Comments on Review of Book on Hysteria

TO THE EDITOR: I am writing to protest the highly unfair comments on Dr. Merskey's book by Dr. Judith Gold. The reviewer's obvious bias is particularly objectionable. Dr. Merskey is well-known as a critic of the construct of dissociative disorders and of its purported link to childhood trauma (1). Why, then, did the Journal choose as a reviewer Dr. Gold, who is known to be passionately committed to these very ideas? The result was predictable. Dr. Gold dismisses Dr. Merskey's scholarly review as “arguments put forward by the supporters of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.” The readers of the Journal deserve better than this. I recommend that anyone who is interested in conversion and dissociation will benefit from consulting Dr. Merskey's text.