Child Sexual Abuse and False Memory Syndrome

Is repressed memory fact or fiction? What role should therapists play in determining the truth? What, if any, weight should these "memories" be given when prosecuting claims of child sexual abuse? Noted experts seek answers that could affect thousands of lives.

Tabloid talk shows and the courts are overflowing with adults alleging sexual and other abuses they endured as children. Parents have been hauled into court, convicted, and jailed over their children's claims of abuse, many of which have been based upon "memories" that have surfaced after therapists employed dubious techniques and suggestive "therapies." In some cases, the abuse really did occur. Alarmingly, in other cases, it did not.

Noted psychologist and author Robert A. Baker states that experienced and responsible therapists vehemently disagree about the nature, source, and reliability of these "memories." In Child Sexual Abuse and False Memory Syndrome doctors, therapists, victims, researchers, and others search for answers in seven major areas: memory and its recovery, childhood trauma, repression and amnesia, hypnosis, suggestibility, professional problems and ethical issues, as well as needed research and legal implications.

Distinguished contributors include Maggie Bruck, Stephen J. Ceci, Gail Goodman, James Hudson, John F. Kihlstrom, Elizabeth Loftus, Richard Ofshe, Harrison Pope, Leonore Terr, Ralph Underwager, Hillida Wakefield, Ethan Watters, Michael Yapko, and more than 20 others.

The late Robert A. Baker, Ph.D. was the author of the acclaimed They Call It Hypnosis. He taught psychology at MIT, Standford University, and the University of Kentucky, where he was chairman of the Psychology Department until his retirement. He was also the author of Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within, and Mind Games: Are We Obsessed with Therapy? and was editor of Child Sexual Abuse and False Memory Syndrome.