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I recently had the opportunity to discuss the case of a woman whose vague memories of sexual abuse by a family member emerged during the course of her analysis. This woman was highly intelligent, very troubled, and extremely grateful for the chance to have an analysis after years of less intensive treatment had proved unsatisfactory. Her memories came forth when she started to feel understood, respected, and trusting. The treating analyst, who was rather skeptical of her account, was a bit troubled by the implications of this material and maintained as much empathy as he could. However, it sounded as if he had essentially interpreted or ignored these accounts as much as possible until they went away. The patient's doubts about her own judgment in the matter continued, but the analyst did not invite her curiosity to explore it further and so a bit of an unconscious conspiracy of silence ensued. Although the patient apparently did well after this period of time, I was troubled by the patient's compliance. Based on my experience, I was struck by the way the material emerged in both dream form and in recurrent flashback symptoms (Brenner 2000). Also, it did not appear as though her associations were simply the result of displacement from a highly charged erotic transference. I therefore challenged the assertion that the patient's “retraction” was any more credible than her original memories, and asked whether subtle counter-transference issues might have led to the enactment of a maternal transference paradigm in order to sweep things under the rug. I also cited a case of mother-daughter incest, persisting into adulthood, in which a coerced retraction was accompanied by a mysterious flight into health. Many months later, the patient finally acknowledged, “I can't recant,” a confession that heralded a new phase of treatment. My colleague was narcissistically wounded by my failure to endorse