Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash over Meaning, Memory, and Mind

by Paul R. McHugh

In the 1990s a disturbing trend emerged in patients began accusing their parents and other close relatives of sexual abuse, as a result of false “recovered memories” urged onto them by therapists practicing new methods of treatment. The subsequent loss of public confidence in psychotherapy was devastating to psychiatrist Paul R. McHugh, and with Try to Remember , he looks at what went wrong and describes what must be done to restore psychotherapy to a more honored and useful place in therapeutic treatment.


In this thought-provoking account, McHugh explains why trendy diagnoses and misguided treatments have repeatedly taken over psychotherapy. He recounts his participation in court battles that erupted over diagnoses of recovered memories and the frequent companion diagnoses of multiple-personality disorders. He also warns that diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder today may be perpetuating a similar misdirection, thus exacerbating the patients’ suffering. He argues that both the public and psychiatric professionals must raise their standards for psychotherapy, in order to ensure that the incorrect designation of memory as the root cause of disorders does not occur again. Psychotherapy, McHugh ultimately shows, is a valuable healing method—and at the very least an important adjunct treatment—to the numerous psychopharmaceuticals that flood the drug market today.


An urgent call to arms for patients and therapists alike, Try to Remember delineates the difference between good and bad psychiatry and challenges us to reconsider psychotherapy as the most effective way to heal troubled minds.

 

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Psychiatry

300 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2008

Reviews

[Emma Louise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wouldn't bother reading. This is the man that in a court case said 'These 2 disturbed womens memories are just from fabrication. I don't believe what they say happened. Its impossible for memories to be suppressed for that long' I'm sorry this man also supports pro life, is against transgender doesn't believe that people can dissociate from traumatic childhood events... I could go on. Disgrace to psychiatry.

[Louis W · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting catalog of a shockingly unscientific witch hunt that gripped psychiatry in the late '80s: The "recovered memory" movement, wherein deluded psychiatrists convinced unstable patients to imagine they'd been sexually abused as children. You can imagine where that went. If you can't, it's Court. It would have been an interesting and gripping catalog if it had been 100 pages shorter. The verdict is skim.

[Bookish · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very dull, and clearly tries to shy away from the issues of abuse and hide the damage caused by it. He's not interested in any other type of memory - only child abuse - very odd. I was expecting something well researched but it's poor, and poorly referenced. Avoid.

[Meshari · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little too technical for me. But generally a good read.