1. Betrayal Blindness 2. Conceptual Knots 3. Context and Controversy 4. Why Forget? 5. Ways of Forgetting 6. Testable Predictions 7. Creating Connections Afterword References Acknowledgments Index
Jennifer J. Freyd is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon.
A century of observation leaves no doubt that some traumatized
people develop amnesia for the event and may not recall their
experiences. How can we understand this?...Freyd calls
attention...to the social context in which the trauma occurs. The
relationship between the victim and the perpetrator is central to
her theory. "In order to survive in cases of core betrayals (abuse
by a trusted caregiver on a dependent victim) some amount of
information blockage is required."...In one of the most ingenious
and original sections of the book, Freyd puts her hypothesis to the
test by reanalyzing data from four recently published studies of
adults with histories of childhood sexual abuse. In each case, she
finds that those who were abused by close relatives were more
likely to have forgotten the abuse...[This book is] a thoughtful
and impassioned treatise by a survivor who has transformed her own
betrayal trauma into an investigation of the psychology of
memory.
*American Journal of Psychiatry*
A powerful work dealing with the often forgotten element of
betrayal in the paradigm of traumatic (non)experience...Freyd's
work places itself squarely against a segment of American medical
community that stresses the shortcomings of "false memory
syndrome"...A survivor of betrayal trauma herself...Freyd should be
commended for standing up to a (distinct) typos of traditional
psychiatry...[that discounts] an individual's experience by naming
it as indicative of false memory syndrome.
*Metapsychology*
[Freyd has set] out on an ambitious mission: to review the
scientific evidence relevant to the hypothesis that child abuse is
most likely to be forgotten when the perpetrator is a trusted
caregiver. The result is a book of stunning clarity and objectivity
that contributes a great deal to the literature on psychological
trauma...Dr. Freyd marshals an impressive array of scientific
evidence...and she does so in a way that is accessible to a broad
audience. This book sheds light on some of the thorniest questions
about the delayed recall of childhood abuse without resorting to
emotional pleas or sanctimonious grandstanding. Dr. Freyd lets the
data speak for themselves, which results in one of the finest
integrative reviews of traumatic-memory research to come along in
the past decade...Ultimately, Betrayal Trauma is a triumph of
objective evidence over impassioned pleas, politics, and media
sound-bites. This book is a must-read for anyone who has a personal
or professional stage in how our society deals with the issue of
childhood abuse and its treatment.
*Psychiatric Services*
Betrayal Trauma stands apart and claims our serious attention on
several counts. It systematically presents a plausible theory to
account for amnesia for childhood abuse and evidence to back up
that theory; it makes sophisticated use of contemporary cognitive
science; it is well written and avoids...descent into hyperbole and
belittlement; and, finally, it notes alternative interpretations of
the assembled data...Because it is a cogent, well written, and
informative presentation of a way of understanding and accepting
the validity of lost and refound memories of trauma, Betrayal
Trauma is highly recommended reading.
*Psychoanalytic Books*
Jennifer Freyd describes a logical, often elegant theory of
forgetting childhood abuse experiences and other upsetting
events...[She] addresses the politics of the recovered memory/false
memory debate in a sober and rational way that encourages thinking
over affect. She does this despite her own painful experience with
both the topics of abuse, itself, and the impact of the False
Memory movement on those who report recovered memories...I found
this book to be refreshing, intelligent, and challenging. I
recommend it to the mental health community, cognitive scientists,
and the interested layperson.
*Contemporary Psychology*
This book clearly goes beyond the previous texts [on recovered
memory]...Freyd has provided a book that is interesting and
informative for the layperson, practitioner, and researcher. By the
end of Betrayal Trauma, the reader will have a solid understanding
of the issue and controversies related to forgotten child abuse.
More important, the reader will understand that there is a logic to
this forgetting that could be conceptualized within a particular
model.
*Child Maltreatment*
Rational views of the available evidence [surrounding recovered
memory] are rather uncommon...That, in addition to the intrinsic
merit of the book, is what makes Jennifer Freyd's Betrayal Trauma,
such an exceptional document and raises it to the level of a
landmark contribution. Betrayal Trauma is a feat of superb
scholarship and remarkable objectivity and integrity...Adroitly
employing everyday experiences to make potentially complex
processes and concepts immediately accessible, Freyd reviews the
literature on both the distortion of memory and the preservation of
memory with admirable evenhandedness...Freyd's own theory is simple
and elegant...For the scholar, the mental health professional, and
the intelligent lay reader, Freyd's rich and rewarding work offers
powerful testimony that a scholar with integrity and compassionate
rationality can withstand the onslaught of impassioned hysteria and
redirect a field's attention to its basic concerns. She has set a
new standard for responsible scholarship in this frequently
troubled and troublesome area of study. Let us hope her example
proves influential.
*Pennsylvania Gazette*
Jennifer Freyd has written an incredibly powerful and moving book,
the kind where her thinking gets yours going and you start to jot
notes in the margins as you tear through it...Dr. Freyd has risen
above the fray about repressed memories.
*Post-Traumatic Gazette*
Freyd's book is elegantly and economically written, argued with
clarity and precision and presenting testable predictions...[It is]
the best book on motivated amnesia for childhood abuse.
*Clinical Psychology Forum*
One may easily predict that this book, and the theory it proposes,
will be considered as a central milestone in the research of human
psychology in the next decade...There are certain books, and they
are not many, which reading is equal to a successful psychotherapy,
and which inner truth penetrates the heart. This book most
certainly belongs among them. Freyd's writing combines experience,
sincerity, and courage with professional capability.
*Mar'ariv Daily Newspaper*
In this well-researched book, Freyd has articulated a theory of
memory loss and recall surrounding childhood abuse that is both
grounded in cognitive science and immensely validating of and
accessible to feminist therapists...She covers a tremendous amount
of ground, all the while articulating complex processes in clear,
relevant terms. She made memory research exciting and relevant to
me as a therapist while satisfying my researcher's need for
evidence...Freyd has taken a courageous huge step in bringing both
sanity and clarity to the field of child sexual abuse therapy.
*Women and Therapy*
Betrayal Trauma is not a polemic tract but a knowledgeable treatise
on the subject of memory formation, and forgetting. In covers in
scholarly, yet clear detail the formation and logic of memory and
its retrieval
The book is highly recommended for all those
interested in the field, for it encapsulates the research whilst
clearly showing the plausibility of what Freyd calls the "logic of
forgetting childhood abuse."
*ANZJFT*
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