Human responses to the Rorschach were analyzed according to developmental principles of differentiation, articulation, and integration in a longitudinal study of normal development (ages 11-12, 13-14, 17-18, and 30) and in a sample of adolescent and young adult inpatients. In normal development, there was a significant increase in well-differentiated, highly articulated, and integrated human figures seen in constructive and reciprocal interactions. In comparison with normals, patients gave human figures that were significantly more inaccurately perceived, distorted, and partial and that were seen as inert or engaged in unmotivated, incongruent, nonspecific, and malevolent activity. Unexpectedly, however, patients, as compared with normals, gave significantly more human responses at developmentally lower levels on accurately perceived responses and significantly more human responses at developmentally advanced levels on inaccurately perceived responses. It was only in the most seriously disturbed patients that both accurately and inaccurately perceived human responses were at lower developmental levels. These findings are discussed in terms of the nature and the function of experiences of reality and the importance of assessing the content and formal properties of object representation in studying normal development and psychopathology.

This commentary evaluates the evidence presented by Alpert, Brown, and Courtois in the Final Report of the APA Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse. The weaknesses in their assessment of evidence and their theoretical arguments go beyond those identified by Ornstein, Ceci, and Loftus. Historical and clinical data are uncritically overvalued, and empirical concepts (like state-dependent memory) are borrowed for explanatory purposes without appreciating the limits and inconsistencies in the underlying empirical research. An argument is advanced that clinical evidence can never be free of the influence of cherished beliefs and that some therapeutically recovered memories may reflect the cherished beliefs of clinicians who recover them.Requests for reprints should be sent to C. Brooks Brenneis,

In the waning of the controversy over recovered memories of trauma, the question may be asked, What evidence is there that the phenomenon exists, not in disputed form, hut in accurate and validated form? Because no memory can he authenticated in isolation, some form of corrohoration is required. A single instance of validly recovered memory demonstrates the existence of the phenomenon. Can such a case be found? In search of the answer, a wide variety of case reports is surveyed. Only a few are without major flaws, but those few are provocative because, for the most part, they deviate substantially in context and content from the recovered memories most frequently described in the clinical literature. This casts doubt on the historical authenticity of therapeutically recovered memories and makes relevant for practice the possibility that they represent commentaries about the analytic present and not revelations about the historic past.The debate about recovered memories of trauma appears to be winding down, but before the issue leaves the stage, it might be important to establish whether the phenomenon of memories for trauma that are lost and

No abstract

When the manifest dreams of young adult male and female Chicanos were examined through an inventory which captures the dream content and pattern, striking differences between male and female dreams were found in the areas of setting, characters, interaction, self, instinctual modalities, and realism. Generally speaking, the men's internal psychic world, as viewed through their dreams, tended to be organized around a highly visible and demarcated self seen as robustly active, randomly in motion, and often contentiously involved with unrelated others. The confines of this internal world were sketched in as broad, but were occupied by boundaries and barriers and were often subject to unpredictable events. In contrast, the women's internal world contained a relatively less sharply defined and less robustly active self, but also a less contentious self with a greater range of interactions with more, and more familiar characters. Narrower confines were matched by less emphasis on boundaries, greater predictability, and more goal-directed locomotion.

No abstract

This study is the conclusion of an exploratory cross-cultural investigation of dream content and organization. Following our report in "Ego Modalities in the Manifest Dreams of Male and Female Chicanos," (Brenneis and Roll, 1975), this paper examines differences in the organization and content of dreams: (1) between Anglo men and women; (2) between Anglo and Chicano men and Anglo and Chicano women; and (3) between Anglos and Chicanos.

The psychoanalytic reconstruction of specific influential past events has been a regular feature of psychoanalytic practice from its inception. More recently, as reconstructions of incestuous sexual abuse have become more frequent, the reconstructive process has attracted attention, and doubts have been expressed about the validity of the analytic evidence used to substantiate their inference. Over the years, psychoanalytic discourse about the adequacy of this evidence has moved from Freud's uneasy confidence to a rather sharply divided debate between advocates and skeptics. From beyond psychoanalysis, memory research raises questions about the validity of this evidence, and research on influence raises questions about the procedures by which it has been collected. A reexamination of several cases in which reconstructions emerged from unstable therapeutic circumstances leads to the conjecture that dynamics located in the analytic present may have been displaced to the historical past. Although logically "truth in the past" need not foreclose on "truth in the present," in practice, once a reconstruction surfaces, the latter seems to disappear behind the former.