False Memory Syndrome Foundation Newsletter

History

The FMS Foundation Newsletter began on 15 March 1992, the same month the False Memory Syndrome Foundation incorporated in Pennsylvania. Pamela Freyd and her husband Peter Freyd (a mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania) founded the organisation after their adult daughter accused Peter of childhood sexual abuse on the basis of memories recovered in therapy. The Foundation's address was initially 2020 N. Addison Street, Philadelphia PA 19146, later moving to 3508 Market Street, Suite 28, Philadelphia PA 19104, with a phone line at (215) 387-1865 and an 800 number (1-800-568-8882) that became the primary intake channel for accused families nationwide.

The newsletter ran monthly through its early years, publishing eleven issues in 1992 alone, then settled into a regular schedule through twenty volumes. The law firm Drinker, Biddle and Reath handled incorporation. Annual dues were $100 per family. By January 1993, the Foundation had documented hundreds of cases and was conducting systematic surveys of accused families, collecting data on therapist credentials, memory recovery techniques, and family demographics.

The newsletter's content mixed personal testimonials from accused families, legal case summaries, reviews of clinical literature on memory, and commentary from the Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board. That board eventually included Elizabeth Loftus (memory researcher, University of Washington), Paul McHugh (Johns Hopkins psychiatry chair), and other figures who became central to the memory wars of the 1990s. The publication tracked court cases involving recovered memories, reported on professional conferences, and documented what it termed the spread of "cult-like thinking" in certain therapeutic communities.

By its second year the newsletter was running to eight or more pages per issue, incorporating surveys of families (religious background, ages of accusers, types of therapy involved), legal database projects for cases settled out of court, and studies of mental health professionals' beliefs about repressed memory. The Foundation positioned itself as a research and advocacy body, distinct from a support group, though the newsletter served both functions.