearly one in five women who reported childhood sexual abuse also reported completely forgetting the abuse for some period of time and recovering the memory of it later.

2. Loftus misrepresented the facts of a legal case in a scholarly paper and, after finally apologizing to the victim of her misrepresentations, continued to promote the article with falsehoods. (See Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus' Scholarship and Accuracy, by Jennifer Hoult, whose case Loftus misrepresented.)

3. Loftus is aware that those who study traumatic memory have for several years, based on a great deal of research and clinical experience, used the construct of dissociation to account for the majority of recovered memories. However, she continues to focus on and attack "repression" and "repressed memories," which has the effect of confusing and misleading many people.

Here is the study almost never mentioned by Dr. Loftus or the media:

Loftus, E.F., Polonsky, S., & Fullilove, M. T. (1994). Memories of childhood sexual abuse: Remembering and repressing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18, 67-845.

Abstract: "Women involved in out-patient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. The majority (81.1%) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. They also reported greater intensity of feelings at the time the abuse happened. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives did not differ from others in terms of the violence of the abuse or whether the abuse was incestuous. These data bear on current discussions concerning the extent to which repression is a common way of coping with child sexual abuse trauma, and also bear on some widely held beliefs about the correlates of repression."

If you read this paper (and I strongly encourage you to do so, especially if you are presenting this issue to others), you will find that Loftus devotes most of it to attacking the construct of repression. If you read this paper, you will probably find it interesting and ironic that Loftus, after her sustained attack on the construct of repression, uses it to explain the recovered memories of her own study's subjects. If you read this paper and some of the other works cited on this page, you will understand that experts in psychological trauma would not explain the recovered memories of her research subjects in that way, but in terms of dissociation.

Here are the findings at issue:

"Forgetting was associated with a different quality of memory, compared to those who did not forget. Forgetting was associated with a current memory that was deteriorated in some respects. The deteriorated memory was less clear; it contained less of a 'picture,' and the remembered intensity of feelings at the time of the abuse was less" (p.79).

Notice the use of the word "deteriorated" to describe memory characteristics that most trauma specialists would describe as "dissociative." The principle that initially whole memories deteriorate over time is derived from research on nontraumatic memory. In contrast, just as dissociation involves a fragmentation of experience during abuse, subsequent memories tend to appear as fragments too – from the beginning. Thus, if a subject had dissociated during the abuse experience, such fragmentation would likely cause her memory to be "less clear," and to involve less of a "picture." Further, dissociative fragmentation during abuse typically involves a defensive attempt to split (dis-associate) physical and emotional pain from one's conscious experience. This could explain the finding that the women who had forgotten for some time, compared to those who had not, remembered the intensity of their feelings being less during the abuse. But Loftus and her colleagues, understandably wedded to their traditional model of memory and either unable or unwilling to apply the construct of dissociation, can only characterize such memories as "deteriorated."

Ironically, this leads Loftus to use repression as an explanation for these lost memories – though no psychological trauma expert would do so:

"Suppose instead we define repression more conservatively. . . . Just under one fifth of the women reported that they forgot the abuse for a period of time and later regained the memory. One could argue that this means that robust repression was not especially prevalent in our sample" (p.80).

In summary:

* Loftus has conducted and published research which calls into question her public statements on recovered memories; her own study demonstrated that the conditions of amnesia and delayed recall for sexual abuse do exist.

* She has relentlessly attacked the construct of repression in her scholarly work, in her expert testimony to judges and juries, and in her statements to the media; this behavior causes many uninformed people to believe she is arguing that the conditions of amnesia and delayed recall for sexual abuse do not exist.

* She has misrepresented the facts of a legal case in a scholarly paper and, after finally apologizing to the victim of her misrepresentations, continued to promote the article riddled with falsehoods (see Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus' Scholarship and Accuracy)

* She is aware that experts on traumatic and recovered memories, when they do employ explanatory constructs, use dissociation much more than repression to understand these phenomena.

* She has used repression to explain recovered memories reported by subjects in her own research, though experts in traumatic memory would argue that they are more likely dissociative in nature.

* For most of you, this is the first time you are learning these facts, because most members of the popular media addressing this issue have note done their homework or made any of these facts known. (For more on the unreliability and poor track record of the popular media on this issue, see Mike Stanton's piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, U-Turn on Memory Lane).