Psychologists have differing opinions about the topic of repressed memories. Perhaps most notably, psychologists Richard P. Kluft and Elizabeth F. Loftus. Kluft and Loftus provide convincing, yet opposing arguments about the issue of repressed memories, supporting their theories with well-researched evidence. .
Kluft suggests that repressed memories and memories that are lost can be retrieved. He argues that traumatizing memories are the major memories which become repressed. These traumatizing memories include sexual assault, sexual molest, incest and abuse. Throughout his many years of providing his services, he has helped many patients in the recovering of their repressed and lost memories due to traumatization. .
Kluft begins his argument by focusing on examples which confirmed recovered memories. In one instance, he helped to treat a female colleague who was unable to sort out her relationships with men. A recovered alcoholic, she was unable to express herself whenever transference feelings toward Kluft went under exploration. In seeking to help her, he used hypnosis to explore her block. During this trance, she was able to recover memories about her addiction counselor who had encouraged extreme positive transference only to exploit it to seduce her. About a decade later, the addiction counselor then came in for his own psychotherapy. In his sessions, the addiction counselor then revealed that he had manipulated and seduced Kluft's former patient, confirming her hypnotically retrieved account. .
In addition, another example of confirmed recovered memories was made by Kluft to execute that repressed memories can be retrieved. In this example, a woman with dissociative identity disorder came to Kluft to discuss the positives and negatives about tracing her birth parents. Adopted, she often spoke of her adoptive mother and the mental illness that her mother had while in sessions with Kluft.
