Victorian
Government's Inquiry into the Practice of Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT)
HypnosisAustralia,
May 2006
By
Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist &
Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.
This report,
published September 2005, by the Victorian Health Services Commission
was presented to the Minster for Health, the Honorable Bronwyn Pike MP.
It was initiated by media hype about the prevalence of therapists being
engaged in RMT and that there had been reports that clients of therapists
were suffering from false memory syndrome (FMS) surrounding Childhood
Sexual Abuse (CSA).
This issue
has always been controversial and indeed Freud himself reigned in much
of his theories about neurosis being the result of CSA under the threat
of lawsuits by aggrieved relatives. In America particularly there have
been a plethora of lawsuits against therapists whose clients later believe
they suffered induced FMS surrounding CSA due to hyper-suggestion by the
therapist.
To say that
RMT was a therapy is at the very least stretching the imagination. All
therapists use memory recovery techniques in their own way, in or out
of the client's conscious awareness. Many therapies purport to not concentrate
on the past but the reality is that with very disturbed clients it is
useful for the therapist to have some idea about the etiology of the client's
neurosis and an extent of trauma a client may have suffered. Whether we
call those memory retrieval techniques psychoanalysis, hypnoanalysis,
hypnotic regression or inner child work is a matter of splitting hairs
in the public's mind.
The main
concern of the Victorian Government seems to be that there is not false
reporting by a client or therapist to the authorities about CSA abuse
that may never ever have taken place. Mass reporting of CSA is always
embarrassing to governments and can be devastating to families and communities
whether the allegations are true or untrue. However when governments try
interfering with therapeutic paradigms to appease the press, truths are
more likely to be buried than uncovered.
The report
recommends that all therapist associations implement policies and guidelines
with their membership to consider carefully the veracity of recovered
memories and to avoid undue suggestion (Best Practice Guidelines). Hypnosis
and hypnotherapy always gets a bad name with this kind of paranoia simply
because hypnosis tends to be the most effective way of recovering memories.
Well-trained hypnotists. However. treat no memory as being a true representation
of the truth but simply what the client believes is the truth. Also hypnotherapists
need to be aware that hypnotically retrieved memories are not permissible
as evidence in court cases and when dealing with possible CSA, therapists
need to notify their clients of such.
The Victorian
government obviously has concerns about the unmonitored activities of
unregistered professions or practitioners with poor training who do not
belong to peer review health profession associations. While that is a
very real concern, particularly around recovered memories of CSA or FMS,
the government cannot in all honesty expect compliance from professions
that cannot get registration as government-approved healthcare practitioners.
In other words when the government agrees to widen the range of healthcare
professions including psychotherapists, counsellors and hypnotherapists,
only then will better standards be more tightly controlled regarding recovered
memories techniques.
What is obfuscated
and buried by this report is the massive under-reporting of CSA throughout
the whole of the world and how victims often are not believed by civil
authorities. CSA undoubtedly is one of Australia's greatly neglected areas
of social justice. In reality, of the many cases of adults who suffered
CSA therapists see during their therapeutic career, very few of those
cases were ever reported because the client was afraid they would not
be believed.
Victorian
Health Services Common report on recovered memory therapy.
http://www.health.vic.gov.au/pracreg/pdf/final_rmt_inquiry.pdf
©HypnosisAustralia,
May 2006
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