A Feminist Clinician's Guide to the Memory Debate

A Feminist Clinician's Guide to the Memory Debate accomplishes four goals: it publishes a range of chapters which are explicitly feminist to empower feminists, activists, practitioners, scholars, and advocates to be knowledgeable and do the most competent work possible; it helps feminist-friendly clinicians become alert as to how a feminist analysis can expand and contextualize their understanding of the "recovered memory controversy"; it makes proactive statements of what constitutes ethical, healing treatment for the profoundly deforming experience of child sexual abuse; and it empowers the clinician to be effectively political outside the therapy setting.A Feminist Clinician's Guide to the Memory Debate is an invaluable collection of articles that explores nearly every aspect of the controversy over recovered memories that has shaken public life, the courts, feminist psychotherapy, contemporary psychoanalysis, and cognitive science. Among the important issues the contributors of this volume tackle are:

repressed memories and clinical practice

the Feminist Therapy Institute Code of Ethics

therapeutic approaches for adult survivors of childhood incest

hypothetical neurobiological mechanisms for coping with trauma

belief systems and the stands people take on the veracity of recovered memory

False Memory Syndrome movement

ongoing empirical research examining the validity of recovered memories

postmodern theory and the memory debate A must read, this guidebook shows readers how to navigate critical issues in their work with survivors. Therapists learn specific ways they can get involved politically at the local, state, and national levels and guidelines to protect themselves if confronted by civil suits brought against them by alleged perpetrators or clients. Combining practice and theory, this book discusses applications of feminist therapy theory that work successfully with clients and illustrate how an egalitarian philosophy of therapy will avoid coercive or suggestive treatments. A tremendous asset for feminist clinicians, particularly those working outside of feminist support networks, A Feminist Clinician's Guide to the Memory Debate equips therapists with an intellectual contextual framework for addressing questions of truth about memory.