Forgetting having denied: The "amnesic" consequences of denial

The concept of denial has its roots in psychoanalysis. Denial has been assumed to be effective in blocking unwanted memories. In two experiments, we report that denial has unique consequences for remembering. In two experiments, participants viewed a video of a theft and half of the participants had to deny seeing certain details in the video whereas the other half had to tell the truth. One day later, all participants were given a source monitoring recognition or recall task. In these tasks, they were instructed to indicate (1) whether they could remember talking about certain details and (2) whether they could recollect seeing those details in the video. In both experiments, we found that denial made participants forget that they talked about these details while leaving memory for the video unaffected. This denial-induced forgetting was evident for both the source monitoring recognition and recall tests. Furthermore, when we asked participants after the experiment whether they could still not remember talking about these details, participants who had to deny were most likely to report that they forgot this. In contrast to a widely held belief, we show that denial does not impair memory for the experienced stimuli, but that it has a unique ability to undermine memory for what was talked about

High Conflict Divorce as a Complex Family Problem:Why Domestic Violence Screening is Essential

High Conflict Divorce form 20% of separations that involve children. These parents continue to litigate child custody and parenting arrangements, and accuse each other of child abuse, intimate partner violence, and mental health problems. The children suffer because of longstanding animosity. In this contribution, we report on a pilot study among 102 parents in a high conflict divorce, assessed at the Child Protection Council, Safe Home, or a child welfare service. The MASIC, a structured screening interview for intimate partner violence (IPV), was administered to each parent separately. Results revealed that the prevalence of different types of IPV was extremely high in our sample, and the violence kept occurring after the divorce, albeit somewhat less frequently. Our findings largely concur with international research in this area. In particular, the presence of coercive controlling violence perpetrated by one of the ex-partners, should prompt the professional to conduct further evaluation of parental and child safety. The type of IPV that emerges from the MASIC screening has implications for the advice to the parents and the family court