From Repressed Memory to Dissociative Amnesia

 Post by Anastasia Sares

The takeaway

In the 1990s, there was heated scientific debate about whether people could recover “repressed” memories, or whether therapists were instead inducing false memories in their patients. One might assume this debate has been resolved, but it has cropped up under differing forms into the late 2010s, especially when it comes to deciding whether to admit such memories as testimonies in court. These kinds of recovered memories can exist in specific situations, but unreliable memories are also possible.

From repression to dissociation

The term “repressed memory” has generally fallen out of favor; however, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM 5) uses the term “dissociative amnesia” and defines a variety of dissociative disorders. This reflects the consensus of the scientific community, that traumatic memories—particularly, those that are very intense and experienced early in life—can be forgotten for a period of time, at least consciously (for example, of a woman who had a traumatic experience in an elevator and now refuses to take an elevator, though she does not know why). Studies that follow up with abuse victims whose childhood trauma history is recorded (medical record, etc.) find that some do indeed forget about their abuse and later remember it, and their recovered memories are just as reliable as those that were remembered continuously from the time of trauma.

Testing false memory in the lab

Now, this is not to deny the fact that memories can be unreliable. For example, when participants are presented with a list of related words, like “bed” “tired” “yawn” and then when asked to recall the words, they may include “sleep,” which was related to the other words on the list but not actually presented. When people are asked leading questions about whether or not they have experienced something, they may agree they have experienced it, even if they did not. Some recent evidence has shown that certain types of therapies (like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing also known as EMDR) can make people more prone to these sorts of errors. In addition, people with specific mental illnesses, such as dementia, schizophrenia, or Korsakoff syndrome may confabulate, or invent memories.

What's the impact?

As with many debates, there is at least a grain of truth on both sides. Both false and genuinely recovered memories can exist. Dissociative amnesia related to trauma or abuse is most likely to happen to people who experienced intense trauma at a young age. A person’s memory of an event, regardless of its status as “repressed,” would be bolstered by external evidence of that event in court. In the end, each case must be treated with its own unique sensitivity and scrutiny.

References +

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