The Return of the Repressed and What to Do About It

Reports of Recovered Memories of Abuse in Therapy in a Large Age-Representative U.S. National Sample: Therapy Type and Decade Comparisons

“…Nevertheless, for the continued practice of the recovery of repressed memories in therapies, one of the most important factors is whether clinicians and the public believe that it is possible and fruitful to do so. Indeed, one of us (M. H. Pendergrast) has written that a belief in the concept of repressed memories is central to the process of memory recovery (Pendergrast, 2017). So we now turn our attention to not whether there is evidence for repressed versus false memories but whether important groups of people believe in ostensibly repressed memories.…”

“…The sociocognitive model postulates that clients are given the implicit goal (though sometimes explicit) to report and play the role of multiple identities, and subsequent multiple role enactments are legitimized and maintained by social reinforcement and the promise of psychological improvement. These theories are important to the practical matter of DID treatment, and several authors have argued that this subset of recovered memory cases that involve MPD/DID may be particularly iatrogenic and harmful (e.g., Aldridge-Morris, 1989; Bootzin & Bailey, 2005; McHugh, 1995; Pendergrast, 2017; Piper, 1994; but see Brand et al, 2014).…”

Reports of Recovered Memories in Therapy, Informed Consent, and Generalizability: Response to Commentaries

“…It is advisable that clients entering therapy that involves memory recall should be informed of the potential hazards of false memory production. Such memory distortions could disrupt their own and others’ lives, sometimes leading to suicide (e.g., Pendergrast, 2017, pp. 9, 140, 300, 408).…”

“…Goodman et al (2019) cited Williams (1994) as evidence that many people may forget abuse. Here is not the place to critique that study, but Loftus, Garry, and Feldman (1994) and Pendergrast (2017) have done so. The study by Williams (1994) and similar studies have indicated that people do not report abuse because of embarrassment, ordinary forgetting, memory interference of other traumas, infantile amnesia, and so on.…”