Bessel van der Kolk Lands $10 Million Book Deal, Reviving 1990s Repressed-Memory Fight
Updated
Updated · skeptic.com · Aug 19
Bessel van der Kolk Lands $10 Million Book Deal, Reviving 1990s Repressed-Memory Fight
1 articles · Updated · skeptic.com · Aug 19
Summary
$10 million for Bessel van der Kolk’s next books has reignited debate over repressed memories, with critics warning his new titles could spread a theory they say was discredited in the 1990s.
Van der Kolk’s 2014 bestseller The Body Keeps the Score remains hugely influential—still a New York Times bestseller and carrying more than 84,000 positive Amazon ratings—while the new deal includes a sequel, a workbook and two children’s books.
Critics argue the core claims behind that work do not hold up: studies they cite found trauma memories were no more fragmented than other memories, including among PTSD patients, and fragmentation did not reliably improve with treatment.
They also point to research suggesting adults reporting recovered or inferred abuse memories had more trouble distinguishing imagined events from perceived ones, raising concern that therapy techniques can turn suggestion into apparent memory.
The dispute revives the old 'Memory Wars' for a younger audience, as recent books including Amy Griffin’s The Tell help return repressed-memory ideas to mainstream culture.