Finding a new narrative : meaningful responses to "false memory" disinformation

This chapter aims to encourage practitioners and advocates developing public narratives about trauma and abuse that are not only accurate but solutions-focused and hopeful. Increased public interest and understanding of trauma provides much of the material for counter-narratives that oppose the alienating individualism and cynicism promoted by “false memory” advocates. As public and professional interest in trauma grows, “storifying” trauma in principled and solutions-focused ways offers a genuine alternative to the outmoded narratives of the past. The public understanding of trauma has developed to the point of offering a compelling, and ultimately, hopeful, counter-narrative to “false memory” disinformation. The narrative of “false memories” was based upon the public political impulses of the day, and provided journalists, academics and the public with a way of explaining the sudden increase in allegations of sexual abuse, particularly where those allegations challenged “common sense” understandings.