Response to Marchetti et al.'s and Felstead & Patihis' comments on my paper on “alternative truths”

The two comments on my paper highlight the need to clarify the concept of “alternative truths” which might be misconceived by some readers. As it is readily noticeable, the concepts of legal and therapeutic “truths” are written within quotation marks, thus indicating that they are seemingly, but not actually, true. The only unequivocal truth is, of course, the factual truth (without quotation marks) that refers to whatever actually took place. I used the term “truth,” rather than, say, narrative, in order to indicate that for legal and therapeutic purposes a given narrative may be treated as if it is the truth. For example, the judges may or may not have a hunch as to what the factual truth in a given case is. Yet, they must abide by the rules of evidence, and issue a verdict based on the “legal truth” (in quotation marks) which may or may not correspond to the factual truth. Similarly, the term “therapeutic truth” means that for psychotherapy to succeed, the therapist should relate to the client's version of the past traumatic events as veridical (“truth”) in her eyes. That means that there is only one truthful narrative of the event under consideration. All other narratives are conveniently considered “truths” in specific contexts for particular purposes. This reasoning excludes cases where the factual truth cannot be definitely determined, and the people involved provide differential reports of the controversial course of events. In these cases, the “truth” is “in the eye of the beholder,” and consequently it might be either partial or multiple. This is clearly not the case in recovered memories where whenever there is no corroborative evidence, the factual truth cannot be determined, and one is left with the plaintiff's narrative, which is her “truth” (and should be treated by the therapist as such), and the court's verdict, the “legal truth,” as based on the evidence provided by the prosecution. In short, while there is only a single truth, there may be multiple alternative “truths.” In my paper I call for increased awareness among the judges of the problematic nature of the alternative “truths,” in order to enhance the correspondence between the “legal truth” and the factual truth, which can be solely achieved by corroborating evidence.