Elizabeth Loftus, a prominent female psychologist, is known for her work on the malleability of

memory. She was in Argentina when Harvey Weinstein, who had been indicted for rape and
sexual assault, wanted to speak with her. Loftus, who has published over 240 books and papers,
believes that memories are reconstructed, not replayed, and that our representation of the past
takes on a living, shifting reality.
Loftus has testified or consulted in over three hundred cases, on behalf of people wrongly
accused of robbery and murder, as well as high-profile defendants like Bill Cosby, Jerry
Sandusky, and Duke lacrosse players accused of rape. After the conversation in Argentina, she
referred Weinstein to a different memory researcher, who she referred to as a bully.
Loftus resisted the job for four months, but Weinstein and his lawyers eventually persuaded her
to testify on his behalf in exchange for $14,000. She testified for roughly an hour, presenting
basic psychological research that might lead a jury to think that neutral or disappointing sexual
encounters with Weinstein could have taken on new weight in light of revelations about his
predatory history.
Loftus also discussed the possibility that labeling something in a particular way can distort
memory of that item, and that emotion is no guarantee that you are dealing with an authentic
memory.
Joan Illuzzi, Assistant District Attorney, questioned the relevance of "pretend situations" in
understanding trauma. Professor Laura Loftus, a feminist theory professor, questioned Harvey
Weinstein's ability to defend herself in a courtroom. The conversation led to Loftus questioning
the presumption of innocence and the idea that the unpopular deserve a defense. The
conversation sparked debates about the role of context and gender dynamics in understanding
trauma.
The law school dean received a letter from law students demanding that the administration
address the issue of Elizabeth F. Loftus, a professor who is training future psychologists and
lawyers to further traumatize and disenfranchise survivors of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The
students demanded Loftus be removed from the faculty, but she continues to teach. Loftus'
friends and family were skeptical of her decision to testify for Weinstein. She grew up in Los
Angeles, writing in her journal every day about her life and her family. She rarely mentioned her
parents, describing them in impersonal terms. One evening, her father told her that her mother
could no longer have fun anymore.
Beth Loftus's diary was a testament to her emotional state and the way we describe events. She
wrote about her mother's tragic death in 1959, which was ruled an accident by the coroner.
However, when she returned to California, her father tried to overrule her and claim it was
suicide.

Loftus's career has been defined by her recognition that the language we use to describe an event
can change the way we remember it. She studied car crashes and found that people remembered
the cars going faster when she used the word "hit." She published numerous studies showing that
she could manipulate people's recollections of the past in predictable and systematic ways.

Defense lawyers began calling on her to testify about the ways that memories are distorted by
leading questions, sloppy police lineups, and cross-racial identification of faces. James Doyle, a
former head of Massachusetts's Public Defender Division, said that Loftus "obliterated the idea
that there is a permanent, stable memory capacity in humans."

In the early nineties, Loftus began getting questions about a new kind of case: Incest had entered
the American consciousness, and women in therapy were uncovering memories of being abused
by their fathers. This discovery was similar to a century earlier when Freud realized that his
patients were afflicted by fears and fantasies surrounding sex abuse, not by memories of the
actual thing.

A new generation of therapists was careful not to repeat Freud's mistake, as trauma was
described as an extraordinary and idiosyncratic experience that could not be simulated in a lab or
expressed by the rules of science. Trauma set up new rules for memory, challenging the
foundation of family life and the authority of experimental psychology.
Beth Loftus, a prominent psychologist, was a vocal advocate for the idea that memories of
trauma can suddenly come to life after a decade or more. She was concerned that therapists were
coaxing memories into being, and her testimony on behalf of men who she believed were
wrongly accused was seen as an expert complicit in institutions of power. Loftus and Phoebe
Ellsworth, social psychologists at the University of Michigan, were treated as dogs walking on
hind legs when Loftus spoke at her school in 1989. Despite her feminism, Loftus chose not to
draw attention to her experiences as a woman. She emphasized the importance of groups in
holding onto memories and the contest over versions of truth in history. Haaken, a professor
emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, emphasized the importance of
understanding the history of trauma and the impact of standard police procedures on memory.

