• "Some therapeutic approaches attempt, especially, to elicit memories of childhood abuse as the central technique for relieving emotional distress. The validity of such therapies has been challenged."
• "Some patients receiving this treatment have later recanted their claims of recovered memories of abuse, and accused their therapists of leading or pressuring them into such ideas. Research has shown that memory does not always record events accurately. In the presence of severe or prolonged stress, people may suffer significant impairment, in the retention, recall and accuracy of memories. Memories can also be altered as a result of suggestions, particularly by a trusted person or authority figure."
• "Psychotherapy works with memories, dreams, altered states of consciousness and related materials, within the larger context of understanding the patient's current difficulties, accompanied by cautions against premature action by the patient. It's well documented that both dismissing true accounts and accepting false accounts can harm patients and possibly others."

This fact sheet also talks about the importance of not dismissing true de-repressed memory claims. I want to make it very clear as well that we know there is a massive amount of childhood abuse. We all should have--and I do have--the deepest sympathy for the women, the children and the men in our society who are victims of these kinds of crimes. Mental-health professionals probably know better than anybody else about some of the horrendous things that people do to other people.

But when it comes to the repressed-memory controversy, I am not coming out against a child who has gonorrhea of the throat. I am not talking about the woman who has known her whole life that she was molested and only in her thirties, forties or fifties developed the courage to tell a friend or a trusted therapist. I am challenging the claims of false memories generated in therapy.