Repressed
Memories
 |
It would be hard to imagine a more lively debate—filled
as it is with accusations, counter-accusations, and downright insults—than
the controversy about so-called “repressed” memories. The debate
centers on whether or not traumatic experiences can be repressed out of conscious
awareness and then later recalled, either spontaneously or through
psychotherapy. |
Freud:
The
Beginning
|
Sigmund Freud more-or-less started the whole issue about
repressed memories when his clinical case studies in the late nineteenth
century inspired him to develop his psychological theories
 about the nature of
unconscious
mental processes. He used the term repression to describe the way
emotionally painful events could be blocked out of conscious awareness so
that their painful effects would not have to be experienced.
Note that
this repression process is a completely automatic psychological defense against
emotional trauma and does not involve conscious intent. In contrast, deliberately
pushing something out of awareness because you want to avoid any responsibility
for it is called suppression.
Freud’s
theories all came together in his technique and philosophy of
psychoanalysis,
and repression has been a key concept within that philosophy ever
since. |
Repression:
The
Validity
|
You should realize, however, that Freud’s theories emerged
from case studies, and that the concept of repression has not been scientifically
substantiated. Some studies on the subject have been attempted, usually through
“round-about” methods—such as whether the awareness of an
electric shock associated with a particular word, in a laboratory setting,
will be pushed out of awareness—but, to be honest, repression is an
obscure concept and a credible scientifically controlled
experiment
would be unethical and nearly impossible. Imagine taking several hundred
babies, giving them identical upbringing, all the while subjecting selected
groups of them to various kinds of horrific trauma in childhood, and then
waiting years or even decades to see (a) if any of them remember anything
of the trauma or (b) if the different kinds of trauma affect memory in different
ways.
There has,
however, been some progress in investigating the issue from
naturalistic
studies in which known cases of child abuse
are followed by researchers over the course of many years. In this
research [1,2] the abuse is well documented, so if the child forgets about
it, that also can be documented. And then, if the grown child, adolescent,
or adult (all depending on time) remembers the abuse, the recovered memory
can be documented and compared to the actual records. |
The
Repressed
Memory
Debate
|
Anyway, Freud’s speculative theories have today been
taken up in the context of allegations of childhood sexual abuse; i.e., when
an older child or adult suddenly “remembers” having been abused
in childhood by some particular person, usually a parent. The camps are clearly
divided here, some saying that these things happen all the time and that
they reflect historically real events, while others say that recovered memories
are false. Some groups even argue about the definition and reality of the
mechanism of repression. It can get very ugly. |
The
Clinical
Solution
|
As a researcher and clinician, I certainly know about the
reality of child abuse. I have also treated clients who remembered
“forgotten” traumas. I have even seen improvement in physiological
symptoms apparently because of previously forgotten events that were recalled
and discussed in therapy. But I always approach such occurrences as
“personal revelations” whose historical truth is irrelevant, because,
after all, the point of therapy is to help the client cope with dysfunction
in the present. I don’t go looking for “repressed traumas,”
but if “remembered” events give clinical relief, so much the better.
I’m also careful to be honest about
hypnosis
and guided imagery, acknowledging their wonderful curative power, yet
never trying to attribute any particular “reality” to the
results.
It would require
intense scientific scrutiny to allow these personal revelations to take on
any legal or cultural significance, or to use them to substantiate any
theoretical claims. All objective details would have to be meticulously verified
by outside sources. In the end, I’m not willing to be a private
investigator—I’ll focus on helping people reclaim their human dignity,
even though we might never know what “really” happened in the
past.
And I myself
have had to come to terms with ordinary remembered experiences in my own
life that were later shown to be seriously distorted. As a result, I know
how tenuous and fragile an
“identity”
can be, and I realize that the only thing we can be sure of in life, besides
doubt, is what we believe in and value. |
Three
Fictitious
Stories
|
In order to illustrate the therapeutic points made above,
let’s consider three fictitious stories.
The first story
begins with two of your friends, Billy and Bobby. One day Billy borrows a
large amount of money from you. But when he repeatedly fails to pay it back,
you realize that your friendship with him is ruined, and you lose contact
with him for several years.
Then one afternoon,
when you start to prepare dinner and reach into your cupboard, a can of soup
falls off the top shelf and conks you on the head. When you come to your
senses, you have forgotten about the money Billy owes you. A few days later
someone asks you something about Billy. You suddenly realize that you
haven’t seen him in a long time, so you call him on the phone. Billy,
being very sharp, keeps his mouth shut about the money and just enjoys having
you back as a friend.
Then one morning
while you’re trying to get a piece of toast out of the toaster you get
an electrical shock. Slowly you begin to realize that someone owes you money,
but you can’t remember who it is. After a while, you get the impression
that Bobby owes you the money. When you ask him, he denies that he owes you
money, and in your anger you break off the friendship.
