FMS Foundation Newsletter

History

The FMS Foundation Newsletter began in March 1992, issued from 2020 1/2 Addison Street, Philadelphia, PA 19146. Pamela Freyd wrote the founding letter, announcing that the organisation had incorporated in Pennsylvania with legal counsel from Drinker, Biddle and Reath. Annual dues were $100 per family. A toll-free number (1-800-568-8882) was staffed with help from Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager at the Institute for Psychological Therapies in Minnesota. By the time that first issue went out, approximately 100 families had already responded to a preliminary survey about false accusations arising from therapy.

The foundation grew from four "East Coast" families who met in New York in November 1991 to figure out how to reach others in similar situations. They placed classified notices asking whether grown children had falsely accused parents "as a consequence of repressed memories." Calls came from California, then New York, then the Midwest, where a group of seven families had already held a meeting independently. Darrell Sifford, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote a series of articles about the phenomenon that brought national attention. Sifford died shortly after; Freyd's first newsletter carried an obituary noting he had intended to write a book about the cases.

The newsletter published monthly through the 1990s and into the 2000s, tracking legal cases, legislative developments, licensing board actions, and the evolving scientific literature on memory. By January 1996, the foundation had moved to 3401 Market Street, Suite 130, Philadelphia, and assembled a Scientific Advisory Board that included Elizabeth Loftus (University of Washington), Paul McHugh (Johns Hopkins), Fred Frankel (Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital), Richard Ofshe (University of California, Berkeley), and dozens of others from cognitive psychology, psychiatry, and sociology. The newsletter's "Legal Corner" tracked malpractice suits against therapists, while "Focus on Science" reviewed experimental studies on memory distortion, suggestion, and hypnotic confabulation.

The foundation ceased active operations around 2011, by which point professional organisations had adopted formal cautions about recovered memory techniques and multiple high-profile malpractice verdicts had gone against practitioners of "memory recovery therapy."