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This is an eminently sensible book. It is a measure of the maelstrom surrounding the issue of recovered memories and their validity that to invoke commonsense as the consummate criterion by which to judge this book is intended as the highest praise, not as a faint commendation elliptically implying want of imagination, passion or empathy. On the contrary, each of the 16 contributions movingly exhibits these qualities, but leaves the reader with a sense of balanced containment. In his careful foreword where he talks of ‘something akin to a religious war raging between those who wish to protect the victims of childhood abuse and those whose declared allegiance is to individuals claiming to be falsely accused’ (p. xiv), Peter Fonagy sets the tone:
It is a challenge to all of us to preserve precious doubt in a situation where we are under pressure from our clients, from their relatives and from the general public to adopt a clear position; however, when clarity can only be achieved through extremism, the price is too high - the sacrifice of individual lives is intolerable. (p. xv)
Valerie Sinason's introduction picks up this refrain about the need to combine intellectual doubt with empathic response, while giving important information on what might be called the politics of the dispute about memories. She describes how parents, smarting from the feeling of being wrongly accused, developed the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in the USA and the British False Memory Society (BFMS) in the UK. She outlines the background to the reports prepared by the British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Psychiatrists Working Party, the latter being so criticized by the Forensic, Psychotherapy and Child and Adolescent Sections of the College, and by one member of the working party, that its publication