Science and Pseudoscience Around Dissociation and Dissociative Amnesia: A Two-Branched Experimental Approach.

Some psychologists are concerned over the effect, present conceptualisation, and impact of dissociation on real
legal decisions. Concern about the general public's supposed misunderstanding of memory is compounded by the
fact that they could serve as jurors in cases involving delayed sexual accusations. This proposal involves two
experimental branches aiming to question the fundamental reliability of this 100-year-old construct, and therefore
whether it still has a place in psychology today. Research data may indicate the need for revised crown-court
guidance in cases reliant on long-term memory.
Branch one will examine how terminology and other factors influence people's legal decision-making: especially on
the topic of whether repressed memories (vs. dissociative amnesia) would be admissible in court as evidence. It will
also investigate the influence of terminology on potential verdicts in cases reliant on recovered memory and
whether social media videos (not created by the researcher) carry this same influence.
Dissociative symptoms and mechanisms are a concept presented in some court cases by expert witnesses, usually
for the prosecution, to bolster the admissibility of repressed memory testimony. However, Dissociation may not be a
syndrome that actually holds together. Potentially being internally unreliable and therefore invalid when measured
in a more inquisitive way. Branch two will investigate and utilise some of the most widely used measures of
dissociation to likely reveal they are unreliable and invalid-and that these imprecise measures and concepts are in
the DSM and maintain old pseudoscientific ideas introduced by the Paris school of hypnosis.