Recovered memory has become a contentious issue in therapy. For some, recovered memories are accurate images of actual events; for others, recovered memories are fictions termed false memory syndrome. This work moves beyond the poles pf "true: and "false" memories to show how women's stories reveal layers of gendered and ambigious meanings, spanning a wide historical, cultural, literary and clinical landscape. Haaken provides an alternative reading of clinical material, showing how sexual storytelling traverses the symbolic and the "real" and how the cultural repression of desire remains as problematic for women as does the psychological legacy of trauma.