CRIME AND MEMORY

The conflict between knowing and not knowing, speech and silence, reme mbering and forgetting, is the central dialectic of psychological trau ma. This conflict is manifest in the individual disturbances of memory , the amnesias and hypermnesias, of traumatized people. It is manifest also on a social level, in persisting debates over the historical rea lity of atrocities that have been documented beyond any reasonable dou bt. Social controversy becomes particularly acute at moments in histor y when perpetrators face the prospect of being publicly exposed or hel d legally accountable for crimes long hidden or condoned. This situati on obtains in many countries emerging from dictatorship, with respect to political crimes such as murder and torture. It obtains in this cou ntry with regard to the private crimes of sexual and domestic violence . This article examines a current public controversy, regarding the cr edibility of adult recall of childhood abuse, as a classic example of the dialectic of trauma.