Abstract
This chapter aims to encourage practitioners and advocates developing public narratives about trauma and abuse that are not only accurate but solutions-focused and hopeful. Increased public interest and understanding of trauma provides much of the material for counter-narratives that oppose the alienating individualism and cynicism promoted by “false memory” advocates. As public and professional interest in trauma grows, “storifying” trauma in principled and solutions-focused ways offers a genuine alternative to the outmoded narratives of the past. The public understanding of trauma has developed to the point of offering a compelling, and ultimately, hopeful, counter-narrative to “false memory” disinformation. The narrative of “false memories” was based upon the public political impulses of the day, and provided journalists, academics and the public with a way of explaining the sudden increase in allegations of sexual abuse, particularly where those allegations challenged “common sense” understandings.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Trauma and Memory: The Science and the Silenced |
Editors | Valerie Sinason, Ashley Conway |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 130-141 |
Number of pages | 12 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781003193159 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781032044323 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |