Freud, Oh Dr. Freud

How we wish you'd been otherwise employed.

The authors of this volume investigate the cultlike quality of recovered-memory therapy and explore how the “demand characteristics” of the treatment create the phenomenon reported—widespread childhood sexual abuse. The case reports the authors include are indeed harrowing. Instead of trying to understand recovered-memory therapy within a psychosocial framework, however, the authors use their book as a diatribe against Freud and all forms of dynamic psychotherapy. They posit that, since there is no evidence for the existence of repression as a psychic mechanism nor