We describe three women with eating or obsessive-compulsive
disorders who were told on initial presentation for treatment that
their symptoms were due to forgotten experiences of childhood abuse
and that recalling these repressed memories was critical to their
recovery. The two patients who attempted to uncover these memories in
psychotherapy were unable to do so and deteriorated. All three
patients responded to treatment with conventional psychopharmacologic
agents, however. These cases suggest that insisting to patients that
they have been abused when they do not think they have been may have
deleterious consequences.