It was obvious that Ford had been heavily coached. I even wonder if she could have been hypnotized to implant her testimony, little-girl voice and demeanor.
The worst mistake, other than getting a bad script writer for her testimony, was giving her that whiny voice. Who could listen to that for more than an hour?
I dont have credentials to publish papers on the subject, but I think I know a little about recovered memory becauseIn order to recall something in the past, you associate your way back to the memory. It is actually a thought process, in which you draw conclusions and reinforce them with other recall. That means that your memory isnt exactly the same after the recall process as it was before. The very thought process by which you recalled something will leave its tracks in your memory along with the memory you had before.
- I had occasion to hunt for info on the topic, and read a bunch of microfilm of articles on it in the library. And,
- For close to five years I was primary caregiver for my mother when she had Alzheimers Disease.
Because recall involves thought, it matters how dense your memories are about particular events - the more detail is there originally, the less thought is required to recall things. Alzheimers decimated my mothers memory, and that meant that when she recalled things she had to draw conclusions from less data. Naturally, the less data, the more speculation - with the result that she sometimes knew things that were obviously false.
And believe me, from a caregivers POV, that aint fun to see and experience. Things like absurd accusations occurred. Note the passive voice. I dont say, She made absurd accusations, because it is an unfair characterization of her character. She wasnt lying, but she knew things that just werent so. It was just that her mind was working on a decimated data set, and her thought processes - which had been quite functional for most of eighty years - continued as if the data set was still adequate for the conclusions she was drawing. At a not-quite-conscious level. Her brain wasnt working but she couldnt know it.
My understanding of recovered memory is that it is a kind of voluntary gaslighting which utterly convinces you of things that just aint so (or if they were, it would be an extremely improbable accident). Psychoanalysis is the ideal setting to create recovered memories. And once you have a recovered memory - well, it might be more apt to say that a recovered memory has you. In a very real sense, you are your memory.
If you want to be a method actor, it would be the perfect way into the part - but finding your way out of the part afterward would be problematic. You would be a one-role wonder. And otherwise a complete wreck. A lot like Dr. Ford . . .