Posted on 09/23/2018 1:59:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
While acknowledging that “people react differently to experiences,” Dr. Loftus also expressed skepticism about the root causes of the “symptoms” - such as PTSD and anxiety issues - Ford claims to have as a result of the assault.
Our talk inevitably circled back to the fact that we just “don’t know” so many things about this case. If we knew, for example, how many of the supporters who knew Judge Kavanaugh from his high school days were from the girl’s school Ford attended, we might discover how well Ford likely knew him as well.
While acknowledging that “people react differently to experiences,” Dr. Loftus also expressed skepticism about the root causes of the “symptoms” - such as PTSD and anxiety issues - Ford claims to have as a result of the assault.
Our talk inevitably circled back to the fact that we just “don’t know” so many things about this case. If we knew, for example, how many of the supporters who knew Judge Kavanaugh from his high school days were from the girl’s school Ford attended, we might discover how well Ford likely knew him as well.
“There is a motive to remember sexual assault because there is a motive to explain your problems and give you a justification and a reason for why you have problems, and that’s one of the reasons that I see happen in a typical recovered memory case,” said Dr. Loftus before reiterating the fact that we don’t entirely know, besides “some kind of marital difficulty,” what brought her into therapy with her husband.
The professor told me about two assaults from her own childhood experience, one of which she held onto for years while instantly telling authorities about the other.
“I had a sexual assault when I was 15 by some boys from a neighboring high school,” she said. “I remember it pretty well but I could not tell you for life of me who they were. I don’t know if any of them went on to be famous.”
(“So, how does she,” she wondered aloud at that point. “He was a nobody back then. How did she know it was him?
“I told, right away,” said Loftus. “Why? I’m not sure exactly.” While she contends the assault when she was 15 was “worse” than what Ford has described so far, Loftus “told right away in my case and actually there was a subsequent - where boys from high school got together and they apologized and it was over.”
Loftus mentioned that it is “certainly” quite common not to tell authorities right away in “child sex abuse cases,” but the “sort of teenage assault kind of thing” Kavauaugh is alleged to have done is “a little less embarrassing than child sex assault.”
“If she ran away and escaped, I don’t know why you don’t tell, in some sense,” said Loftus. “It seems easier to tell than the alter boy molested by the priest.”
Loftus didn’t tell anyone about other abuse until “a few years” after she was married to her then-husband.
While acknowledging that “people react differently to experiences,” Dr. Loftus also expressed skepticism about the root causes of the “symptoms” - such as PTSD and anxiety issues - Ford claims to have as a result of the assault.
Our talk inevitably circled back to the fact that we just “don’t know” so many things about this case. If we knew, for example, how many of the supporters who knew Judge Kavanaugh from his high school days were from the girl’s school Ford attended, we might discover how well Ford likely knew him as well.
Because of my own skepticism on the subject, I inevitably wanted to ask whether Dr. Loftus drew any red flags at encountering the word “psychotherapy” when reading the original Washington Post report.
“Yeah,” she responded, laughing. “Because I still feel that there’s a chance that continued psychotherapy beyond the initial disclosure session could have resulted in what it sometimes does - developing the story, making it more coherent, adding details. But did those details get developed in psychotherapy? And again, we don’t know, and I know she’s a psychology professor and seems to have done a lot of good work in statistics and biostatistics. You can have intelligent, educated people who develop distorted memories. It could happen to any of us.”
Finally, whether through psychotherapy or her own memory over the years, could Ford have somehow “amplified” what happened to her to construct a very real “memory” of something that at the time may have been in actuality more benign - such as a misplaced grope or an awkward kiss?
“It is certainly possible that it wasn’t quite as frightening or as violent as she’s now describing it and as people are now refer to it, as a violent attempted rape,” said Dr. Loftus. “It’s possible that it got more extreme in the course of her thinking about it.”
“In the midst of the MeToo movement I think some people are really reluctant to do anything other than embrace her story,” noted Dr. Loftus. “I’m a Democrat and I’m a pro-choice person, and I’m scared of having him on the Supreme Court, but if he doesn’t get on I want it to be fair.”
How about she made it up? Is that a likely explanation??
While Loftus is good and I respect her excellent work, I understand she helped pick the OJ Simpson jury to get him those most easily manipulated.
Reminds me of the folks who get hypnosis regression to recall past lives and they all end up being a very famous king or queen!!!
What’s wrong with that? Somebody had to do it....
(hat tip rashputin) Ford is so typical of the liberal/progressive scum that make up the backbone of the Democrat party. Wallowing in "White Privilege" all their lives....... and then becoming "Victims" when it suits their agenda. The "dregs and deplorables" not well-off enough to go to exclusive private schools, staunch conservatives, and others who don't 'get with the prog program' are nothing but jokes to them ...... and handy targets to feed off of.
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ANALYSIS Ford saw a money-making opportunity: she'd lie like hell, say Brett is a sex maniac.....and cash-in. There's money to be made doing speeches to Democrat women's groups, personal appearances, eternal seminars on abused women, maybe an abused woman foundation, definitely a tax-exempt non-profit, appointments to boards........and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseaum.
Obama is still dining out handsomely as the community organizer victim, the Halfrican who rose from poverty to be president.
>> Memory expert, Dr. Loftus...
Seriously.
I’ve read all her books. Best researcher on false memory.
