The Infantile Amnesia Issue-excerpts from Memory and Abuse by Dr. Charles Whitfield

A common tactic of FMS advocates is to attack the credibility of survivors who remember having been abused before age three or four-whether or not they have always remembered it. They use the 'infantile amnesia' variation of the 'false memory' defense. But many people can and do remember traces, fragments or even the majority of traumatic experiences from this early age. For example, professor of psychiatric nursing and trauma researcher Ann Burgess and her colleagues prospectively studied 34 children who had been repeatedly sexually abused by day-care staff. The children's ages at the time of the abuse ranged from three months old to about four-and-a-half years old, with an average age of two-and-a-half years old. Nineteen of these 34 children were subsequently evaluated in follow-up by three independent observers at five and ten years after the abuse, and the plan is to continue the follow-up. The results suggest that children remember traumatic experiences in at least four dimensions, including the somatic, behavioral, verbal and visual. Evlen (58 percent) of the children always verbally remembered the abuse, five (26) partially remembered and three (16 percent) totally forgot experiencing any abuse. Other observers have reported similar results.

What would happen if as children or adults they told helping professionals, authorities or the courts of their experiences and they were invalidated by the "infantile amnesia" claim? How would that negative response to their true experience affect their well-being and the after effects of the abuse? Would it re-traumatize them? If so, how much? I believe, as do others****, that people can remember or recover traumatic memories of abuse from this early age, as this study demonstrates. We need more trama therapists and researchers to study and report their observations, whether on individuals or groups of survivors.

Much before age three children cannot talk clearly about their experiences. They tend to act out or "act in" their traumatic experiences to express their pain-somatically, behaviorally or visually. In the Burgess et al study cited above, 100 per cent of the children manifested somatic memories, 82 percent showed behavioral associated memories, and 50 per cent had visual memories shown through art therapy.

Terr studied 20 children who suffered documented psychic trauma before age five at an average age of three years and ten months (ranging from six months to four years old) at the time of their traumas. She found that visual and behavioral memory are stronger and more influential and enduring than is verbal memory. Verbal memory is not the most sophisticated manifestation of memory, nor is memory a solely verbal system. No matter the age that a person may suffer abuse, their memory of it includes several components, including any from their inner life plus the physical, behaviroal ,visual and verbal. Each of these may be a part of one's story memory.

Autobiographical memory, our "stroy" or parts of it, is usuallly specific, personal, long-lasting, and often has practical usefulness. However, with a history of having been mistreated, abused or traumatized in another way, that memory may be dissociated and split off from our ordinary consciousness and memory. Only when the person feels safe enough and has triggers or cues to assist them in remembering a forgotten traumatic experience will they be able to bring it into their conscious awareness.

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1. Baillargeon R et al:Location memory in 8 month old infants in a non-search AB task:further evidence. Cognitive Development 4: 345-367, 1989
2.Bernstein AEH, BLacher RS:The recovery of a memory from three months of age. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 22: 156-161, 1967
3.Chamberlain D:Babies Remember Birth. Tarcher, Los Angeles, 1988
4. Hewitt S, Friedrich WD: Assessment and abuse allegations with very young children. in Ney T(ed): Allegations of Sexual Abuse: Assessment and case management. Brunner/Mazel, MY, in press for 1995
5. Hewitt SK:Preverbal sexual abuse:what tow children report in later years. Child Abuse and Neglect 18(10): 819-824, 1994
Howe ML, Courage ML: On resolving the enigma of infantile amnesia. Psychological Bulletin 113(2): 305-326, 1993
6. Terr L: What happens to the memories of early childhood? Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 27: 96-104, 1988
7. Terr LC:Childhood traumas: An outline and overview. American Journal of Psychiatry 148: 10-20, 1991
8. Terr L: Too Scared to Cry: Psychic trauma in childhood, Basic Books, NY 1990