Recollections of Trauma: Scientific Evidence and Clinical Practice(291 NATO Science Series A:)

The controversy regarding cases in which people report "recovered memories" of childhood sexual abuse may well prove to be the most important issue in professional psy- chology in the 1990s. Some have argued that such reports often reflect illusory beliefs in- advertently created by suggestive forms of "memory work" in psychotherapy. This claim amounts to a charge of widespread malpractice, and publicity about it threatens the reputa- tion of clinical psychology. From a culturaVhistorical point of view, this controversy con- stitutes a crisis point in Western society's belated and still incomplete efforts to acknowledge and respond effectively to the shocking prevalence of child sexual abuse. "Responding effectively" entails both protecting children from abuse and avoiding false accusations. Some professionals who emphasise prevention of false accusations have de- scribed the popularisation of therapeutic searches for suspected hi

Table of Contents:
Primary Lectures.- Increasing Sensitivity.- An Integrated Approach to Treating Adults Abused as Children, with Specific Reference to Self-Reported Recovered Memories.- Accuracy of Adult Recollections of Early Childhood Abuse.- Memory Issues in the Diagnosis of Unreported Trauma.- The Logical Status of Case Histories.- Clinical and Experimental Approaches to Understanding Repression.- Dispatch from the (UN)Civil Memory Wars.- Children’s Reports of Pleasant and Unpleasant Events.- Relevance of Neuroendocrine Alterations in PTSD to Memory-Related Impairments of Trauma Survivors.- Recollection.- Anomalies of Autobiographical Memory.- Hypnosis, Pseudomemories, and Clinical Guidelines.- Informed Clinical Practice and the Standard of Care.- Brief Papers.- Gender and Recall of Child Sexual Abuse.- A Cognitive Corroborative Case Study Approach for Investigating Discovered Memories of Sexual Abuse.- Sexual Abuse Memories.- Reported Amnesia for Childhood Abuse and Other Traumatic Events in Psychiatric Inpatients.- Why Memory is a Red Herring in the Recovered (Traumatic) Memory Debate.- Remembering Early Experiences during Childhood.- The Repeat and Revictimisation of Children.- Seekers after Truth.- Information Processing in Combat Veterans.- The Prediction of Accurate Recollections of Trauma.- Forms of Memory Recovery among Adults in Therapy.- Trauma Memory and Alcohol Abuse.- Implicit Memory, Interpersonality Amnesia, and Dissociative Identity Disorder.- Trauma, Memory, and Catharsis.- The Social Construction of Multiple Personality Disorder.- Legal Panel.- The Role of Legal Rules in Recollections of Trauma.- Framing the Question of the Admissibility of Expert Testimony about Recollections of Trauma in the United States.- Evidentiary Standards in Sexual Abuse Cases inContinental European Legal Systems.- Evidentiary Standards in Sexual Abuse Cases in Nordic Legal Systems.- The Psychiatric Expert Witness.- Should We Question How We Question Children?.- Reports of the Working Groups.- Agenda for Research.- Investigating Alternative Accounts of Veridical and Non-Veridical Memories of Trauma.- Professional Guidelines on Clinical Practice for Recovered Memory: A Comparative Analysis.- Personal Perspectives on the Development of the Concept of Sexual Trauma in France.- ASI Participants Questionnaire.- Reports of the Working Groups.- Poster Session Abstracts.