Publisher's Synopsis
Each year over a million Americans are convinced by their therapists (or by misguided 'self-help' books) that their childhoods were not as happy as they thought-that they harboured repressed memories of horrendous abuse by their parents, other relatives, and even satanic cults. Their identities are destroyed, their pasts rewritten, and their families are torn apart. Several books have been written about this strange phenomenon, some of them very good, but Pendergrast's has been consistently acclaimed by reviewers as the most comprehensive, balanced, and readable coverage of the topic. Originally published in 1995, the book was so highly received that a second edition came out just a year later. Among the publications that have given high praise to this book are Scientific American, New York Review of Books, Booklist, the Los Angeles Times, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychological Reports, and the Montreal Gazette.
