In this reaction to Lindsay and Read, we raise three unanswered questions, and rebut three unquestioned answers. Specifically, we ask: (1) how compelling is the evidence for repression as a mechanism, as opposed to simple forgetting, infantile amnesia, or motivated foregetting?
( 2 ) are trauma memories subject to the same type of alteration and nontraumatic memories?; and (3) should memory work techniques be used even in they entail some reliability risk, because to forsake them will result in unrecovered memories?. The three unquestioned answers we address are: ( I ) painful, but nonsexual, genital experiences (e.g., vaginal catheterizations), do not get recovered in therapy because they are societally sanctioned, and therefore do not rise to the level of trauma that is associated with sexual abuse by a trusted loved one;
( 2 ) it is acceptable for therapists to pursue repressed memories if their 'index of suspicion' is raised by the presence of multiple symptoms of childhood abuse; and 3) the problem with incest resolution therapists has been overblown, by focusing on a few bad apples.
Laura Pasley worked for the Dallas Police Department. One day, at the urging of a friend, she sought therapy for a life-long problem, bulimia. She was to emerge from that therapy with another problem-one for which she had no prior memorynamely, incest (Pasley, 1993). Pasley was hypnotized by her therapist. She joined group therapy and tore up phone books (an anger-.venting exercise that is common in incest resolution therapy), and had flashbacks that her therapist insisted were actual data from her repressed past. Each dream she reported was, according to her therapist, an actual rendition of her past, no' matter how bizarre. And they were very bizarre! Like other members of her group therapy, Pasley was urged to read Courage to Heal, The Child Within (Bass and Davis, 1988) and other so-called 'bibliotherapies'. Aided by these books and her therapist's interpretations of her dreams, she started 'remembering' having been sexually abused by animals, group human sexual abuse, and a dead man hanging from a rope (Pasley, 1993: p. 355). Pasley accused family members of these crimes, and broke off contact with them. Laura Pasley's case is typical of the type that Lindrjay and Read are most concerned