Buried memories of sexual abuse can have a devastating impact on a victim's relationships, work, and health. Using case histories, Renee Fredrickson stresses the importance of recovering these memories as a crucial step in healing, and she explains various therapeutic processes used in memory retrieval.

The question of whether memories can be lost, particularly as a result of trauma, and then "recovered" through psychotherapy has polarised the field of memory research. This is the first volume to bring together leading memory researchers and clinicians with the aiming of facilitating aresolution to this question. The volume offers a unique and timely summary of the theories of memory recovery, and how false memories may be created. Some of the first research relating to the phenomenal characteristics of memory recovered is reported in detail, suggesting important avenues fornew research. Theories of autobiographical memory, implicit memory, reminiscence, and the effects of repeated recall on memory are included. Recovered memories and false memories provides the most current and authoritative thinking in this area, and will be an essential sourcebook for memoryresearchers and psychotherapists.

Beginning in the 1990s, the contentious “memory wars” divided psychologists into two schools of thought: that adults’ recovered memories of childhood abuse were generally true, or that they were generally not, calling theories, therapies, professional ethics, and survivor credibility into question. More recently, findings from cognitive psychology and neuroimaging as well as new theoretical constructs are bringing balance, if not reconciliation, to this polarizing debate. Based on presentations at the 2010 Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, True and False Recovered Memories: Toward a Reconciliation of the Debate assembles an expert panel of scholars, professors, and clinicians to update and expand research and knowledge about the complex interaction of cognitive, emotional, and motivational factors involved in remembering—and forgetting—severe childhood trauma. Contrasting viewpoints, elaborations on existing ideas, challenges to accepted models, and intriguing experimental data shed light on such issues as the intricacies of identity construction in memory, post-trauma brain development, and the role of suggestive therapeutic techniques in creating false memories. Taken together, these papers add significant new dimensions to a rapidly evolving field. Featured in the coverage: The cognitive neuroscience of true and false memories. Toward a cognitive-neurobiological model of motivated forgetting. The search for repressed memory. A theoretical framework for understanding recovered memory experiences. Cognitive underpinnings of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Motivated forgetting and misremembering: perspectives from betrayal trauma theory. Clinical and cognitive psychologists on all sides of the debate will welcome True and False Recovered Memories as a trustworthy reference, an impartial guide to ongoing controversies, and a springboard for future inquiry.

Lost Daughters movingly depicts the human toll exacted by the widespread belief in Recovered Memory Therapy. It portrays families devastated by daughters' RMT-inspired memories of childhood sexual abuse and their accusations against parents.

Maintains that there is no controlled scientific evidence that memories of trauma may be "recovered" years later.

The phenomenon of recovered memories has excited much controversy in recent years amongst professionals with extreme positions being held: either all such memories are, by definition false, or any such claim is an attempt to deny the victims of abuse their rights to confront their abusers. In this refreshing new approach to the problem Graham Davies and Tim Dalgleish have assembled leading figures from both sides of the debate to provide a balanced overview of empirical evidence as well as evidence from clinical practice. Recovered Memories: Seeking the middle ground, unlike most other writing on the topic, eschews extreme positions. It provides clinicians with findings from the latest research to enhance their understanding of memory and presents pure researchers with a range of experiences encountered in clinical practice for which they presently have few explanations. Topics include the impact on family and community members, the latest findings on implanted memories and discussion of clinical guidelines for therapeutic practice to avoid potential influence on memory. Having weighed the evidence, a framework is offered in which true and false recovered memories are seen as the inevitable compliment of true and false continuous memories. This important new collection should not be missed by anyone with an interest in memory, whether engaged in a clinical, legal, child protection, family welfare or experimental research capacity. It is the most authoritative and comprehensive review of the evidence on both sides available to date.