Loftus, a childless scientist, has been accused of being unable to comprehend the pain of victims
of sexual abuse. She has lived alone for thirty years and tried to have a child in the mid-eighties,
but was unable to get pregnant. She turned her surgery into an experiment, reading her
anesthesiologist's words while she was unconscious to see if she could recall them later. The
fibroid was removed, but she couldn't get pregnant. Six years later, she and her husband divorced
due to her intense work ethic. Some scholars have proposed that Loftus has her own repressed
memories, as she has not been able to integrate her own experience into her research. Critics
suggest that there is only one kind of story that women can tell about sexual abuse, but Loftus
never forgot what happened. She shared the memory with her husband shortly after they married,
and the babysitter used to comfort her.
Nicole, a survivor of sexual assault, faced uncertainty about her identity and the impact of her
mother's accusations. She struggled to maintain a sense of self that wasn't dependent on her
mother's accusations, comparing it to dieting. Nicole, who now sees patients remotely, wore a T-
shirt quoting Desmond Tutu, a quote that suggests neutrality in situations of injustice is choosing
the side of the oppressor. She didn't know of any psychological literature on the effects of having
one's memories doubted, as clinical psychologists are trained to believe.
Nicole Loftus, a survivor of Elizabeth Loftus's abuse, has entered a new phase in her quest to
determine whether her mother abused her. She has found herself in a position similar to Freud's
female patients whose memories of abuse were believed and then discredited. However, she no
longer feels commandeered into someone else's theory anymore.

Nicole has drifted in and out of a relationship with her mother, realizing that she could never
give her what she wants from her. Loftus's brother David, a lawyer and the president of a
Buddhist meditation center, believes there was nothing intentional about their mother's death. His
younger brother Robert, a property manager in Garberville, California, has pieced together a
different explanation for their mother's death, which he believes is an oxymoron.

Loftus and Robert have been speaking on the phone daily since the pandemic began, and
recently, they all talked together on Zoom. Debbi, who had not seen her cousins for years, told
the author that they all would like their memories stimulated, if they can be. The author warned
them that Debbi did not think there was any ambiguity about their mother's death and that they
were giving them permission to tell them.

The author explained that Debbi had been with their aunt Pearl when she found Rebecca's body
in a cold-water spring, not a pool. She was concerned that the swimming pool was a little lake-
ish, so she was not sure she trusted that.

