Repressed Memories: A Recent Development?

[ramonmercado]

Repressed memories a recent development?
No one wrote about this condition until the 1800s.
Kerri Smith



The idea of repressed memory — when traumatic events are wiped from a person's conscious memory but resurface years later — has had a chequered past. Some have cited it as evidence in court, yet others dismiss it as nothing more than psychiatric folklore.

A new study adds a literary layer of evidence to the debate. To see how long the idea of repressed memories have been around, a group of psychologists and literature scholars turned to historical writings.

They could not find a single description of repressed memory, also referred to as dissociative amnesia, in fiction or factual writing before 1800.

Harrison Pope of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues harnessed the power of the Internet to gather information, advertising on more than 30 websites and discussion boards a US$1,000 prize to the first person who could find an example of repressed memory after a traumatic event in a work published before 1800.

If such cases existed, they reasoned, then throughout history, individuals would have witnessed them and written about them in the literature of the time. Other psychological phenomena, like delusions or dementia, have been documented across the ages in this way, with no particular date at which the condition suddenly emerges.

But although more than 100 people replied, they came away empty-handed. There were "a number of near misses", Pope says, such as King Dushyanta, a character in a 4th century play by the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa who forgets he was in love with his wife Shakuntala as a result of a curse. But this example doesn't qualify, says Pope, as the memory is not of a distressing event.

Cultural sensitivity

Writing in the journal Psychological Medicine1, the team suggest that repressed memories are not a neurological reality, but a cultural invention from the time when Freud's theories of the unconscious mind took hold of nineteenth century psychology. "I'm reasonably confident that if there were a case, it would have surfaced," Pope says.

The idea of trawling the historical literature for examples occurred to Pope as he read Rudyard Kipling's 1897 novel, Captains Courageous, to his children. The main character develops amnesia after losing his family in a flood, but a later event suddenly brings the memory back.

Other psychologists are less certain about the technique. Repressed memory is a strategy usually seen in children trying to cope with abuse, says Chris Brewin, a psychologist at University College London. The focus of literature might have been on adults, he notes — the wrong place to pick up these experiences. And not finding examples doesn't necessarily mean that the condition wasn't there.

Total recall

Could literature searches along similar lines help to demystify disputes over other psychological conditions? "The technique would apply only to things that are easy to recognise," Pope says. It would not be so straightforward, he adds, to look for things with non-specific symptoms, such as attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism.

Pope is quick to add that their findings don't mean that the condition doesn't need treatment. Even things with no biological basis need to be dealt with, he says.

But the idea that it is not a neurological disorder does have implications for legal claims, he says. He warns that people who feel they have remembered repressed memories may not be recalling real events.


References
Pope H., et al. Psychol. Med., 37. 225 - 233 (2007).



Story from [email protected]:
http://news.nature.com//news/2007/070205/070205-5.html

 

[OldTimeRadio]

But this example doesn't qualify, says Pope, as the memory is not of a distressing event.

But if you set up such parameters to exclude reports before 1800, isn't that going to guarantee that you have no pre-1800 reports?

I've had experiences with both "recovered memories" and "false memories" but none have been in any way associated with traumatic events.

 

[RainyOcean]

That's interesting. May I ask why you think the 'recovered memories' may have been repressed, if not by some kind of trauma? Did you just forget them over time, or was there another reason?

 

[ramonmercado]

You may post comments on the article here:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2007/ ... nt_de.html

 

[Kondoru]

`Captain Courageous` is one of Kiplings lesser known but better novels IMHO

Im not sure about repressed memories, but trauma can do some nasty things, however to affect memory like as not it would be severe and render the victim poorly functional. (as it does Penn, in the novel. He undergoes a dramatic change from a top preacher to a simple minded sailor who is partialy dependent on his farmer cousin...But `CC` is full of larger than life characters..but not impossibly so.)

 

[OldTimeRadio]

That's interesting. May I ask why you think the 'recovered memories' may have been repressed, if not by some kind of trauma? Did you just forget them over time, or was there another reason?

Sorry for the delay in reply. I've been searching my mind for any especially traumatic triggers and I certainly can't think of any.

 

[GNC]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tay ... 054249.stm

Settlement for bogus abuse woman

A woman who falsely accused her father of rape after undergoing a discredited form of therapy has received an out-of-court settlement.

Katrina Fairlie, 37, launched a claim seeking damages from NHS Tayside.

She claimed the "recovered memory" treatment triggered accusations which had ruined her and her family's lives.

The health board said the settlement, reported to be £20,000, had been made on economic grounds and without admission of liability.

Katrina was undergoing recovered memory therapy in a psychiatric hospital in Perth when she made a series of allegations of sexual abuse by her father, former SNP deputy leader Jim Fairlie.

Duty of care

She later said those claims were completely untrue and a police investigation found there was no evidence of abuse.

Mr Fairlie had previously sued Perth and Kinross Healthcare NHS Trust, now part of NHS Tayside, for £250,000 in compensation.

