Recovered Memories of Abuse

Peter Fonagy is Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Director of the Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology at University College London. He is Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, London. He is a clinical psychologist and a training and supervising analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society in child and adult analysis. He has published over 200 chapters and articles and has authored or edited several books. Joseph Sandler qualified as a psychoanalyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society. He was the Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis in the University of London and Director of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, and in private practice in London. He was formerly the first Sigmund Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Editor of the 'International Journal of Psychoanalysis' and the 'International Review of Psychoanalysis', and was President of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

• Preface -- Foreword -- Memories of abuse, or abuse of memories? -- Cognitive perspectives on recovered memories -- Remembering in therapy -- Panel discussion -- A psychoanalytic theory of repression and the unconscious -- Perspectives on the recovered memories debate

'This excellent book retains the freshness of spontaneous debate at a Conference at University College, London, combined with the measured and scholarly quality of the main papers. Lawrence Weiskrantz (who chaired the advisory Board of the British False Memory Society) sets the scene, highlighting some of the concerns of those representing the falsely accused and drawing attention to misleading assumptions that may lie behind evaluations of recovered memories. John Morton (who Chaired the British Psychological Society Working Party on Recovered Memories) then outlines various contemporary models of memory, indicating possible mechanisms whereby some recovered memories could be false and some genuine. Next, Valerie Sinason displays her gift for hearing the unbearable in a rich account of the emergence of communications of abuse in child psychotherapy.The second half of the book contains a carefully argued chapter by Joseph and Anne-Marie Sandler crucially revising core psychoanalytic concepts in relation to memory and repression. Finally, Peter Fonagy and Mary Target present an overview, offering some of the most sophisticated thinking to be found in discussions of recovered memory and clinical technique. There is much to learn and think about in these pages.'- Phil Mollon, from his Foreword