In conclusion, Nicole Loftus's journey from victim to survivor is a complex and complex one,
influenced by her family's experiences and the importance of understanding and addressing past
traumas.
“Sounds to me, from the country-property point of view, that our idea of a pool is much
different,” Robert said. He had been a math prodigy, the most brilliant of the three children,
Loftus had told me. Now his speech had the cadence of someone who had spent his formative
years socializing with stoners. He does not have an Internet connection, so he was sitting in the
trailer of his adult son, Abe, who lives on his property, and was sharing his hot spot. Abe sat next
to him, staring out the trailer window.
“What else did Debbi remember?” Loftus asked.
I said that Debbi seemed surprised that anyone believed Rebecca’s death was an accident. “She
sort of acted like it was a no-brainer,” I said.
“If she believes that . . .” Loftus paused for a few seconds. “I’m not sure she believes it from her
own observation or what she would have learned afterward. Debbi was living in the world of the
relatives who hated our father, so I don’t think Debbi’s age-twelve observations are—I mean,
Debbi’s great, but.” She stopped mid-sentence.
The sun was setting in California, and there were few working light bulbs in Abe’s trailer. Robert
wore a flannel shirt, unbuttoned, and his image was so dim and grainy that he somehow looked
like he was twenty again. He said, “When Beth did the Weinstein case, she was saying that after
one of the gals went through the interrogation it sort of massaged her memory in a way to get it
to migrate.”
“You don’t need to bring in Weinstein right now, Robert,” Loftus said, amiably.
“I was sort of thinking of this in terms of how Debbi viewed what happened to Mom,” Robert
continued, “and how the general attitude in her home might have affected Debbi’s memory.”
“Leave Weinstein out of it,” Loftus said. “You know, because honestly—I was a blind witness. I
didn’t even talk about any specific people. It was just stuff about memory.”
When I had first spoken with David, he mentioned hearing a story about his mother getting hold
of his uncle’s gun. I told him that Debbi had heard about a similar incident.
“That is total news,” Loftus said.
“Not to me,” David said.
“How did you know?” Loftus asked him.
Beyond interactions on social media, David hadn’t had a conversation with Debbi in several
decades, and even as children they were not close. “I bet she posted something,” he said. “That’s
my only guess. On Instagram. Or Facebook.”
“Debbi wouldn’t have posted about this on Facebook,” Loftus said.
“I know—that doesn’t make sense,” David said. “That’s so interesting: when you have such a
clear memory and then you go, Well, how did I come to know what I believe? And you can’t
think of any way in which you could have acquired that knowledge.” David spent five years
studying Tibetan Buddhism in a Himalayan village in India, and he seemed well suited to this
line of pondering. “Did something happen in a dream and I remembered it as true?” he said.
Earlier that day, Loftus had forwarded a scan of her 1959 diary to David. It was the first time he
had read her journal, and he was curious about the entry she had written the night before their
mother’s death. “Should I read it?” he asked.
Loftus, who hadn’t read the journal for years, nodded.
“My mother and I had a long talk until midnight all about her childhood and many other things,”
he read. “I was really happy because we’d never been too close before, and now we were talking
like we really were.”
David looked up from the page he was reading. “Beth, are you crying?” he said, tenderly.
She was. “It’s O.K.,” she said, nodding quickly and pursing her lips. She had never paid close
attention to the time line. “But, if I really was with her until midnight the night before,” she said,
“it is a little bit weird that we’re having this really wonderful night and she dies the next day.”
The timing had struck me, too. Sometimes, once people resolve to commit suicide, they become
uncharacteristically lucid and emotionally expansive, perhaps because the end of their suffering
feels near.
“Was she apprehensive about going back to California—to an intolerable household reality, to
the responsibilities of motherhood and parenting?” Robert asked. “I mean, where did I get that
infusion of images?”
“I said that to you, because I do believe that,” Loftus said. “But I don’t know where I got that. I
have no idea.”
“If Debbi is sure it is suicide,” Robert said, “it might be that some people come into their
experience of mental illness with a baseline rigidity. They can’t relate to mental illness and see
these people as extraterrestrial.”
Robert’s son, Abe, who has had psychiatric treatment, suddenly chimed in: “The first question
they ask is ‘Have you had any suicidal thoughts?’ They shame you right off the bat. The minute
you get in their office. How can you answer something like that? And then they say you’re
depressed because you can’t answer it correctly. That’s just me, though—sorry.”
“No, it’s O.K.,” Loftus said. “Abe, is this weird for you?”
In a conversation between two women, Debbi Loftus and her brothers, they discuss the
possibility of a mother's suicide attempt. Debbi had a poorer memory of childhood than her
brothers, treating their memories as possessions they had been gifted unfairly. David recalled a
memory of their mother standing at the top of the stairs in a slip when their father came home
from work. Loftus had a poorer memory of childhood than her brothers, and she treated their
memories as possessions they had been gifted unfairly.

