One of the many heartbreaking things that alienated parents face is seeing your beautiful and loving children turned into cold and distant ones with distorted or false memories about you and what happened in their childhood. It’s so clear to alienated parents that the alienators have been able to manipulate the children into believing in these lies, yet the rest of the world does not seem to recognize that. Other people: family, friends, neighbors and community will listen to the children’s false memories and take those as fact. Even professionals often don’t recognize that it’s possible for children to have false memories.
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, an expert in human memory, is one of the first scientists who proved that memories can be distorted and rich false memories can be implanted in people, even healthy, educated, and intelligent people. This is groundbreaking because that gives us hope. That gives us a chance to ask professionals and the court to stop and examine the false allegations that are backed by false memories in children.
In this interview, Dr. Petra Deeter asked Dr. Elizabeth Loftus about her research, particularly about factors that influence the creation process of false memories. If we can start to understand how false memories are created, we can hopefully start to figure out ways to reverse them.