Peter Naish 20/May/2016

Dr Peter Naish

Headstrong Club, May 20, 2016

Trust and Abuse

The horrors of the Savile scandal seem to have precipitated a witch hunt for abusers – some would say with the Commissioner of the Met acting like the witch-finder general. Accusers are told to come forward, “You will be believed!” Really? What became of ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Perhaps ‘erring on the safe side’ is justified if great harm is done by childhood sexual abuse, but if that is so, shouldn’t more effort be put into stopping it in the first place rather than wasting millions on the likes of Operation Midland? Come to that,
what is the evidence that great harm is done? Another evil to come out of the lurid stories is the redoubling of the efforts by certain therapists to unearth the abuse that they are convinced underpins their clients’ problems. False memories are created. If real abuse impacts the mind, then might the effects be as bad if a person comes to believe that they were abused? If it turns out that as much harm is done by believed-in abuse as by the real thing, shouldn’t Society track down the perpetrators with a zeal equal to that currently employed in the paedophile hunt? Answers will be offered for many of these questions: the remainder are long overdue for debate.

Peter Naish has a background in the Physical Sciences as well as Psychology. Although it is in the latter field that he is principally known, his ‘hard science’ training has provided valuable tools and perspectives to his psychological work. After obtaining his doctorate in the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology, he spent most of his working life in academia, but he has carried out research for the Home Office, and in the Ministry of Defence too. A good deal of his own research has concerned the nature of hypnosis, its place within our understanding of consciousness and its role in the production of false memories. These interests are underlined by his membership of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, his stint as President of the Section for Hypnosis at the Royal Society of Medicine, and his Chairmanship of the scientific advisory board to the British False Memory Society. Peter is a keen advocate of the dissemination of science, and as well as making TV and radio appearances has spoken on many occasions at all the major science festivals, including the British Science Festival, Cheltenham and Edinburgh.

P Naish

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