Wayback on March 9, 2006 Allen Esterson drew attention to a $1000 challenge from Harrison Pope at Harvard for a case of repressed memory in a non-fictional or fictional work before 1800. Pope anticipated that such a case would not be found, and that this would argue in favour of an interpretation of repressed memory as a cultural phenomenon rather a true psychiatric disorder.
I posted twice on the topic. In my second letter, I said: "I had written that Pope & Hudson's $1000 challenge to find a case of repressed memory before 1800 was conceptually flawed. I offered two counter-examples, autism and Parkinson's disease. These, I boldly asserted, were unknown before 1800, but this did not demonstrate that they were romantic notions rather than scientifically-valid conditions. " Continuing to be bold, I then wrote directly to Pope (and also posted on butterfliesandwheels) to gently explain to him how misguided his project was. He has now published an interesting article on the outcome of his project (Pope et al, 2007) and, to no one's surprise, he (or his independent judge) found no one worthy of claiming the prize. He thus concluded: "Therefore, it appears that dissociative amnesia is not a natural neuropsychological phenomenon, but instead a culture-bound syndrome, dating from the nineteenth century". Pope never responded to my letter. But in his paper, he says this: "In another similar argument by analogy, it might be noted that conditions such as autism or Parkinson's disease do not explicitly appear in works prior to 1800, yet these disorders have probably always existed" Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. He then rejects this argument, saying: "However, such disorders are not analogous to dissociative amnesia because they exhibit a whole range of non-specific symptoms, overlapping with many other syndromes. Thus historical references to these conditions would be buried...". (as for my examples, Manyam and Sanchez-Ramos (1999) do claim that Parkinson's has been described since "ancient times" (although not identified by Parkinson until 1817). For autism, the earliest possible example I know of is Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, just a few years into the 19th century. ) Stephen Pope, H. et al (2007). Is dissociative amnesia a culture-bound syndrome? Findings from a survey of historical literature. Psychological Medicine, 37, 225-233. See also news report at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/arts/03memo.html?ref=science ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
