Criticisms
Bass and Davis have no formal training in psychiatry, psychology or any form of treatment for mental illness, with critics stating that as a result they are not qualified to write such a book. This lack of training may have resulted in Bass, Davis and others who adopted their approach leaping to conclusions that caused considerable harm, irrespective of their intentions. Bass and Davis also never acknowledged that their basic claims of how memory works were flawed or outright wrong. Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and award-winning researcher in the field of memory describes the book as the "bible of incompetent therapists". A report for the Australian branch of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) found the book was linked to nearly 50% of the cases in which a false allegation of child sexual abuse was made based on recovered memories and a 2005 report by the Health Services Commissioner to the Minister for Health of Australia stated that some respondents from families where there were accusations of child sexual abuse called for the book to be banned, believing the book promotes the practice of recovered memory therapy. Frederick C. Crews has criticized the book for appealing not to women who have always remembered abuse, but rather being aimed at those who struggle to convince themselves they were abused as children in the absence of previously-existing memories, and that the author's claim to promote self-esteem are actually based "on a shattering of their readers' prior sense of identity and trust".
Elizabeth Loftus, an award-winning researcher on memory, stated that the book was certainly very comforting to individuals living with memories of abuse, but questioned the effect it would have on people who do not have such memories, and suggested The Courage to Heal may be one of many sources of false memories for some individuals. Loftus also stated that "All roads on the search for popular writings inevitably lead to ". The Courage to Heal encourages the use of strategies such as guided imagery to access and attempting to elaborate details and emotions and discouraging individuals from questioning the memories recovered.
According to psychologist Bryan Tully, the philosophy of the authors regarding memories of abuse, or lack thereof, is that:
| “ | Forgetting is one of the most effective ways children deal with sexual abuse. The human mind has tremendous powers of repression. Many children are able to forget about the abuse, even as it is happening to them... You may think you don't have memories but often as you begin to talk you do remember, there emerges a constellation of feelings, reactions, and recollections which add up... To say 'I was abused' you don't need the kind of recall that would stand up in a court of law... Often the knowledge that you were abused starts with a tiny feeling, an intuition. It's important to trust that inner voice and work from there. Assume your feelings are valid... So far no-one we've talked to thought she might be abused and then later discovered she hadn't been. The progression always goes the other way, from suspicion to confirmation. If you think you were abused, and your life shows the symptoms, then you were. | ” |
Professors of English Doane and Hodges note that the book was widely condemned for its use of checklists to determine if the reader was abused, describing the complaints made against the book as being as formulaic as the stories it engenders (in part due to things like the "notorious") and only criticizing parts of the book. Doane and Hodges also state that the use of "you" throughout the book blinds Davis and Bass to their shaping of the identity of the reader and their story.
Read more about this topic: The Courage To Heal
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