You suspect a patient's account of a particular childhood memory may be a screen memory. Before revealing the answer, decide how you would approach establishing this.

Approach this gradually and without pressure, since establishing which specific parts of a memory are true and which are substituted is often genuinely difficult and can require careful exploration over more than one session rather than a single direct challenge. Where possible, gently cross-check details of the memory against other sources or accounts, and pay attention to any part of the memory that seems inconsistent, oddly vivid, or protects the person from a more distressing version of events. Avoid suggesting a specific alternative version yourself, since the aim is to let the substituted detail and the painful truth it may be protecting against emerge from the patient's own exploration, not to introduce a new, equally unreliable account.