Regarding the 'Repressed Memories' Debate of Childhood Trauma.

OF course I see the vulnerabilities of the theory in that confabulation or false memory formation can occur in patients undergoing therapy, but, on the whole, I think it is vital people believe a person's claims of childhood abuse foremost, before defaulting upon calling someone a liar or a fantasist. I am much appalled by the Wikipedia article on repressed memories as it more or less dismisses them as quackery: they are most certainly not. As one with undoubted memories of severe and protracted abuse in my childhood I have to state my case.

   I have had (partly due to brain damage, partly owing to said abuse but also due to 'hypnosis grooming') many certain and corroborated memories repressed due to fear and dissociation. Dissociation takes a mind entirely out of a room or situation, so that few or no memories remain at all. This I think will be truer the worse the abuse is, as there is a higher need to escape from its more dangerous effects. In my experience (and experience after all must be our means on earth to judge a theory) I had almost entirely repressed my many awful memories; but when they came back due to triggers I knew they were true because not only did I remember them, but I remembered remembering them, this is an important point. What is more, I remember the sick and depressed feelings of dealing with them as merely a child. The power of dissociation is so thorough that it can make one think one is another being altogether in an entirely different place. But the trauma is there still, hiding away in the amygdala, wrapped in the body. P.T.S.D. does not spring out of nowhere. Therefore I plight my troth that the article is entirely mistaken and that repressed memories should be treated with the closest regard.