Misattribution of eating and obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms to repressed memories of childhood sexual or physical abuse.

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.