Remembering childhood sexual abuse in therapy: Psychotherapists' self- reported beliefs, practices, and experiences

We attempt to situate the controversy regarding the use of memory recovery techniques in psychotherapy in its broader cultural context and then briefly review the highlights of recent surveys of U.S. and British psychotherapists' beliefs, practices, and experiences regarding clients' memories of childhood sexual abuse (D.A. Poole, D.S. Lindsay, A. Memon and R. Bull, in press, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology). The surveys document that use of memory recovery techniques in psychotherapy is widespread, although they also reveal that most practitioners do not have an overarching focus on childhood sexual abuse and that there is considerable disagreement about which symptoms are indicators of abuse histories and which memory recovery techniques should and should not be used to search for memories of childhood abuse.