“When my wife and I recall a shared incident—a concert, an argument, a trip—we seldom remember the same incident. Through a process called ‘chunking,’ our memory of the concert is affected by memories of other concerts, including concerts we’ve seen on television and in the movies, even concerts we’ve only heard about. And all of these memories exchange details with one another—so that our recollection of an afternoon at Lincoln Center is changed by the documentary that we saw about Woodstock, and also by what we’ve read of Wagner—not to mention the dream we had of porpoises swimming through La Scala.
“It works like this: every memory is connected by neuronal highways to every other. But inasmuch as no two people have had the same experiences, each of us has a unique matrix of memories and neuronal connections. So when my wife and I attend a concert, we have similar, but different, experiences—and similar, but different, recollections of that same event. And not only that: since these memories are themselves subject to constant and further evolution, my wife’s recollection of the concert may one day be entirely unrecognizable—at least, to me.”
Over the objections of plaintiff’s counsel, Shaw had then gone on to review various experiments concerning eyewitness testimony—citing the work of Elizabeth Loftus and others. The studies revealed that although most people—“the general public, doctors, lawyers, even psychiatrists”—tend to hold the belief that “memory” represents a procedure of review, the reality is quite different. In fact, “memory” represents the reconstruction of an event in the mind. It sounded like “splitting hairs” Shaw said, but the “difference could not be more profound.”
The key point was that such reconstructions were unreliable. “Memory is a novelist, not a photographer,” Shaw told the court.
To illustrate his point, Shaw described a series of experiments in which short films were shown to students, who were then asked misleading questions about what they’d seen. When the students were questioned a second time, about a week later, it was found that most of them had integrated the misleading data into their own recollections. They now “remembered” things that they’d been asked about—but hadn’t seen. “In other words,” Shaw said, “they formed pseudomemories.”
Adrienne’s eyes were beginning to strain—despite the overcast day, the cottage was flooded with light, and Nikki’s laptop screen wasn’t active matrix. Was she ready to call this guy? Maybe yes, maybe no.
Getting to her feet, she stretched, and went to the front door. Stepping outside, she took in the damp air and the smell of the ocean.
It’s all about memory, she told herself. About Nikki’s confabulations, and Duran’s. Doctor Shaw was the Memory King, and if he couldn’t help her, no one could. But would he?
She took in another lungful of salt air, and returned to the kitchen, passing Duran on the way. “You want some coffee?” she asked. He shook his head, caught up in the histrionics of a soap opera.
In the kitchen, she made a cup of instant coffee, and sat down in front of the laptop. Logging onto the Web, she ran a search in Dogpile, telling it to fetch pseudomemory. A minute later, she had dozens of hits, most of which revolved around the use of hypnosis to “recover” memories of alleged sexual abuse—precisely what had happened with Nikki. The phenomenon appeared to be epidemic, the debate intense. There were even dueling nonprofits: the False Memory Foundation, which set out to debunk such accounts, and Believe the Children (Inc.), which sought to shore them up. Nikki, she remembered, had left some money in her will to the latter.
By now, the “recovery” of memories had become so commonplace—and so controversial—that The National Association of Psychology had instituted guidelines. First, therapists should be on guard against unconsciously guiding their clients toward the “discovery” of long-repressed incidents of abuse—which, in fact, may never have occurred.
A second guideline suggested that therapists should be aware that memories recovered through the use of guided imagery or hypnosis were likely to be challenged in court—should any litigation occur. Since these “memory enhancing” techniques had been shown to increase “suggestibility” and the formation of pseudomemories, most insurance companies now required that sessions of this kind be taped for the protection of the therapist.
And, in fact, it was this very practice that won the Brewster case. According to The American Lawyer:
Shaw’s commentary on the therapist’s tape recordings of his sessions with Mrs. Brewster was particularly trenchant.
“He’s cajoling her,” the professor told the court. “If we listen to the questions he asks, it becomes clear that he’s proposing scenarios by implication—scenarios which she then adopts. The process becomes a true collaboration, a kind of pseudotherapeutic conspiracy, when she amends the scenarios in idiosyncratic ways that he then embraces, rewarding her with well-timed bursts of sympathy and congratulations.
Adrienne shut down the laptop, got up and stretched. The pounding of the surf was beginning to get on her nerves.
“Hey,” she called to Duran. “You awake?”
He appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, looking rumpled and sleepy. “More or less.”
“You know those tapes you made?” she asked.
“For the insurance company?”
Adrienne nodded. “I was wondering if you could call about them. Maybe you could get copies.”
Duran gave her a quizzical look. “You mean… now?”
She looked him up and down. “Well… yeah, now. Unless you’re too busy—”
He glanced at his watch, gave her a lazy smile. “I guess I’ve got a little window here.” Going into the living room, he picked up the remote and turned off the TV. Then he went to the phone, and called Information. Five minutes later, she heard him say, “Just don’t turn me over to the machine, okay? Because I already made this call once. I want you to check Mutual General Assurance, all right? M-G-A. Mutual General Assurance anything. Limited. Inc. Company. Whatever.” He listened in silence for a while, and then hung up.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I can’t get a number for the company. Which doesn’t make sense, because I know the address. I mean, I sent tapes out two or three times a week. In fact—” he patted the pockets of his sports jacket. “I’ve still got one.” He removed a cassette from his inside jacket pocket, and laid it down on the counter. “I never got a chance to mail it, but… I know the address: 1752 Avenue of the Americas. Suite 1119. It’s… Manhattan.”
“Let me look it up,” she suggested, and turned to the laptop. “Anywho’ll have it.”
“Mutual General Assurance,” he said. “Not Insurance. A—”
“I know,” she said. “I heard you.” As the modem dialed into the Web, she picked up the pill bottle she’d found in the computer’s case, and held it out between her forefinger and thumb. “You know anything about this?” she asked.
He took the bottle from her and examined it while she searched the Web for Mutual General Assurance. Finally, he put the bottle back down on the counter, and shook his head. “Maybe it’s some kind of clinical trial,” he suggested. “Though… ‘Placebo 1’? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe she went to an herbalist,” Adrienne supposed.
“You think?”
She put the vial in her pocket and shrugged. She was thinking, Maybe I’ll get the pills analyzed… The blue bar completed its slow crawl across the bottom of the screen, and a list of insurance companies snapped onto the page in front of her. All in all, there were nine listings for companies whose names contained some combination of the words Mutual, General and Assurance. But there was no Mutual General Assurance Company, or anything like it, in New York State.