As you look back, do you believe your memories are real?
I'm afraid everyone's answer to this is yes. But scientists remind us that the relationship between the things we recall and the real events is not as simple as looking in the mirror, and sometimes it is like a "haha mirror", taking another strange image.
In the past decade, scientists have found that memory actually has a huge gray area, and there are too many blind spots. Memories can even be faked, and things that have never happened at all can actually be used through various psychological manipulation means to make the parties feel that they have indeed happened! This is called "false memory." This phenomenon is still a hot topic today, and it was accompanied by a well-known case in the United States in the 1980s, the "McMartin case".
Bizarre cases begin and end
The McMartin case, also known as the McMartín Kindergarten Harassment Case, was the first "multi-victim, multi-offender" type of child abuse case in the United States, and this case set many records — it lasted more than 6 years, the longest case in U.S. history; the entire trial cost $15 million, so it was also the "most expensive" criminal case at the time. The outcome of the trial was beyond anyone's expectations – no one was guilty!
McMartin Kindergarten is located on Manhattan Island Beach, California, and is owned by Ms. McMartin Boozzi, whose son Ray is a part-time administrator of the school. On August 12, 1983, a woman named Judy Johnson suddenly complained to the police that her son had been flirted with by Mr. Ray in the kindergarten, and after a period of investigation, the police arrested Ray on September 7.
Later, officers at the Manhattan Island Beach Police Department distributed an investigative letter to the parents of McMartin's kindergarten students, saying that Ray may have forced the children to participate in pornographic games and that he may have sexually assaulted some of the young girls. The letter asked parents to look for information about the events.
Next, hundreds of children in the kindergarten were called to the Children's Association for questioning and special medical examinations. The Children's Association's medical staff examined 150 children and found no physical evidence of sexual assault, but the doctors adopted a new psychological testing program that stimulated the children's unspeakable potential memories of sexual assault, and this time the doctors concluded that about 120 children had been sexually abused! Soon, that number increased to another 360.
Suddenly, the whole city fell into panic, especially the parents of these children, and exploded! Ironically, allegations of child sexual abuse followed from several other nearby schools, all of which were accused of being devil believers and belonging to a child pornography gang. In total, about 100 teachers have been charged with child flirting or abuse!
Memories that are "encouraged" out
Why didn't the children tell their parents anything about it before, but when they were questioned, they "recovered" their memories? After the incident, it became known that those were nothing more than false memories encouraged by the "memory experts" of the Children's Association. These so-called experts specially designed various questions about Mr. Lei's sexual assault of young children, and then induced these children to recall the scene at that time, and under the constant hint and encouragement of the staff, the children did recall a lot of Mr. Lei's harassment and assault of them.
Kyle, the "brave" child who came out to testify against the McMartin family, told the world more than a decade later about his real experience. Referring to the children's association's questioning at the time, he said: "I remember them asking me very strange questions, like did Ray ever touch me, and I told them that nothing had happened to me. But they almost laughed and even said sarcastically, 'Oh, boy, we know that something did happen to you, so why didn't you tell us all about it?' Every time I give an answer they don't like, they ask me again, and that's encouraging me to give the answer they want. ”
So how could he describe all kinds of cruel abuse in the materials of the accusation?
"I 'created' the details of the evil acts they wanted by recalling their painful feelings for the church. We went to that church every week, but no one wanted to go, and along the way, several of our children were crying, kicking, and trying to escape, which was the most memorable experience I had, so I changed the details of going to church to make it more terrifying, and then told them. ”
"When I said those things had happened, I felt very uncomfortable, even a little ashamed, because I lied. But my parents said, 'You're doing a great job, don't worry!' Everyone around me said how proud they were of me. Also, there are so many kids who say that everything happened, so if you say 'no,' no one will believe you. Again and again, this "encouragement" led little Kyle to constantly "describe" the memories that could be "restored".
It's worth emphasizing that Kyle is a little different from the other children, he was more sober at the time, he knew he was lying. Later evidence showed that many other children had false memories when asked these questions.
Children's association staff have a clear tendency to ask children questions, and if they get the details of a child's description, they will put these in a list of questions and ask other children, and this question will always get a positive answer from the younger child. As a result, the vicious circle intensifies, and it seems that most children have experienced a similar situation.
