How Reliable is Memory . On one side of the issue is the group claiming memory is completely unreliable and that all therapists who work with survivors of sexual abuse are charlatans trying to ruin innocent reputations. On the other is the group that seems to say that almost everyone was abused as a child, most likely by Satanists, we just haven't all remembered it yet. Whenever two groups line up as polar opposites, you can bet the truth is somewhere in the middle. We now know a great deal about memory and are learning more every day.
Memory is a tricky thing, and can be unreliable.
There is no doubt, however, that the process of repression, the forgetting of traumatic events, is a real and provable process. In a recent study at Harvard Medical School, researchers located adults who were known to have been sexually abused as children. A high number of those now grown up children had no recollection of the abuse in their past. The younger the child was at the time of the abuse, the less likely it was that they would have conscious memories of it as an adult. This study, and others that will be completed soon, should leave little, if any, room for doubt that the process of repression is a real and verifiable phenomena.