Dissociation is defined as significant discontinuity in awareness, perceptions, bodily sensations, and/or memory that is self-reported, meets psychiatric diagnostic criteria for a dissociative disorder, or is so delineated as a result of psychological measurements. The focus of this literature is on women’s dissociative experiences occurring in the aftermath of childhood abuse. The review begins with assumptions that dissociation is a real phenomenon, having multiple manifestations, but is also a social construct with such constructs applied distinctly across gender. The review is feminist in that it is focused on the ways that clinicians talk about dissociation and act on these ideas, such that they affect the day-to-day lives of women survivors of child abuse. The review begins with a brief history on the concept of dissociation and then proceeds covering the areas of measuring dissociation and its incidence in childhood abuse cases; types of dissociative experience and consequences for women abuse survivors; multiple personalities and childhood abuse; false memories, dissociation, and childhood abuse; dissociation and religious/ritual abuse; dissociation and the body, physiology of dissociation and trauma; self-harm, abuse, and dissociation; the language and practices of treatment, dissociation; and revictimization; and pathology and/or protections. The review points toward four key realizations about women child abuse survivors. First, when women volitionally do not pay attention to traumatic material, this is not dissociation. Secondly, when dissociation is not problematic, it can be normalized. Thirdly, when problems related to but not caused by dissociation occur, both components need attention, and lastly, when dissociation itself is interfering with life’s purposes and pleasures, women need to receive treatment that preserves their autonomy, credibility, and interests. This review was based on the theory that the avoidance of painful material is at the base of dissociative experiences, yet, if not for the ability to compartmentalize overwhelming stress, such as childhood abuse, the woman survivor could not psychologically carry the realities of the trauma with her until such a time as these “demons” can be released and tamed. Dissociation may be more generally understood as a way to remember versus a way to forget. References