100 Books Like The Myth of Repressed Memory

When I was in graduate school, I watched the movie Awakenings with Robin Williams playing the role of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Having really enjoyed the movie, I went to a bookstore and picked this book up and could not put it down.

Sacks, more than any author I have read, captures the perspectives, struggles, triumphs, feelings, and diversity of people dealing with various psychological and neurological conditions.

At the time, studying psychology, I was reading books, listening to lectures, and watching videos about effective listening practices. Sacks made me understand seeing the person—observing and identifying subtleties, idiosyncrasies, and proclivities—was part of being an effective observer and that listening was only possible if we use our eyes as well. 

Those of us who do behavior science are data-driven. In the realm of human services, it is hard to describe to people what you do and why this approach resonates with those of us in the field.

Just as I was coming into behavior science, I picked up this book, one of the few available dealing with autism. It was eye-opening: a mother’s honest, heart-wrenching, determined look as she came to understand behavior science as a gift of compassion, hope, and promise for those with autism and their families.

I remember thinking that this book was validating the career path I was going down, feeling optimistic about where it would take me, and being grateful to learn about the importance of listening to people talk about their struggles.

When I read this book, I knew who I was: a behavior scientist.

Knowing this, of course, didn’t bring me fame or fortune, nor did it solve any personal problems. Reading this book, though, was powerful and lasting.

It helped determine the idea I would pursue a life trying to help improve the human condition using behavior science, something I have done now for over 30 years. It made me realize behavior science is inherently empathic, pragmatic, and optimistic.

I didn’t read it understanding all of the references or all the ideas that I would come to study later, but I understood the listening I would do would provide an understanding of a person’s environment and how, maybe, just maybe, small changes in it could make the person’s world better, one behavior at a time.

As a 19-year-old kid thinking about maybe being a psychologist, I picked this book up after hearing about the idea of unconditional positive regard introduced by Carl Rogers.

This book contained transcriptions from many of the debates Rogers had with prominent psychologists in the 1950s. When I was reading it, much of it escaped me. But then, he had a dialogue with a psychologist that riveted me. When I read the psychologist’s words, I thought, “This is how I think,” and “Yes, this is the way I see things.”

The psychologist was the eminent behaviorist B. F. Skinner, and this book served to strengthen the idea of listening to others without judgment and also began my lifelong curiosity with more science-based approaches to helping others. 

Focusing in the main on the psychology of memory, in this excellent book Kurt Danziger argues that conceptually memory has changed considerably over time, not least because of the shifting historical contexts in which it has been applied. The book covers such critical issues as different kinds of memory, memory and metaphor, the cultivation of memory, and memory and truth. Danziger’s contention throughout the book is that memory and remembering are ineluctably social, and any sound understanding of them needs to account for how various historical factors and cultural practices have shaped and helped constitute them. 

Drowse Draaisma is a memory specialist, and this lucid, eloquent and humorous book celebrates the rich and fruitful pleasures of memory in later life (and takes the sting out of the natural forgetfulness that comes as we grow older). It combines science, psychology, anecdotes, advice, and it is above all a work of spirit and optimism.  

On some evenings, I like to curl up in bed with a brain-squeezing puzzle.

What I appreciated about this activity book are the various game genres and degrees of difficulty. This allowed me to select a puzzle based on my interest and focus level of the moment.

Overall, it’s a hearty collection of challenges for anyone who loves getting lost in riddles, mazes, and numbers.

Boy Toy is a book that stands out for me because it tackles a rarely discussed subject in young adult literature—the sexual abuse of boys. In this case, the protagonist, Josh, was molested by a teacher when he was younger. Now that he is about to graduate from high school, the repercussions of that abuse, along with the everyday stress he deals with, is coming back to haunt him. Lyga handles this subject matter in an unflinching and realistic way, which can be uncomfortable at times. That said, Boy Toy is definitely a worthwhile, original read.

This well-written, tightly-argued little book of 1995 gathers together four feature articles from The New York Review of Books that together represent a watershed moment in ‘Freud Studies.’ For here was the NYRB, a long-standing bastion of psychoanalysis, publishing splashy articles that functioned like a Hollywood expose of Freud’s failings as a man, thinker, and therapist. In truth, Crews was simply giving voice to a ‘revisionist’ portrait of Freud that started in earnest in the wake of Jones’s three-volume ‘life and work’ of Freud (1953-57). Best of all: Crews connects it all to the ‘recovered memory’ movement of the 1980s and 90s, thereby drawing a  disturbing portrait of Freud’s legacy.  

This memoir addresses a rarely discussed form of trauma: sibling sexual abuse.

With honesty and vulnerability, Epstein recounts the delayed unraveling of repressed memories, the emotional aftermath, and her journey toward healing. The book also raises awareness of the widespread but often overlooked impact of this form of abuse. The author and I both dissociated from our trauma in order to survive.