Talk:Recovered memory

Appropriateness of external links; pattern of introducing content
I would ask Citizens to look at the article, which deals with neurology and psychology, and then to look at the External Links page. Are the external links consistent with the scientific approach of the article, or are they a way to have CZ pointing to ritual abuse advocacy sites? How many of them are neurological?

Do also look at the article, which starts on general neurological aspects, but, without emphasis, focuses on repetitive child abuse.

There is unquestionably child abuse. Oddly, the existing article on the subject is not being edited, but new articles, on possibly controversial theories, keep getting introduced. What would a search engine see as the growing amount of CZ material focused on repetitive child abuse? Howard C. Berkowitz 03:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * None of the links are about ritual abuse. All are directly related to the topic. All of the articles are accurate as written. (reverted by user: It appears that you are following me around on Citizendium now, which feels like harassment.) Neil Brick 03:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Harassment? Perhaps concern with CZ: Neutrality Policy, which is reasonably within my scope as both a Citizen and a member of the Editorial Council.


 * I certainly don't object to someone "following" my contributions. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I was going to strike the comment, but you replied first. Will do so now. Neil Brick 03:46, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Context of "trauma"
"Trauma" is a very general term, and the usage here needs to do one of two things:
 * 1) Narrow the definition to specific forms of psychological events, which are certainly things presented in therapy. "It is important to separate the role of the mental health professional as therapist from the role as an expert witness in court."
 * 2) General physical and psychological trauma from accidents, combat, etc. I'm active, for example, in the Trauma and Critical Care online forum.

Without touching the issues of ritual abuse, there is obviously a huge knowledge base dealing with the second sort of trauma. The military has an immense interest in combat-related stress. Physical trauma medicine is multidisciplinary, and a survivor of multisystem trauma from an automobile accident is apt to get psychological evaluation, and treatment if necessary. While the methods are controversial &mdash; Critical Incident Stress Debriefing is now deprecated &mdash; emergency response workers also are monitored for psychological trauma.

So, given the amount of data on trauma of the second sort, which is noncontroversial, why are the examples predominantly related to child abuse? The second sentence of the first paragraph introduces the first case" "People sometimes report recovering long-forgotten memories of, for example, childhood sexual abuse." There is one mention of "Vietnam combat veterans with PTSD, and in patients with PTSD related to early childhood sexual and physical abuse. ", but all of the other trauma examples appear to be child and sex oriented. There are explicit mentions of child neurology but much more vague references to all populations.

This emphasis makes me about the article being a way to introduce content about patterns of child abuse, rather than seriously addressing the broader subject. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, yes; but this is an interesting topic and one that needs to be handled properly. I'm not suggesting for a second that it's OK by me; I've just made a start with the first 3 sections and most importantly the bibliography. We could think about structure : subsequent headings might be Trauma; Post-traumatic stress disorder (with related text on effects on memory). Other headings? Laboratory studies on false memory; Suggestion; Legal cases; Media coverage?Gareth Leng 16:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Gareth, you know that I like to approach subjects from a top-down standpoint. We certainly could use an article on trauma; I can speak fairly well to the scope of emergency/trauma medicine. Psychological trauma is a subset.


 * I can also come up with a fair bit of data on combat trauma and trauma in emergency service workers, as well as the still-difficult diagnosis and management. If, however, child abuse trauma is to be considered separately, let's identify it as such. Note that there is already an article, which definitely could use work, on child abuse. Again, a top-down approach might start with the well-documented areas of physical abuse and individual pedophilia, before leaping into ritual matters with much less documentation.


 * It's also an interesting question how this topic meets family-friendliness. When I was 7 or so, I saw an artist's reconstruction of an unidentified child, beaten to death, in a police request for information posted in a public place. I had nightmares for years. I had some rough personal experiences as a child, but there is a large difference in making family-friendly safety warnings available, and creating vivid imagery, even in words. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Medicolegal
Looking at the Boakes and Porter quotes, I wonder if they really should be relegated to a footnote. Rather, perhaps their quotes, and possibly accepted testimony on recovered memory, might be the start of a section on medicolegal aspects of recovered memory. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:33, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes fine in a section, but that would be too much for the lead?Gareth Leng 22:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. What would you think of having a sentence in the lead that essentially says the area has much controversy, especially in the U.S., in balancing the rights of the accused against testimony that may either be imagined or a very bad experience? Such a sentence would then wikilink internally to the section, where the quotes could live. I'm open to suggestions about internationalizing the controversy; I simply don't know to what extent it's been an issue outside the U.S.  Apparently, it is of note in Germany. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:32, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Style issue
It really isn't CZ style to put four and five sources after a statement. If the sources say essentially the same thing, pick a good one, or, even better, quote a peer-reviewed meta-analysis or review.

If they say different things, then the differences need to brought out. For sheer readability, it is possible that a point that needs five references may need to be in a separate section or subarticle.

Numbers of references alone proves nothing. It would be, however, extremely informative to have impact metrics on the references. Impact metrics, I recognize, are evolving, with both citation and view measurements suggesting different things. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * IMO, it is sometimes good to have more than one source back up a controversial point. Being an encyclopedia, it also gives readers more resources on the topic. But I will keep your idea in mind and think about the style angle more.Neil Brick 03:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Again purely speaking to style, pick the best source if there is no review, and then put the rest in bibliography/external links. We aren't trying to give readers "more resources" in the main article. That's the role of subpages. An encyclopedia is not a bibliography, but a place of synthesis and summarization. Right now, it's almost impossible to scan up and down between the text and the reference list, because the list of citations gets so long.


 * I have written articles with a great number of citations to primary document sources. Nevertheless, there was almost invariably enough differences betweenthe cited documents that each valid reference had a sentence about its point. Physically, that's much easier to understand than five footnotes in series. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:42, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

intro too long
Seems far too detailed with too many references. It seems like a mini article in its own right. For example, hypnotism material should be in the body of the article. Chris Day 15:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I just added a new heading titled Authenticity. Feel free to change the heading but lets keep all the content out of the intro.  As an aside, the second to last paragraph in that section has far too many citations to be useful (at present this includes the citations in the twenties), we should be focusing on the best references.  To a reader, too many references become bewildering an is not helpful.  I would go through and weed out the redundant or weak ones but i do not have enough background information to begin the task. Chris Day 16:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

First attempt on unifying context
Fully understanding that not all trauma or recovered memories are suggested to be sexual, I created a preliminary article, medicalizing sexual offenses. In no way am I committed to that specific title, although the subject is important. It needs a parent topic of sexual offenses, as well as on sexual offenses against children, child abuse (which isn't always sexual), and criminalizing consensual sexual activities. I offer it in the goal of establishing context for a number of difficult articles.

In this case, there needs to be a parent topic of trauma, including purely emotional, physical (i.e., multisystem trauma medicine is an interdisciplinary centered around surgery but not limited to it), and interactions: if there is recovered memory and trauma, it certainly could apply to an accident victim just as much as to a crime victim.

The issues raised are relevant here, and in recovered memory, since the topics are at the intersection of law, health sciences, ethics and social sciences.

If some of these redlinks can be filled in, remembering family friendliness, and the articles (or Related Pages) be well-linked, it would be a start on taking individual studies and books and putting them into broader and &mdash; dare I say more encyclopedic' &mdash; contexts. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:08, 18 March 2009 (UTC)