A debate has been raging in courtrooms, journals, and the popular press about the validity of recovered memories. The memories in question are of childhood sexual abuse, mistreatment, and trauma. They have tremendous power for harm or healing, for righting of wrongs or for unjust accusations; it all depends on their validity. Is it possible for a memory to be lost and then recovered? What is the validity of such a memory? Can children be persuaded that events did or did not happen? What causes childhood amnesia and are traumatic childhood memories more or less likely to be remembered than nontraumatic ones? This book examines these and other complex but critical questions. It presents the latest contributions from researchers representing the full range of positions on the issues and using many different approaches to the questions. The topics are organized as follows. Section I covers the effects of emotion and stress on memory in children. Section II contains analyses of the development of normal autobiographical memory as a context for understanding how childhood traumatic events might be recalled, whether at the time by children, or later by adults. Section III covers the suggestibility of memory. This issue is central because therapists may unwittingly induce false memories in their patients, and abusers may suggest to their victims that their memories are imaginary. Whether and how these can happen depends on suggestibility. The veracity of child witnesses also hinges to a great degree on their suggestibility. Section IV contains some examples from current literature and is the only place where the reports on recovered memories from both the American and the British Psychological Associations can be found.

Table of Contents:
Childhood Trauma and Memory: G.S. Goodman, J.A. Quas, J.M. Batterman-Faunce, M.M. Riddlesberger, and J. Kuhn, Predictors of Accurate and Inaccurate Memories of Traumatic Events Experienced in Childhood. M.R. Harvey and J.L. Herman, Amnesia, Partial Amnesia, and Delayed Recall among Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma. C. Cameron, Comparing Amnesic and Nonamnesic Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Longitudinal Study. L. Terr, True Memories of Childhood Trauma: Flaws, Absences, and Returns. N.J. Cohen, Functional Retrograde Amnesia as a Model of Amnesia for Childhood Sexual Abuse. The Development of Self and Autobiographical Memory: M. Tessler and K. Nelson, Making Memories: The Influence of Joint Encoding on Later Recall by Young Children. M.L. Howe, M.L. Courage, and C. Peterson, How Can I Remember When 'I' Wasn't There: Long-Term Retention of Traumatic Experiences and Emergence of the Cognitive Self. R. Fivush, Young Children's Event Recall: Are Memories Constructed through Discourse?; N.L. Stein, Children's Memory for Traumatic Events: Implications for Testimony. Childhood Memory: Distortion and Suggestibility: K. Pezdek and C. Roe, Memory for Childhood Events: How Suggestible Is It?; P.A. Ornstein and J.T. Myers, Contextual Influences on Children's Remembering. S.J. Ceci, M.L.C. Huffman, E. Smith, and E.F. Loftus, Repeatedly Thinking about a Non-event: Source Misattributions among Preschoolers. K.J. Saywitz and S. Moan-Hardie, Reducing the Potential for Distortion of Childhood Memories. Repressed Memory and Recovered Memory: D.S. Lindsay, Contextualizing and Clarifying Criticisms of Memory Work in Psychotherapy. J.W. Schooler, Seeking the Core: The Issues and Evidence Surrounding Recovered Accounts of Sexual Trauma. J.F. Kihlstrom, The Trauma-Memory Argument and Recovered Memory Therapy. M.P. Toglia, Recovered Memories: Lost and Found?; J.L. Alpert, Professional Practice, Psychological Science, and the Recovered Memory Debate.; L.S. Brown, On the Construction of Truth and Falsity: Whose Memory, Whose History. C.A. Courtois, Informed Clinical Practice and the Delayed Memory Controversy. Interim Report of the Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse, American Psychological Association,; Recovered Memories: The Report of the Working Party of the British Psychological Society. Index.