However, a judge dismissed the action after ruling that the trust did not owe a duty of care to Mr Fairlie as a relative of a patient.

Ms Fairlie brought her own action against NHS Tayside and a hearing was scheduled in Edinburgh.

A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said: "We can confirm an out-of-court settlement was reached with Ms Fairlie without any admission of liability on the part of NHS Tayside or its predecessor authorities.

"The decision had been made purely on economic grounds."

So much for repressed memories...

 

[Yithian]

No thanks for the memories...

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Perhaps, some of those victims of the Witchcraft Persecutions, back around the 17th Century, who confessed to the most baroque encounters with the devil, demons and wild Sabbaths, under torture and prompting, were early sufferers of 'False Memory' syndrome?

 

[OneWingedBird]

So much for repressed memories...

it looks like that case has been dragging on for a long time... earlier reports are rather interesting:

The Scotsman - 9 July 2004

Father loses claim over sex-abuse allegations

A FATHER who claimed his daughter falsely accused him of sadistic sex abuse while undergoing "recovered memory therapy" lost a £250,000 damages action yesterday.

James Fairlie, 63, said his family life was shattered after a psychiatrist disclosed his belief that the allegations were true.

However, a judge ruled that Mr Fairlie’s case could not be allowed to proceed to a stage where he would be given the chance to prove that the doctor had been negligent.

The Court of Session was told that in 1994, Katrina Fairlie, then 24, was treated for severe abdominal pains, and when her symptoms continued she was admitted to a psychiatric unit at the Murray Royal Hospital, Perth.

Mr Fairlie, of Crieff, said his daughter underwent intensive "recovered memory therapy".

According to Mr Fairlie, Katrina, as a result of the therapy, alleged that he and others had sexually abused her in a brutal and sadistic manner. He maintained that the allegations "were entirely without foundation" and were subsequently withdrawn by Katrina, but not before social workers and the police had become involved.

Perth & Kinross Healthcare NHS Trust denied that Katrina had undergone recovered memory therapy, or that the psychiatrist had told members of the family that he believed Mr Fairlie had abused her.

Sunday Times, 18 Feb 2004

...Fairlie is suing the former Tayside Regional Council which provided social services in Perth at the time of the allegations. He claims that the social work department breached his confidentiality by passing false information to his family which made them doubt his innocence. He is also seeking compensation from Perth and Kinross Healthcare Trust (now called Tayside Primary Care Trust) for medical negligence in making the wrong diagnosis at the Murray Royal Hospital...

so she recovered the memories during the repressed memory therapy that the trust says she never had?

james fairlie, not content with his daughter taking back her claims, went on to try and extract 1/4million £ from his local nhs trust... evidently with no concern for the consequences of that... to prove a point?

i really don;t think this is as straightforward as it looks...

 

[EnolaGaia]

The classic concept of a repressed memory (a la Freud) is now viewed with a lot of skepticism.

Can you recover repressed memories?

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United States was in the grip of a panic. Thousands of adults were recovering memories of horrific childhood abuse — memories they believed they had long repressed because they were too painful to bear. In all, 736 legal claims were filed, usually against family members, based on these memories, according to The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a non-profit based in Philadelphia.

At the end of the 1990s, the epidemic of recovered childhood traumas died down as investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice proved some allegations of abuse false. But the concept of memory recovery never completely disappeared from psychology. A recent study found that 76% of clinicians still believe in memory repression today.

But is it really possible to recover deeply repressed memories of an event, years after it happened?

Related: Was Freud right about anything?

It was early 20th century psychologist Sigmund Freud who initially theorized that people dissociate, or tune out, at the time of a trauma, losing all memory and awareness of the event. But there's no evidence that such a mechanism is possible, said Albert Katz, a psychologist at Western University in Ontario, Canada.

"There's no doubt we can forget things," Katz told Live Science, "But that doesn't necessarily mean that there's been this active process to keep them out of consciousness."

There are many reasons people forget. We gradually forget the things we don't call to mind frequently. We also tend to forget mundane, everyday events. We can even forget on purpose, said Charles Brainerd, a psychologist at Cornell University. In one study, participants were more likely to forget a list of words when told to put it out of their minds. Although intentionally forgetting (also called "directed forgetting") might help you forget an awkward first date, it won't cause a real trauma to fade from memory. That's because we preferentially remember traumatic events, Brainerd said. "It's one of the basic laws of memory," he told Live Science. ...

A number of therapies in vogue during the 80s and 90s aimed to bring so-called "repressed memories" to the surface. Therapists and their clients thumbed through photos of their childhood and read books in which characters were sexually abused, Brainerd said. They participated in hypnosis and guided imagery exercises, in which therapists give verbal suggestions to help clients call to mind specific scenarios and sensations.

The problem was, these styles of therapy encourage people to develop “memories” that never actually happened, Katz said. That’s because people are prone to creating false memories when given hints or suggestions. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/repressed-memories-not-science.html