She saved a lot of men from prison when they were falsely accused of molesting their daughters when bad therapists planted false memories in the daughter’s minds years later.
It turns out that the accuser has done work herself with victims of trauma (in conjunction with several co-researchers); and, found a range of reactions.
Even an eye-witness account by a victim in real time is “iffy.” You normally want corroborating evidence. These include physical evidence and third-party eye witnesses. Also, a pattern of behavior. Having said this, a report in real time by a victim would usually warrant some kind of police investigation to try to development corroborating evidence.
In the case of a recovered memory and a long-delayed report of abuse or assault, which report is uncorroborated or even contradicted, absolutely no.
The issue is VERY controversial. Similar to lie-detector tests. While lie-detector tests are widely used in many settings, the results of lie-detector tests are not admitted in courts of law because they’re not reliable. Some people, e.g., pathological liars, can pass lie-detector tests while lying. Others can pass lie-detector tests because they believe their false statements to be true. Regarding recovered memory, they too are used by a good number of therapists and have been found useful in therapy and in law enforcement. But, they have also been used to make many proven false accusations. They, by themselves, are unreliable.
Because of the possibility of recovered memory, statutes of limitation on child abuse and sexual assault have been extended in many jurisdictions. This is a valid response. In cases where the recovered memory is corroborated by other evidence, legal action can move forward, even to conviction. But, where the only evidence is the recovered memory, no, legal action should not move forward. This is only adding to the whatever condition warranted the therapy, and needless cost to the taxpayer and, especially, to the accused.
Especially concerning is when recovered memories involve famous people, the possibility of pecuniary gain, or other personal motivation, and all you have is the recovered memory of the accuser and the denial of the accused.
Double especially concerning is when the recovered memory is contradicted by third-party witnesses, physical evidence and patterns of behavior.
Now I will be blunt: in the case of Judge K.’s accuser, we are talking of a party girl who started drinking heavily as a young teenager and boasted of having sex with dozens of boys in her high school yearbook, and who continued to be a party girl after high school.
Have we become so numb to drug and alcohol abuse and to sexual promiscuity that we cannot consider the character of the accuser?
Ford should be asked at what age did she go on “the pill”.
Here is an excellent study from 2001 by Loftus. I quote this often in my lectures on memory.
Bugs Bunny Invades Disneyland
Pickrell and Loftus lined up a group of 120 persons and told them they were going to participate in an advertising evaluation program, one of those group meetings where you’re supposed to sit around and tell what works and why.
All of the participants had visited either Disneyland or Disney World. (The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABCNEWS.)
“The subjects thought we were working for Disney,” Pickrell says, but they weren’t. They just wanted to find out if they could toy with someone else’s memories.
The participants were divided into four groups, and asked to read a printed ad for Disneyland.
The first group read an ad about the theme park that made no mention of cartoon characters.
The second group read the same ad, but a 4-foot-tall cardboard cutout of Bugs Bunny was placed in the room.
The third group, which the researchers refer to as the “Bugs Group,” read a fake Disneyland ad featuring Bugs Bunny.
The fourth group got a double whammy: both the Bugs ad and the cardboard cutout.
After reading through the ad, which featured a picture of Bugs just outside the Magic Kingdom, the participants were asked whether they had met Bugs while on a visit to the theme park, and whether they had shaken his hand.
About one-third of the participants who had read the phony ad featuring Bugs said they either remembered, or at least knew, they had indeed met Bugs at Disneyland and shaken his hand. Or foot, as the case may be.
But here’s the rub. Bugs Bunny wouldn’t be caught dead at Disneyland. He belongs to Warner Brothers.
Measuring Memory’s Vulnerability
By contrast, only eight percent of the first group, and four percent of the second, thought they had met the Wascally Wabbit at Disneyland. The difference, the researchers say, was in the ads. The mere suggestion of Bugs invading the land of Mickey was enough to convince a surprisingly high percentage of the participants that they had met him there.
The specific tally for those with memory implants was 30 percent for the third group and 40 percent for the fourth.
I distrust anyone with old memories suddenly surfaced. Don’t need a PHD to explain the added details over time aspect. This story is crap, period.
As a result of Loftus, in New Jersey the jurors are read a statement about unreliability of eyewitnesses testimony at trials.
““I don’t see any evidence that she said the name at that time [in 2012], so when did she attach the name of Brett Kavanaugh to the episode?”
We may never know because -— redacted.
Grassley hasn’t even seen the unredacted because — republican
False memories happen. To this day I can vividly see the tank shooting fire into the compound in Waco.
I live in Chapel Hill.
I checked the UNC yearbooks for 1988 to 1990 and could not find her. I checked all classes. I could have missed it as I only checked UNC Chapel Hill yearbooks.
Memory Distortion and False
Memory Creation
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.497.8690&rep=rep1&type=pdf
She went on to become a clinical psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, having earned a psychology degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, master’s degrees at Pepperdine and Stanford, and a Ph.D. in educational psychology at the University of Southern California.
But it was those early days — when she was known as Chrissy Blasey, a student at the Holton-Arms School who ran with students from a network of exclusive tony schools just across the border from the District of Columbia — that have landed her at the center of the most explosive Supreme Court confirmation battle in decades.
I’ve never had hypnosis regression but have always had a feeling I was rich and of nobility in a past life. I don’t neccesarily believe in past lives though so I’m not sure what to make of it :)
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