inferences as though they were observation statements. Moreover, I wonder how easy it would be to show that the nature of the clinical evidence supporting the repression of satanic cult memories is dierent from that supporting the repression of memories of real events; if a distinction cannot plausibly be drawn, does not this suggest that commentators have more than a title to be sceptical ± they have an obligation? And ®nally, it is dicult to see how the clinical evidence can be so strong and clear-cut as Brewin and Andrew claim when some clinicians construe it as weak and fuzzy. For example, Pope et al. (1998) could be describing a universe completely parallel with the one Brewin and Andrews describe.
As a whole, I found Recovered Memories and False Memories rather ¯at (though I confess to being a little less sceptical about recovered memories for having read it). To a degree, this may have been a function of the editor's asking the contributors to make strong but non-adversarial statements. This was to help realise the declared central aim of the book, namely of encouraging collaboration between psychotherapists and memory researchers. All the same, perhaps the book could have been made more interesting, without seriously compromising this aim, by the inclusion of a critical overview (or perhaps two ± one from each `side') of the contributions. And, perhaps a chapter locating the issue in its historical, social, and ideological context might not only have enlivened the book but might also have given some inkling about how successful such collaboration was likely to be.