A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO REPRESSED MEMORIES

I make use of insights from narrative psychology to illuminate claims made by advocates of the controversial multiple personality doctrine. The notion of ''repressed memories'' of childhood abuse is one of the foundations of the claim that one body can host two or more personalit ies. Until recently, a therapist could help a client reconstruct a fai ling self-narrative without being concerned with the historical truth of recovered memories. In the current litigious climate, clients bring suits in courts of law for damages supposedly caused by long-unrememb ered childhood instances of abuse by parents or other adults. In the f orensic setting, the narrative truth that flows from the recovery of r epressed memories is not enough; historical truth is required. I discu ss the role of imagining in the construction of rememberings and the d ifficulties in establishing the historical truth of any remembering.