Some of the children's testimonies were bizarre, and in addition to being sexually assaulted, they saw wizards flying around, traveling in the sky in hot air balloons, and being taken to a secret underground passage (investigators later tried everything they could to find, but never found). Some children also said they were forced to play a game called "Naked Movie Star", when they were forced to take nude photos, but no photos were found in the investigation. These "experiences" have their own prototypes, for example, the so-called secret passage is actually a game of hide-and-seek played by children that splices cabinets together and can drill in and out. After "twisting", this plot became a shocking "crime" of Mr. Lei!
False memories are not uncommon
The McMartín case is not the only case of false memories, which are often reported in the press, especially in the field of psychotherapy:
In 1986, a woman named Kouer in Wisconsin, USA, sought treatment from a psychiatrist, and during the treatment, the psychologist used hypnosis and other suggestive therapies to recall some horrors that she had never experienced in her childhood, such as her own participation in evil superstitious activities, eating babies, and being forced to watch the horrors of her childhood friends being killed, which were not real at all, but more like nightmares. Afterwards, Koul realized that she had been indoctrinated with false memories, so she accused the psychiatrist of mistreatment. In March 1997, the case ended with Ms. Kouer receiving $2.4 million in damages.
In 1992, in missouri, a woman named Beth, induced by a therapist, recalled false memories of her father (a clergy member) who often raped her between the ages of 7 and 14 and made her pregnant twice. After the above statement was made public, her father was forced to resign from the priesthood, however, a later physical examination of her showed that she was still a virgin, and she had never been pregnant. So Beth sued the therapist and received $1 million in compensation in 1996.
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In the above-mentioned cases, the parties in the process of receiving psychotherapy produced false memories of childhood abuse and later denied the authenticity of these memories. Growing research results suggest that some of us are susceptible to false memories under the right circumstances. When we talk to others, when we are interrogated implicitly, when we read or watch reports on television about something that may have happened to us, disinformation can invade our memory.
A typical case of false memories generated by media reports is a multi-witness memory error incident that occurred in Washington, D.C. in 2002: a crazy sniper committed a series of crimes on the highway, shooting and killing 10 people, and many witnesses said in several reports that they saw a white truck fleeing from the crime scene, but when the suspect was finally arrested, he was found to be driving a blue car. Obviously, these witnesses could not have collectively lied, but why are what they see so different from the facts? Later, the researchers found that what witnesses said about a white truck had appeared in the video of the first shooting scene reported by the media, most likely because the repeated playback of these videos "polluted" the witnesses' memories, causing them to subconsciously remember the "white truck".
Tragedy caused by false memories
Also, if we have the wrong memory of what happened before, what does that matter? Most of the time there is no impact. But sometimes, false memories can do a huge toll, not only for the recaller himself, but also for others — the "McMartin case" is a typical case. One of the reasons why the trial of the case lasted for 6 years and was finally withdrawn was that during the proceedings, the testimony of many witnesses was chaotic and contradictory, showing that the children's "recalled memories" were actually nothing more than false memories instilled into the children's consciousness by the "memory restoration experts" of the Children's Association.
This is one of the most famous cases in American judicial history, and it has had huge consequences: even without any evidence of a crime, members of the defendant McMartin family have been imprisoned for several years. After the trial, McMartin Kindergarten was closed and razed to the ground; eight other schools where similar cases were reported were closed and never reopened. The hundreds of children involved in this incident, now adults, still believe that they have been violated, because for them, this misguided memory shadow lingers in their minds and has become a real experience! Some people have counted that among them, about 20% are seriously affected, 10% lose emotional control, and 1% eventually choose to commit suicide, and the main culprit of all this is the false memory that exists in their brains.
We can also see in other cases how terrible the dangers of false memories are! In 1986, a young man named Ronald Cotton in the United States was accused of raping a 22-year-old female college student. At the time, the victims identified Cotton as the perpetrator of her rape. However, a DNA test 11 years later showed that the killer was someone else. Later, another man named Bobby admitted that the rape was his own doing, and later test results proved that the person was the real criminal.
It was "imagination" that directed the scene
The question is, if these "recovered memories" are incorrect, where did they come from? Why do people's brains believe in the authenticity of these memories?
Scientists' research has revealed the reason for this: people's memory is complex and fragile, it is not the same as the principle of watching video, but more like a pile of colored fragments to piece together a multicolored picture. In addition to actual events, memories are derived from images, overheard conversations, dreams, suggestions, and imaginations. They also change over time.