Robert recalled that Debbi's father, Harrold, had a den where he kept his paraphernalia from both
World Wars. Loftus thought that Dad had thought it was suicide and Mom's family thought it was
some accidental thing. However, Loftus did not think that everybody knew it was suicide.
The conversation led to Loftus mentioning the Forrest Gump of psychology, who was able to
work with a professor in graduate school on a memory project. She still believed that her
mother's death was either an accident or "accidental suicide." She suggested finding concrete
evidence, such as a map of her uncle's vacation property, but she did not want to challenge that
fact.
Debbi Loftus, a former prisoner, was caught in two memory errors and claimed that her father
had never called to check on her. Loftus, a researcher, expressed camaraderie with Debbi's errors
and received letters from prisoners, empathizing with them and offering legal help. David joked
about Loftus experiencing Stockholm syndrome, as he thought she might have been trying to win
approval by representing other wealthy white men accused of bad things. However, there are
rarely just two sides to a story, as a larger cast of characters and institutions of power determine
what stories get believed. Even Loftus's study about being lost in the mall has lent itself to
conflicting interpretations.
Elizabeth Loftus, a prominent female psychologist, is known for her work on the malleability of
memory and her testimony in over three hundred cases. She believes that memories are
reconstructed, not replayed, and our representation of the past takes on a living, shifting reality.
Loftus has testified or consulted in over three hundred cases, on behalf of people wrongly
accused of robbery and murder, as well as high-profile defendants like Bill Cosby, Jerry
Sandusky, and Duke lacrosse players accused of rape.

Loftus's career has been defined by her recognition that the language we use to describe an event
can change the way we remember it. She studied car crashes and found that people remembered
the cars going faster when she used the word "hit." Defense lawyers began calling on her to
testify about the ways that memories are distorted by leading questions, sloppy police lineups,
and cross-racial identification of faces. James Doyle, a former head of Massachusetts's Public
Defender Division, said that Loftus "obliterated the idea that there is a permanent, stable memory
capacity in humans."

In the early nineties, Loftus began getting questions about a new kind of case: Incest had entered
the American consciousness, and women in therapy were uncovering memories of being abused
by their fathers. A new generation of therapists was careful not to repeat Freud's mistake, as
trauma set up new rules for memory, challenging the foundation of family life and the authority
of experimental psychology.

Loftus, a childless scientist, has been accused of being unable to comprehend the pain of victims
of sexual abuse. She has lived alone for thirty years and tried to have a child in the mid-eighties
but was unable to get pregnant. She divorced due to her intense work ethic and struggled to
maintain a sense of self that wasn't dependent on her mother's accusations.
Nicole Loftus and her cousins have been discussing their mother's death on Zoom since the
pandemic began. Debbi, who had not seen her cousins for years, expressed her desire to
stimulate their memories of their mother's death. The author explained that Debbi had been with
their aunt Pearl when she found Rebecca's body in a cold-water spring, not a pool, and was
concerned that the swimming pool was a little lake-ish.

The journey from victim to survivor is complex and influenced by her family's experiences and
the importance of understanding and addressing past traumas. Robert, who had been a math
prodigy, now has a different idea of a pool than Debbi. He believes that Debbi's memory of the
incident might have been affected by the general attitude in her home.
David, who had not had a conversation with Debbi in several decades, mentioned hearing a story
about his mother getting hold of his uncle's gun. Loftus had forwarded a scan of her 1959 diary
to David, who was curious about the entry she had written the night before their mother's death.

Robert suggested that some people come into their experience of mental illness with a baseline
rigidity, which makes it difficult to relate to mental illness and see people as extraterrestrial. Abe,
who has had psychiatric treatment, suddenly chimed in, saying that the first question they ask is
"Have you had any suicidal thoughts?"

In a conversation between Debbi Loftus and her brothers, they discuss the possibility of a
mother's suicide attempt. Debbi had a poorer memory of childhood than her brothers, treating
their memories as possessions they had been gifted unfairly. Robert recalled that Debbi's father,
Harrold, had a den where he kept his paraphernalia from both World Wars. However, Loftus did
not think that everybody knew it was suicide.
Loftus, a researcher, worked with a professor on a memory project, believing her mother's death
was accidental. Debbi Loftus, a former prisoner, was caught in memory errors and claimed her
father never called. Loftus sympathized with prisoners and offered legal help. David joked about
Loftus experiencing Stockholm syndrome. However, stories often have multiple interpretations
due to larger characters and institutions of power.