Personality profiles, dissociation, and absorption in women reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

Women reporting either repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of chil dhood sexual abuse or no abuse history completed questionnaires tapping per sonality traits, absorption (fantasy proneness), dissociation, depression, and posttraumatic stress. Planned contrasts indicated that recovered memory participants scored higher on absorption add dissociation than did those r eporting either continuous memories or no abuse history; repressed memory p articipants scored nonsignificantly higher than did recovered memory partic ipants. On measures of distress, continuous memory participants were indist inguishable from nonabused participants, repressed memory participants scar ed highest, and recovered memory participants scored midway between continu ous and repressed memory participants.