An emerging clarity about the trauma-based nature of many severe mental states was thrown into confusion by the realization in the early 1990s that some memories of childhood abuse might be ‘false memories’. However, the debate about memory often generates simplistic and unproductive arguments in an area which is inherently eomplex and confusing and pervaded by ambiguity. ‘Memories’ are often best regarded as psychodynamic products, not unlike dreams, mixing elements from various sourees. Motivated forgetting is not a mysterious process beyond the reaeh of introspection but is, in many instances, very ordinary and familiar. Patients who have suffered severely traumatizing childhoods often have very disturbed, or ‘mutilated’, states of consciousness; a narrative of abuse may be presented in one state of mind, with amnesia for this in another state of mind. Acknowledgement and tolerance of uncertainty form the appropriate stance for the therapist. Some guidelines are suggested for psychoanalytic therapists, designed to reduce the dangers of fostering, or colluding with, false memories of childhood abuse.