The part of the brain that is usually used to manage real feelings overlaps with the part that manages imagination, so an imaginary event can leave a memory in the brain and is very similar to the memory left by the event that is actually experienced. That is, when the brain wants to store memories of personal experiences or imaginations, it uses the same nerves and the same storage methods.
In this way, recalling whether or not something has happened is actually the same process in the brain as imagining that it happened! If someone asks you if something has happened, you'll imagine it. Later, maybe a day or a year later, when someone asks you if this happened, it will be difficult for you to tell if it happened or just imagine it.
In the process of psychotherapy, allowing patients to use imagination to restore memories of the past is a common method used by psychologists. Surveys have shown that most psychologists ask patients to open their imaginative wings and imagine at will when evoking childhood experiences that patients have long forgotten and hidden in the subconscious. One psychologist even said bluntly to the patient, "Take some time to imagine that you have been abused, don't worry about whether the imagination is correct, just make your imagination make sense." ”
These imaging methods can even remind patients of things that happened in infancy. We know that it is almost impossible for an adult to recall his own experiences when he was one year old, because at one year the human brain is still far from mature, and the hippocampus, which plays a key role in the production of memory, has not even been formed, and it is impossible to produce and store long-term memories. But a famous psychologist invented a hypnotic and induced method that actively encouraged subjects to construct infancy experiences through imagination, which actually produced memories of infancy, and the recallers were convinced that these infant memories must be real!
The researchers also found that the more times subjects envisioned something they hadn't done, the more likely they were to "recall" what they had done. This suggests that the constant repetition of imaginative behavior makes one feel more and more familiar with false events, and that this familiar feeling is mistakenly conceived as a memory of past events.
Memory itself also plunges into nothingness?
It seems that, as scientists later studied, some of our memories are real, some of them are a mixture of fact and fantasy, and some of them are purely false, no matter how real those memories may seem.
How can we determine whether memories of childhood abuse are real or false? In the absence of confirmation, it is difficult to distinguish between false memories and which are real. Statistically, however, there are some differences between real and false memories: subjects used more words to describe real memories, and real memories were clearer than false memories. The events that really happened are contextualized and the details are more organized, while the imaginary memories are very hollow, and the subjects cannot recall more real and fuller details, and these differences allow experts to distinguish between real memories and imagined memories. However, for the average bystander, it is difficult to distinguish which memories are real and which are false.
Are we thus caught in the trap of "true" and "false" nihilism? Things are not so pessimistic, although we have doubts about the objectivity of "memories", but with the help of scientific instruments, we can still distinguish which memories are real and objective and which are imaginary. Using modern electronic scanners, it is possible to observe the processing of information by various parts of the brain. Scientists have found that real memories differ from the images of the brain displayed on electronic scanners compared to false memories. Therefore, relying on more professional judging standards, it is still possible to distinguish the true and false memory to a certain extent.
In fact, fundamentally, even memories that we regard as real are not necessarily reliable, and the facts in the memory are often too far from what actually happened, which is why different people often have very different memories of the same thing. And people's memories are also constantly changing, and after the memories are awakened in different environments, they will gradually be modified.
We once thought that the human brain was like a computer hard drive, faithfully recording data from life, but now scientists have discovered that the human brain is a highly active organ that filters, edits, and sometimes even invents memories on its own, and is easily manipulated.
Human memory is directly related to emotions such as pain and pleasure. We thought that we had enough ability to preserve our memories in various ways and maintain the authenticity and certainty of the memory of events, but now it seems that this effort to restore memories is always easily disturbed by external factors, not because people are not capable enough, but because memory itself has characteristics that are easy to change. This is extremely thought-provoking, and it reveals an important law: our pleasure and suffering are only a state of mind, which is maintained by mental activity, and memory activity is a major part of mental activity. Therefore, the subjective arbitrariness of memory itself directly affects our feelings, and it does not matter whether the past experience is true or not. In the McMartín case, it was misguided memories rather than real events that hurt people's feelings and made the person actually feel the pain. Conversely, pleasant memories (whether false or real) always make people feel joyful, and it does not matter whether there are those happy events happening.
It seems that "memory" itself is an extremely complex phenomenon!