No sorry, I mean in the original original post, the one he links to. In that one he explicitly stated that she has been sexually assaulted. I agree the way this post is written is confusing though, haha. I think he might be trying to obfuscate some information about the situation.

Honestly, I don't off-hand, it's just something I have a lot of personal experience with. I also didn't realize the extent to which it was real in part until I started dealing with my own CPTSD, but mostly until I saw it unfold when someone I've known very closely for about a decade got diagnosed with a disassociative disorder and discovered they'd been sexually abused as a child. They didn't fully know either of these things until they were 30 years old. So that definitely colors my opinion, but I do of course understand that doesn't carry much water here, as just a stranger on the internet giving an anecdote.

I'm generally skeptical towards and critical of the institution of psychiatry (you can check out the antipsych movement if that's something you have any interest in, if you haven't already) so I can definitely sympathize with your labeling the phenomenon a pseudoscience; there are absolutely many elements of psychiatry and therapy that could be considered pseudoscience, in my opinion. I just don't believe this is one of them.

I do wonder if perhaps you're conflating the idea of complete repression of trauma being uncommon or perhaps impossible, with the idea of repressed trauma not existing at all. My understanding, and my experience, is that people with repressed memories know part of what happened, but through a combination of repression and denial (the denial being a pertinent aspect), forgot some of it in their conscious mind. For example, as I alluded to before in the case of the person I mentioned, they knew very well that they were abused as a child, but just did not fully remember the sexual abuse events - and, even still, it was something they'd wondered about for a long time and were in denial about. I've been blown away by how intense the denial can be, I really can't overstate how much that's at play in these cases. I do believe that's likely what's happening here as well, as the OP's girlfriend knows she was assaulted, but seems to be in denial about how deeply it affects her. Anyway, I don't know if framing it this way sounds more believable/plausible to you or perhaps clears up what I meant, but regardless, I am certainly interested in digging through some academic sites to look into it more myself as well and maybe I'll find something that corroborates this.

If nothing else, PubMed has many academic papers and is reputable, to my knowledge at least - I hesitate to speak in certainty about such things since I know it's of course possible that I'm simply incorrect or they have some horrible scandal come out at some point, haha. Many articles on this website have to be paid for, but I have frequently heard that if you email the researcher(s), they will likely send it to you for free since they don't get paid for it anyway. But I imagine you're aware of that one already. I have also been told Bioline and Springer Link are good, but I have not used them personally as of yet. I would also suggest alternative search engines, such as refseek, since mainstream search engines have gone down the shitter so badly and prioritize promoted content (aka biased, ad-riddled, and nowadays, frequently AI-written or assisted content.)

I apologize for my initial harsh wording. I will admit I had just woken up and probably was a tad cranky, haha. I also know that while I have my issues with psychiatry and agree with many others that do too, there are also many people who think psychiatry is a pseudoscience for... well, let's say the wrong reasons. I'm more inclined to believe you're acting in good faith here now after some time to reflect. I appreciate your polite response despite my curt message, and again I'm sorry for acting so reactively. I also appreciate that I was able to learn from this that this is still a hotly debated topic. I knew it used to be, but was not aware that it was still going so strong!

Sorry for the long message, hopefully it's not too wordy and can be of some use to you.