A REVIEW
From Book and Media Review
Memory and Abuse:
Remembering the Healing Effects of Trauma, by Charles L. Whitfield, M.D.
Media has been inundated over the past few years with information issued by proponents of the so-called “False Memory Syndrome.” Air waves and bookstore shelves are literally and figuratively “loaded” with propaganda designed to convince the general public that the issue of child abuse is nearly nonexistent and that the clinicians who treat trauma survivors are actually the abusers of otherwise healthy families.
In his book, Memory and Abuse, noted author of The Child Within, Charles L. Whitfield, M.D., has managed to address each of these discords. This text is the first (and perhaps only) to confront the false memory falsehoods head on and without apology. Many scholars have often stopped short of answering the most important question of all: Can a ‘false memory’ happen? Whitfield courageously answers, “yes, rarely,” then discusses not only how or why this might occur, but places the rare ‘false’ memory itself into the broad context o the dysfunctional family.
Memory and Abuse is full of citations from both sides of the disputed memory debate, uses over 50 tables and diagrams, and could have easily been divided into three or four volumes, though there is a subtle feel of urgency in getting as much information as possible to the public before its’ too late.
Lay audiences who have had their own road to recovery paved by Whtifield’s earlier works may have difficulty with the academic tone of this book and academicians may too easily dismiss the message by the ease of its delivery.
While some minor changes in organization might have made it flow more evenly and eliminated some repetition, the work achieves its goal. Readers will ultimately be presented with the facts and fictions of the disputed memory controversy, clinicians will have a comprehensive reference when asked to provide a response to the allegations of impropriety, and survivors will find a champion of their rights once again.
By Kim Anderson, MSW,
LCSW, Clinical Coordinator, Women’s Counseling Collective and Women’s Clinical
Consultants, Managing Editor, Secondary Survival,