Introduces the controversy over recollections of childhood sexual abuse as the window onto a broader field of ideas concerning memory, storytelling, and the psychology of women.

This book draws on interviews carried out over a period of eight years, as well as novels, films, and domestic violence literature, to explain the role of storytelling in the history of the battered women¡¦s movement.

Integrating critical and feminist psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, this text offers a distinct perspective of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a clinical and social phenomenon.