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Adults who may have been abused or severely traumatised in childhood, but who have no continuous, conscious explicit memory of such events prior to beginning treatment, present analysts with a difficult clinical problem. With what degree of confidence can we assume that new memories which appear or are reconstructed in the course of treatment represent historical truth rather than fantasy? To what extent are such new memories the product of the lifting of repression and the integration of previously dissociated past experiences or the result of suggestion, compliance and other wishful and defensive forces at work within the analytic dyad?
Traditionally, the psychoanalytic rules of evidence—at least in theory—have been thought to rest securely upon concepts such as ‘neutrality’, ‘objectivity’ and the analyst's capacity to keep his/her countertransference in check. Contemporary formulations (e.g. Gill, 1994; Levine, 1994, 1997; Renik, 1993, 1996), however, have increasingly emphasised the degree to which such concepts are unattainable ideals. As such, they offer only limited protection in practice from unconscious subjective elements that may arise from either participant in the analytic process and distort the historical accuracy of reconstructions and memories. To make matters worse, in cases of suspected sexual abuse or incest, the pressure to distinguish true memory from false may be further exacerbated by our current cultural climate, in which the truth or falsity of reconstructed and recovered memories may become the subject of passionate and polemical debate—or even the basis for legal action.
The prevailing clinical wisdom about the optimal analytic stance needed for the successful treatment of patients who may have been abused or severely traumatised in the past, but who have no continuous explicit memory for the events, appears to be deeply divided. On the one hand stand the dangers of compliance and suggestion. On the other, the assertion that if the a