There have been indications that the debate over repressed memories of childhood abuse is not resolved. The central question in this controversy is whether attempting to help clients to recover purportedly repressed memories of abuse leads to memory distortions that harm rather than heal clients (see McNally, 2012). Freud (1893-1895/1953) appears to have introduced the belief that memories of traumas are often repressed-and this belief still persists among the general public as well as a majority of clinicians, yet is more rarely endorsed by experimental psychologists (Patihis,

Contrary to claims by B. P. Karon and A. J. Widener (1997), the literature they cited from the WWI and WWII era fails to support the reality of repression of traumatic memories. K. Diven's (1937) experiment demonstrated that unpleasant experiences are in fact more memorable, whereas the case

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Space constraints force us to address only the most crucial issues raised by discussion of the memories of World War II (WWII) veterans.1. Karon and Widener (1998) asserted that we and other critics of their article "suggested] that the WWII patients who suffered trauma and repression were all malingerers" (p. 482). Yet, in our article (Lilienfeld & Loftus, 1998), we stated that "It is possible [italics added], for example, that his [the patient's] symptom represented malingering" (p. 474) and discussed several other explanations for the patient's reported symptoms. Moreover, nowhere did we suggest that the symptoms of other WWII veterans represented malingering. We find it difficult to understand what would motivate Karon and Widener to mischaracterize our statements in such a wholesale manner.2. Although Karon and Widener (1998) claimed that we "talk[ed] about issues never raised in our article: hypnosis as a truth-seeking procedure" (p. 484), this denial is categorically false. In their original article, they asserted that during WWII "there were experimental uses of hypnosis and sodium penthathol interviews to undo the repression and recover the memories in brief therapy" (pp. 338-339).3. We are at a loss to respond to Karon and Widener's (1998) assertion that the Consumer Reports study (Seligman, 1995), which revealed that most individuals who receive therapy report benefits, provides evidence that the lifting of repressions is therapeutically effective. Most forms of psychotherapy do not rely on removing repressions, and Karon and Widener's contention that "any psychotherapy that permits patients to remember more of their

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