Tuesday, April 8, 2008
New Amsterdam
I was watching this show on Fox earlier today called New Amsterdam. It takes place in New York City, and it's basically about this detective named John Amsterdam who is immortal and until he finds love he doesn't age and has near death experiences but never dies. In each episode, there are cases that he has to solve. The episode I watched aired on March 3rd and was called "A Soldier's Heart". In this episode, Amsterdam and his partner are trying to solve the case of a dead psychiatrist, Dr. Prender and they are going through all the people that were recently in contact with her. They find a "crazy" man on the street and he talks about Prender, then they interrogate him, but Amsterdam leads him to remember killing the psychiatrist through the questions he asked. It reminded me of the memory articles we read in class. He said: "And you killed her?" and the man confessed saying that he did it. This is a false confession because the man confessed to something that was put into his head by the detective, even though he doesn't seem all there, he is innocent. Amsterdam then interviews this woman who had met with the psychiatrist in the past and the woman swears that her father abused her, and that the psychiatrist helped her not hurt her or her family. She says that Prender helped her remember, then the detectives say that Prender denied that the abuse ever happened. When they speak to her father, he denies it all and says that the psychiatrist ruined his life. As I was watching, it reinforced the memory aritcle I read in class about false planted memories. I think this is a case of that. I find it funny that every time we go over a wierd phenomenon in class, I see it or hear about a few days later. I put the link to the website in the title where you can watch the full episode (called A Soldier's Heart). Let me know what you guys think about it.
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4 comments:
Aha. I saw that episode.
I don't think a majority of these psychologists mean to put false memories into their patients' heads. And those that do, well, they themselves need therapy. But I think its hard to phrase certain things you want to ask to help someone remember. If someone gets mugged on the steet, the first thing you ask is "what did they look like?" If they cant remember, you usually try saying things like "was he black?" "was he white?" "was he tall?" "did you see his face?"
I'm not sure these questions really help. Sometimes they do. But not always. You saw what you saw. If you can't remember it right away, chances are you probably won't remember it later. But sometimes certain things you may see or hear trigger something in your head and you remember things. Like for example: on the quiz I couldn't remember the Stanley Milgram experiment. I wrote and wrote waiting to see if it would come to me and it didnt. Until after I walked out of the room and someone asked me "what was the milgram experiment?" and i said "wasnt it the people who got shocked..... oh f%$*... damnit" It just depends I guess. I even mentioned something with shock treatment and it still didn't come to me at that moment.
These assumptions are very similar to cops that abuse their power of being cops. If feel it should be a crime to do such things because this can cause long term damage. The fact that their is millions of people who have been emprison because they have been brain washed. Psychologist are not the only ones who are capable of brain washing common folks such as teachers can do the same in teaching their view and being bias rather than giving us a chance to do our own thing.
I wish I had seen the episode, sounds sooo appropriate!
I also don't find it beneficial when people ask questions like that - to an extreme. It really does start to take a toll on the interviewee, but I agree with Jake, sometimes it can be helpful, but when you're planting something into someone's head, it's hard to justify it comepletely.
Like the example Rebecca gave us. implanting false memory. It is like a power of being cop. Well we see these episodes a lot when we watch Tv shows like CSI or Law& Order. And because of these aspects of false memories, now a day, cops does not rely on just confession. They would rather looking to find material evidence.
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