OK. Notice that
this story illustrates two points:
|
1. |
An event that
you cannot remember can be psychologically equivalent to an event that never
happened. |
|
2. |
An event that
you falsely remember can be psychologically equivalent to an event that really
did happen. |
Of course, this
first story, in its emotional sense, is overly simple. Even silly. A real
trauma would diffuse itself across several
ego
states and make things more complicated. So let’s look at a second
story to illustrate this.
You’re a
very young child, and for some reason your mother must leave you in the care
of your uncle for a few months. During that time, he sexually abuses you,
most often by the swimming pool in his back yard. Eventually your mother
takes you back home, and your whole family moves away; you never see your
uncle again. Let’s assume that the memory of the abuse becomes repressed,
for whatever reason, but in its place you’re left with a general fear
of water and the inability to go swimming like other children. This phobia
lasts for years. Then, as an adult, you enter psychotherapy for your phobia
of water, and suddenly you remember the abuse. So the therapy focuses on
the trauma, and, in due time, you’re no longer afraid of water
either.
Here, in this
story, we have the illustration of a trauma being repressed and diffusing
into a phobia that is metaphorically connected to the trauma itself. Then,
in psychotherapy, the real trauma emerges, and with its ultimate resolution
the phobia is resolved as well.
Now let’s
put a twist to these events with a third story.
This time,
let’s assume right from the beginning that your uncle never abused you,
but that he was an odd man, emotionally cold and given to teasing others.
One day, at a family gathering, you fall by the swimming pool and split open
your lip. This causes an uproar in the family, and, during all the confusion,
your uncle makes fun of you, right in front of everybody, for being a “cry
baby.” None of this gets repressed, but it does just recede into the
back of your mind like most childhood events. But for some reason, you develop
a fear of water. Years later, you seek therapy to resolve this phobia. As
you work on your emotional experiences, you slowly develop the suspicion
that your uncle sexually abused you in childhood. So the therapy focuses
on those “memories” and works to resolve them. And with their
resolution, you find that the phobia of water resolves also.
This third story
illustrates the point that even a false memory can be used therapeutically.
Maybe your unconscious mind created the memory of abuse because your uncle
really was a cold man who enjoyed humiliating others, and, by seeing him
as a child abuser, you were able to deal with the emotional fears of humiliation
that motivated the water phobia. Who knows? But just remember this: such
a false memory may be a therapeutic help, but it would be a grave mistake
to try to prosecute your uncle for actual abuse. We, by benefit of the
story, know that the memory was false. But in real life, without independent
corroborating evidence, you will never have the benefit of knowing conclusively
whether a recovered memory is true or false. If you make an accusation, and
you’re wrong, you’re really wrong. |
The
Clinical
Issue
of
Being
Believed
|
While a child is being abused, for example, the child’s
greatest desire is that someone with power and authority will recognize the
abuse and put a stop to it. If this doesn’t happen, and if the child
simply endures years of pain into adulthood without ever being believed,
there will always be a childlike
part
of the adult that desires desperately—and repetitively—to make
others recognize any sort of injustice. This frustration can even be one
of the underlying psychological factors motivating
terrorism.
If such a person
enters
psychotherapy
for the treatment of
trauma,
the issue of “Do you believe me?” can quickly emerge as a therapeutic
problem.
Clearly, if the
psychotherapist says, “Oh, that’s all in your head. Why don’t
you just get over it?” then all of the client’s inner experiences
surrounding the traumatic “memory” are invalidated.
And here is precisely
where the real damage is done. Mind you, the damage has nothing to do with
accepting or denying the past. It doesn’t really matter whether the
psychotherapist believes that the event in question actually happened exactly
as the client remembers it. But it does matter that the psychotherapist
believe the client’s pain because the real therapeutic issue
is whether the psychotherapist can help the client believe his or her
own pain enough to sit and listen to it without running from
it.
In the end,
psychotherapy is all about the adult part of the personality finally listening
to the the frightened child part tell its story—and taking adult
responsibility for the healing process that the child part cannot manage
on its own. For the psychotherapy, then, “Do you believe me?” is
not a question about facts but a question about inner, emotional
respect. |
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Additional
Resources
References:
1. Williams,
L. M. (1994). Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women’s
memories of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
6, 1167–1176.
2. Widom, C. S.,
& Morris, S. (1997). Accuracy of adult recollections of childhood
victimization: Part 2. Childhood sexual abuse. Psychological Assessment,
9, 34–46.
Dissociation:
Dissociative
Disorders from THE MERCK MANUAL, Sec. 15, Ch. 188.
International Society for the Study of
Dissociation
Trauma:
The International Society for Traumatic
Stress Studies (ISTSS) provides a forum for the sharing of research,
clinical strategies, public policy concerns, and theoretical formulations
on trauma in the United States and around the world through its education
and training programs and its various publications.
Related pages within A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice:
Anger: Insult,
Revenge, and Forgiveness
Death—and the Seduction
of Despair
Diagnosis
Forgiveness
Honesty
Identity and
Loneliness
Personality
Psychology and
Psychiatry—and Psychoanalysis
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Trauma and PTSD
Types of Psychological
Treatment
The Unconscious
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