Betrayal Trauma, By Jennifer Freyd--A Book Review

This book answers vital questions about recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.

How can the huge betrayal of sexual abuse remain hidden in the back corners of someone’s psyche for years and years? Can we really believe a memory that was hidden so long?

Betrayal Trauma provides sensible, evidence-based answers to these questions. Freyd explains that forgetting is useful to the child because it enables her to remain in contact with the family that is essential for her survival. The closer the relationship with the abuser, the more important it is to forget the abuse in order to keep that relationship working, problematic though it is.

Freyd even found data showing that kids whose abuse was reported to authorities often “forgot” it for years, and the closer the relationship to the abuser (father vs. cousin, for example), the more likely the forgetting.

Isn’t that stunning? Yet it makes total sense. The child has to keep eating breakfast every morning opposite her perpetrator and relying on him for food, learning, and even love. Forgetting is a survival mechanism.