Richard J. McNally
Biographical Sketch
Richard J. McNally received his B.S. in psychology from Wayne State University in 1976, and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1982. He completed his clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the Behavior Therapy Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Temple University School of Medicine. In 1984 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School where he established the Anxiety Disorders Clinic and directed the university counseling center. He moved to the Department of Psychology at Harvard University in 1991 where he is now Professor and Director of Clinical Training. He has more than 320 publications, most concerning anxiety disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], panic disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder), including the books Panic Disorder: A Critical Analysis (Guilford Press, 1994) and Remembering Trauma (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2003). He has conducted laboratory studies concerning cognitive functioning in adults reporting histories of childhood sexual abuse. He has conducted laboratory studies on people who report having recovered memories from past lives and people who report having recovered memories of abduction by space aliens. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. He served on the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV PTSD and simple phobia committees, and he is an advisor to the DSM-V Anxiety Disorders Sub-Workgroup. He is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, winner of the 2005 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology, and on the Institute for Scientific Information's "Highly Cited" list for psychology and psychiatry [top 0.5% of published authors worldwide in terms of citation impact].
Abstract: Searching for Repressed Memory
In my presentation, I will provide a critical analysis of clinical studies adduced in support of the concept of repressed (or "dissociated") memory of trauma. Although advocates of the concept of repression have interpreted these studies as showing that trauma survivors are often incapable of recalling their trauma, these studies actually document phenomena other than repression. In the second part of my presentation, I will describe studies done by my research group on people who report having recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), report never having forgotten their CSA, or who believe that they harbor repressed memories of CSA. I will concentrate on experiments designed to test the capacity of these subjects to forget material related to abuse. Finally, I will examine the complexities concerning the concept of trauma, addressing how these affect the debate about the repression of traumatic memories.