[Retrieved memories of traumatic events in the youth]

A working party of the Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a report on retrieved recollections of sexual abuse during childhood and drawn up guidelines for the coping with such recollections. In contradiction to what the working party is asserting, amnesia for sexual abuse in the past may not be excluded. The working party's conclusion that false recollections of negative events can be induced in susceptible persons may be endorsed. As the working party also states, extreme caution is to be exercised in coping with retrieved recollections of childhood traumas, in which no reliable distinction can be made between true and false recollections because independent and objective evidence is often lacking.