Tag: Memory

Carla Clark at Brain Blogger on repressed memories: bullshit or not?

The idea is that repressed memories are different to suppressed memories. Suppressed memories we have pretty solid proof of, although some of us are better at it than others, which in some scientific circles, as we mentioned in a recent article on how best to control intrusive thoughts, has resulted in these proficient thought controllers being dubbed ‘natural repressors’.

Suppressing a memory involves some form of consciously directed effort – a choice – to attempt to not think about it or not. A bona fide repressed memory on the other hand is often considered to happen without free will in response to traumatic events, or has been buried so deep in our subconscious minds that it can take years for the memory to fully resurface.

That’s the spooky Hollywood kind, that finally comes roaring out of the darkness if Joanne Woodward just keeps calling you sweetie long enough.

Indeed, supporters of both sides tend to agree that there is no direct empirical evidence as of yet that unconscious memory repression is a real and reliable phenomenon. You see, the problem with investigating the existence of repressed memories is their subjective nature.

There is no real way, at present, to peek inside the minds of those claiming to have had, or indeed claiming to currently have, repressed memories and see what is going on. All we have is their word. Even if there is solid proof of being exposed to traumatic events, humans are pretty susceptible to self-deception, the memory itself may have never been truly repressed and pushed out of the realms of conscious recall.

And yet we’re told (in some circles) that we simply have to believe, and if we don’t, we’re turning our backs on survivors.

So far, the evidence we have is largely circumstantial and highly-subjective evidence. While some of that evidence comes from sexual abuse victims and genocide survivors on the one hand, other reports of repressed memories come from people claiming to be abducted by aliens, which as you can imagine in the scientific community, doesn’t help matters much.

Exactly. It casts a lot of doubt on the techniques used to dredge up these “repressed” memories.

While false memory syndrome is NOT considered a syndrome in the DSM, the production of false memories is indeed real and has been tested in the lab, and the term is widely used to describe the hypothesis that recovered memories have the potential to be partially incorrect or altogether false.

In fact, this year, one study indicates that it is not the process of hypnosis itself that can produce false memories in some individuals. In fact, the results suggest that those that are the most readily hypnotized, i.e. are highly suggestible and have flexible belief systems, are also more susceptible to the development of false memories.

That’s the thing, isn’t it. If you’ve never formed the habit of noticing bullshit and reacting against it…then you haven’t, and so you’re susceptible to being fooled by bullshit.

I’m reminded by a Facebook conversation that there are people who still believe in “repressed memory.” (I’m reminded – see what I did there?)

An interesting article from 2008 talks about it as a cultural phenomenon:

ARE SOME experiences so horrific that the human brain seals them away, only to recall them years later? The concept of “repressed memory,” known by the diagnostic term dissociative amnesia, has long fueled controversy in psychiatry. During the 1980s, claims of childhood sexual abuse based on recovered memories led to a spate of highly publicized court cases. A number of the supposed victims retracted their allegations in the early 1990s, admitting that they had been swayed by therapeutic techniques. Yet the scientific validity of dissociative amnesia has remained contested ground.

In a recent study, professor of psychiatry Harrison Pope, co-director of the Biological Psychiatry Lab at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, put “repressed memory” to the test of time. He reasoned that if dissociative amnesia were an innate capability of the brain—akin to depression, hallucinations, anxiety, and dementia—it would appear in written works throughout history. In collaboration with associate professor of psychiatry James Hudson, Michael Parker, a professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, Michael Poliakoff, director of education programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and research assistant Matthew Boynes, Pope set out to find the earliest recorded example of a “repressed memory.”

They found quite a lot from the 19th century, but nothing before that.

The researchers then offered a $1,000 reward—posted in three languages on more than 30 Internet websites and discussion groups—to the first person to identify a case of dissociative amnesia in any work of fiction or nonfiction prior to 1800. They received more than 100 responses, but none met the “repressed memory” criteria. Although many early texts describe ordinary forgetfulness caused by natural biological processes, as well as instances of individuals forgetting happy memories and even their own identities, there were no accounts of an inability to recall a traumatic experience at one point and the subsequent recovery of that memory.

In a report of their findings published in Psychological Medicine, Pope and his colleagues concluded that the absence of dissociative amnesia in works prior to 1800 indicates that the phenomenon is not a natural neurological function, but rather a “culture-bound” syndrome rooted in the nineteenth century. They argued that dissociative amnesia falls into the diagnostic category “pseudo-neurological symptom” (or “conversion disorder”)—a condition that “lacks a recognizable medical or neurological basis.”

It makes such a compelling story.

 What, then, accounts for “repressed memory’s” appearance in the nineteenth century and its endurance today? Pope and his colleagues hope to answer these questions in the future. “Clearly the rise of Romanticism, at the end of the Enlightenment, created fertile soil for the idea that the mind could expunge a trauma from consciousness,” Pope says. He notes that other pseudo-neurological symptoms (such as the female “swoon”) emerged during this era, but faded relatively quickly. He suspects that two major factors helped solidify “repressed memory” in the twentieth-century imagination: psychoanalysis (with its theories of the unconscious) and Hollywood. “Film is a perfect medium for the idea of repressed memory,” he says. “Think of the ‘flashback,’ in which a whole childhood trauma is suddenly recalled. It’s an ideal dramatic device.”

That’s what I mean about compelling. Movies can show the memory as it’s recovered – that is, they can seem to show it, which for us open-mouthed watchers amounts to the same thing. Movies can be incredibly good at overwhelming our critical faculties.