Title: Betrayal Trauma
First published: 1996
Description: How can someone forget an event as traumatic as sexual abuse in childhood? people who don't know firsthand may wonder, and many apparently do, or controversy wouldn't be raging around the issue of recovered memories today. This book lays bare the logic of forgotten abuse. Psychologist Jennifer Freyd's breakthrough theory explaining this phenomenon shows how psychogenic amnesia not only happens but, if the abuse occurred at the hands of a parent or caregiver, is often necessary for survival.

What Freyd describes, with cogent real-life examples, is "betrayal trauma," a blockage of information that would otherwise interfere with one's ability to function within an essential relationship - that of parent and dependent child, for instance.
Subjects: Psychic trauma, Psychological aspects of Betrayal, Betrayal, Child sexual abuse, Psychological aspects, Abused children, Adult child abuse victims, Child abuse, Recovered memory, False memory syndrome, Sexually abused children, New York Times reviewed, Sexual Child Abuse, Psychology, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Memory, Adult, Psychotherapy
LC classification: RJ506.C48 F74 1996