Repressed Memories

Today I am reading a short book called Living Reminder. It is a book about the healing power of remembering. Living Reminder is a book by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen states that we can not be whole until we take the wounds that we have, and "let them be available".

All of this makes me think about repressed memories. Most scientific research on repressed memories tells us that more often than not repressed memories are planted memories. What I mean by this is that the patient of the psychologist is under considerable influence, and more often than not the therapist creates memories by leading impressionable persons in certain directions.

On the other hand, there are things in my childhood, and in the childhood of people I know, that are lost to conscious memory. I remember very little about the few years after my parents got divorced. My uncle has several years of his childhood, and events in his childhood he does not remember at all either. Most of those are after his father died. (He was about the same age when his father died as I was when my parents broke up). So, are these memories lingering in the subconscious and need to be brought out to be healed? Or is it part of the healthy functioning of the human brain that some events or periods of time are not committed to memory? My mother with my uncle seems to think the latter is the case...that it is God's way of healing a time in his life that others percieved as difficult or painful.

Another caveat to this repressed memory discussion is a conviction of a Catholic priest of molestation some 30 years after the fact, based on repressed memories. Are these memories reliable? If they are not isnt that a scary thing for some kid who is mad they got disciplined at youth group some 20-30 years ago. What is the criterion for establishing the reliability of repressed memory, and when should it be brought to the surface?