A REVIEW

Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma, Dr. Charles L. Whitfield, M.D.

From The Adult Survivor, Fred Fisher Editor/Publisher

Dr Charles Whitfield is a man you should know about. His book, Healing the Child Within, published in 1987 by Health Communications, Inc., deals with the experience of childhood wounding. At the time he wrote it, he was deeply involved with the healing of alcoholics and codependents. Healing the Child Within, and its companion book, A Gift to Myself, took the recovery field by storm, but we predict a very different kind of storm with regard to his book Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma (Health Communications Inc., 1995).

If there is such a thing as a devil in the anti-recovery movement, Dr. Whitfield goes after it tooth-and-nail. He traces the missteps that occurred in psychiatry as a result of Freud’s renunciation of his seduction theory a century ago, and shows how these negative views still color the attitudes of some professionals. But he also outlines the more positive steps that have been taken during the same time. These steps have put therapy on a sound basis. The research is there, and it’s nice to have it all available at last in a single, convincing, comprehensive book.

Whitfield is one of the first—if not indeed the first—to put together all the available information and clinical experience about trauma theory in one volume. This monumental book contrasts interestingly with Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham’s The Myth of Repressed Memory: False memories and allegations of sexual abuse (St. Martin’s Press, 1994). Loftus has developed quite a record of court appearances (at $375 per hour) on behalf of the False Memory folks. In short, she has become the paid advocate of adults accused of molesting and otherwise abusing children. Loftus is a PhD, but she has few credentials other than availability that would qualify her as an “expert witness” in matters such as this.

We got in touch with Dr. Whitfield for comments. He replied:

“[She] appears to have expertise in a narrow segment of ordinary memory. Beyond that, from reading The Myth of Repressed Memory and several of her other writings, I am unable to find any evidence that she has any qualifications, and this is especially true about her knowledge of traumatic memory.”

This is an important point. Whitfield in his book makes a distinction between ordinary memory and what we now properly call traumatic memory. This is a matter which, we predict, will be very significant in coming years. It’s a distinction that should serve to put away, in the future, abusers and sex offenders who until now have gone free. Stated simply,” Trauma alone dissociates and confuses memory,” and Whitfield adds, “Trying to block it with guilt, shame, and threats—by an abuser or co-abuser—can drive it into the victim’s unconscious.

The documentation in Memory and Abuse is almost overwhelming in its thoroughness. With his extensive clinical experience Whitfield could go out on a limb and hypothesize occasionally, but instead, there is the tremendous force of authority in the many references he cites for support. We nominate Charles Whitfield’s Memory and Abuse as the book of the decade in the recovery field and hope the “memory” of Dr. Loftus will fade quickly into oblivion.