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Commentary: Questionable validity of ‘dissociative amnesia’ in trauma victims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Chris R. Brewin*
Affiliation:
Cognition, Emotion & Trauma Group, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX

Extract

The article by Pope et al is a good illustration of why the literature on trauma and forgetting contains so many pitfalls for the unwary reader, and of how different commentators can come to radically different conclusions. As I have argued elsewhere (Brewin, 1996; Brewin & Andrews, 1997), many of the problems arise from questionable assumptions about the phenomena being studied and about what is good science. A different set of assumptions would, I believe, have led to fairer conclusions about the evidence on trauma and memory.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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