THERAPY WATCH : And Next, Some Teeth

Organized medicine has finally started to grapple with the thorny issue of repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse. The House of Delegates of the American Medical Assn. passed a resolution Wednesday declaring such memories, often retrieved by hypnosis or other therapeutic methods, to be of “uncertain authenticity” and “fraught with problems of potential misapplication.” A few months ago, the board of trustees of the American Psychiatric Assn. stated that there is “no completely accurate” means of verifying such memories without corroboration.

These actions respond to growing evidence that some psychotherapists have planted false memories in vulnerable patients. Last month, a jury in Napa, Calif., ordered two therapists to pay damages to a winery executive who charged they had cost him his job, marriage and home by persuading his daughter that he had raped her when she was a child.

The AMA report is properly cautious, noting that childhood abuse has often been ignored by practitioners in the past. It urges doctors to address the needs of patients reporting such abuse “quite apart from the truth or falsity of any claims.”

The AMA action is fine, but it has no teeth. It is now incumbent on the state boards, in California and elsewhere, that license therapists to bring closer oversight to psychotherapy, which is largely unregulated.

Too many families have been torn apart by apparently imagined memories for this to go on without intervention by the normally lax medical authorities.