(according to the false memory people that is)
The British Psychological Society publishes a journal called Legal and Criminal Psychology. This journal has just published a commentary and debate authored by two individuals formerly affiliated with the British False Memory Society (BFMS) – Felstead and Patihis. It is called, ”There is Only One Truth: The Objective Truth in Recovered Memory Cases,”
There is only one truth, the objective truth, in recovered memory cases – Felstead – Legal and Criminological Psychology – Wiley Online Library
In order to make their point they reference a book written by a Swedish journalist called Dan Josefsson. I actually read this book, in Swedish, about ten years ago. While it makes for riveting reading, using it to illustrate Objective Truth seems a bit far fetched. Felstead and Patihis describe the book as
”The telling example of Thomas Quick—Sweden’s most notorious serial killer who confessed to 39 murders—pinpoints the inherent dangers of accepting “therapeutic truths.” Quick’s psychotherapist, the charismatic Margit Norwell, dogmatically assumed that her clients who entered therapy had been abused in childhood. She subsequently helped Quick to recover repressed memories of murder, memories that turned out to be false. Thomas Quick was subsequently wrongfully convicted of eight murders. The last of these convictions was thankfully overturned in 2013, following the largest forensic investigation in Sweden since the second world war (Josefsson, 2015). ”
Josefsson’s bestseller is called ”The man who stopped lying” in English. The subject matter is complicated. A lot has been written about this case – both academic and non-academic. Felstead and Patihis refer only to Josefsson’s version. They mention the murders that Sture Bergwall ( the man known as Thomas Quick) falsely confessed to committing. However they make no mention of the crimes that he did commit. An alternative description of Bergwall¨s crimes has recently been published by Bruno and Lundström (2025).
”Quick / Bergwall sexually assaulted four boys. One of the boys had been admitted to a children’s clinic where Quick first forced oral sex on him then attempted to strangle him. He was first charged with attempted manslaughter and then was sentenced to in- patient forensic psychiatric care. Several years later the situation repeated itself. Quick stabbed a man with a knife in Uppsala but was not charged as he was still under psychiatric care. In 1991 he was sentenced to inpatient psychiatric care for, amongst other things, a violent robbery. This was a hostage situation where Quick threatened to kill a family and he thrust a knife into a wall as well as a bed where a child was sleeping” ( translation mine).
When he conducted research for the book, Dan Josefsson used a journalistic method that he called Wallraffing (after the German journalist Gunter Wallraff). That is, he pretended to be a journalist writing about one specific subject when in fact, his intention was to write about something else. This allowed him to gain interviews using hidden cameras with psychotherapists and psychologists which would probably would not have been possible had he had made his intended purpose clear. Josefsson himself has said that wallraff is really just a fancier word than lie and the information a journalist gets has to stand in proportion to that lie (Thunander 2013). This method was approved by Swedish public television, which produced an accompanying documentary. But does it meet the standards of an academic publication?
Psychologist and blogger Daniel Kraft (Kritik mot Dan Josefssons bok och dokumentär om Quick-fallet – Det känsliga barnet) suggests that when Josefsson chose to use the Wallraff method, an extreme form of journalism using hidden cameras and hiding his true intention, he actually painted himself into a corner. He could only justify this method by uncovering the most extreme repressed memory explanation and falling into the Loftus camp. The method itself didn’t leave him with any space for ambiguity.
It strikes me that Kraft’s explanation here explains a lot about the position of the FMSF, BFMS and other false memory organisations. They were not primarily researching memory, they were defending people accused of abusing children. So they didn¨t have the space to explore the nuances of memory. They had to hammer their point home even to the point of making themselves look ridiculous.
At least Josefsson admitted he lied to get the information he wanted, while Felstead and Patihis pay homage to thing called Objective Truth without aknowledging the hidden cameras they used to create their objectivity.
References
Bruno, L and Lundström, C. När manskoren sjunger allsång. Parabol (2025). Parabol | När manskören sjunger allsång
Felstead, K and Patihis, L There is only one truth, the objective truth, in recovered memory cases – Felstead – Legal and Criminological Psychology – Wiley Online Library
Josefsson, D. (2015). The strange case of Thomas quick: The Swedish serial killer and the psychoanalyst who created him. Portobello Books.
Kraft, D Kritik mot Dan Josefssons bok och dokumentär om Quick-fallet – Det känsliga barnet
Thunander, G. ”Wallraff är egentligen bara ett finare ord för att ljuga”. Dagens Media. 21 oktober 2013