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Patient: It's so hard for me to believe all that I have told you even though I was the one who lived through it. It's so hard to hold on to it. I don't want to believe it. I have not been able to sleep.
Therapist: What do you experience when you are waking up?
Patient: Afraid. My friends were telling each other their dreams but I felt I couldn't. They are too violent.
Therapist: Can you tell me?
Patient: I had this dream which feels like a flashback of a dream I have had often. I was running from these bad guys who wanted to kill me. I was on a raft in a river with this guy Jack who I wanted to have sex with but he was paying attention to another woman and I was upset but then it turns out he was interested in me. We had sex and I felt like I was a whore for wanting it. These same bad guys got one guy and were mutilating his body. My dream is filled with sex being bad and me being a whore, and the world being so dangerous. How can I have a relationship if being with someone just brings up all these horrors. It's too hard to walk out in the world with all that being true. (She cries.)
(An excerpt from a session with an adult survivor of violent childhood sexual abuse).
Controversies concerning repressed, delayed, or false memories of sexual abuse in childhood have dominated newspaper headlines and TV talk shows recently. Lawsuits against parents by adult