repressed memories

dlowan wrote:

There is, as I said, some evidence that traumatic memories can be stored in a different way from "normal" memories, and that sometimes they return in an overwhelming way when the memory is triggered. People tend to try and avoid those triggers.

Since some people have problems with the term "recovered memory," is this better described as "delayed recall of a traumatic event"?

Why? Since you seem to agree with me, why is my position "over the top?"

Treya wrote:

Where is your proof for any of this Joe? Where is your proof that in every traumatic instance every single person remembers the incident more clearly than day to day life?

In these types of threads, ultimately somebody asks for "proof." The problem, though, is that none of the studies that I'd offer would convince you. It's the same in drug, abortion, and evolution threads, where nobody on one side of the debate accepts any of the evidence on the other side. I've already linked to some studies that, I think, are pretty solid. But I'm not going to spend time searching for even more links when I have no reason to suspect that they'd sway you or BorisKitten or anybody else who is invested in the myth of repressed memories.

Treya wrote:

Where did my memories go of the abuse I suffered as a five year old? I have one very brief memory right before it happened. (no need to go into vivid details about the prelude) Are you saying that because I don't actually remember the whole incident start to finish it surely must not have happened then?

I will say this for the very last time: I AM NOT QUESTIONING THE FACT THAT YOU SUFFERED TRAUMA. I am merely disputing your conclusion that memories of that trauma were "repressed."

Treya wrote:

If so, then please explain how I can have physical scars come from something I don't remember in it's entirety?

I have absolutely no clue. I know nothing about your personal case history, so it would be irresponsible of me to offer any guesses.

It's not about "convincing" me Joe. I'm asking you for information on something you seem to think you are very well informed of based on your opinion on the subject. Are you trying to draw me into a new cultish belief system here? I have no "fraudian" beliefs. All I know is what I know from what I've lived so far. I'm willing to expand that knowledge had I personally been given any links by you... which I haven't.

So I'll ask again... if the memories aren't "repressed" where exactly did they go Joe?

I will agree with you there. That might have been an unfair question on my part, but surely Joe you can explain where the memories go if they aren't repressed... Come on... throw me a bone of some sort here...

It's going to be kind of hard to address something if you don't know what it is.

Quote:

Why? Since you seem to agree with me, why is my position "over the top?"

I neither agree not disagree, really.

I don't think we have sufficient evidence to claim absolute knowledge, which you appear to be doing.

What I DO agree with is the harm done by therapists who went about "recovering" memories.

Your amnesia claim is a point against you by the way.

There occasionally appear to be genuine cases of amnesia as a kind of conversion disorder...where a person is so overwhelmed that they become amnesic for a period.

Emotional memories can be suppressed with practice, new CU-Boulder study says
(University of Colorado Press Release, July 12, 2007)

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study shows people have the ability to suppress emotional memories with practice, which has implications for those suffering from conditions ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression.

The study, which measured brain activity in test subjects who were trained to suppress memories of negative images, indicated two mechanisms in the prefrontal region of the brain were at work, said CU-Boulder doctoral candidate Brendan Depue, lead study author. The study may help clinicians develop new therapies for those unable to suppress emotionally distressing memories associated with disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias, depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive syndrome, he said.

The study was published in the July 13 issue of Science. Co-authors on the study included CU-Boulder Associate Professor Tim Curran and Professor Marie Banich of the psychology department. All three authors are affiliated with CU-Boulder’s Center for Neuroscience and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences, and Banich also is affiliated with the CU-Denver and Health Sciences Center.

“We have shown in this study that individuals have the ability to suppress specific memories at a particular moment in time through repeated practice,” Depue said. “We think we now have a grasp of the neural mechanisms at work, and hope the new findings and future research will lead to new therapeutic and pharmacological approaches to treating a variety of emotional disorders.”

During the training phase of the study, subjects were asked to learn 40 different pairs of pictures, each pair consisting of a “neutral” human face and a disturbing picture such as a car crash, a wounded soldier, a violent crime scene or an electric chair, Depue said.

After memorizing each associated pair, the subjects were fitted with special viewing goggles and placed in MRI scanners at CU’s Health Sciences Center in Denver. Subjects were shown only the face images and asked to either think about, or not think about, the disturbing image previously associated with each face, he said.

The functional brain imaging scans taken during the study indicated the coordination for memory suppression occurred in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, considered by neuroscientists to be the “seat of cognitive control,” he said. The team found that two specific regions of the prefrontal cortex appear to work in tandem to suppress particular posterior brain regions like the visual cortex, the hippocampus and amygdala, which are involved in tasks like visual recall, memory encoding and retrieval, and emotional output, he said.

“These results indicate memory suppression does occur, and, at least in nonpsychiatric populations, is under the control of prefrontal regions,” the researchers wrote in Science. The most anterior portion of the prefrontal cortex highlighted in the study is a relatively recent feature in brain evolution and is greatly enlarged in humans when compared to great apes, said Depue.

The study showed the subjects were able to “exert some control over their emotional memories,” said Depue. “By essentially shutting down specific portions of the brain, they were able to stop the retrieval process of particular memories.”

Depue speculated that memory suppression could be a positive evolutionary trait, using the example of a Stone Age hunter narrowly escaping from a lion while hunting antelope. “If the hunter became so beleaguered by memories of that incident that he stopped hunting, then he would have starved to death.”

It is not clear to what extent an extremely traumatic emotional memory, like a violent battlefield incident or a crippling car accident, manifests itself in the human brain, said Depue. “In cases like this, a person could need thousands of repetitions of training to suppress such memories. We just don’t know yet.”

Originated by psychologist Sigmund Freud more than a century ago, the concept of repressed memories is extremely controversial, said Depue. There is considerable debate today over whether repressed memories and suppressed memories are interchangeable terms, and even as to whether repressed memories exist at all, he said.

“The debate over repressed memories probably won’t be resolved in my lifetime,” said Depue. “I think the important thing here is that we have identified neural mechanisms with potential for helping the clinical community develop new therapeutic and pharmaceutical approaches for people suffering from emotional disorders.”

ehBeth wrote:

It's going to be kind of hard to address something if you don't know what it is.

err, this would have been Setanta posting (kind of funny - to find a post I didn't recall making in a memory-related thread)

That does not mean, on the other hand, that all empirical claims are equally true. If a client told you that she was possessed by demons, I'm confident that you wouldn't accept that claim as true, and the fact that your client really believed that she was possessed wouldn't alter your conclusion. Just because we can't have absolute knowledge about something doesn't mean that we can't be pretty sure about it. In that respect, I'm pretty sure that there's no such thing as the Freudian unconscious, and since the phenomenon of "repression" is premised on the existence of that unconscious, I'm pretty sure that there's no such thing as "repression" either

And how does that, in any way, contradict what I said previously?

Because it seemed to me you claimed that amnesia was always a result of PHYSICAL trauma.

Nov 10, 3:02 AM EST
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) " Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries - signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It's work that one day may allow far easier diagnosis for patients - civilian or military - who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: Problems too often shrugged off as "just in your head" in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them.

"There's something different in your brain," explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. "Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing," encourages more people to seek care.

Up to one in five U.S. veterans from the long-running combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is thought to have symptoms of PTSD. An equal number are believed to have suffered traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs - most that don't involve open wounds but hidden damage caused by explosion's pressure wave.
...
...
There's a remarkable overlap of symptoms between those brain injuries and PTSD, says Dr. James Kelly, a University of Colorado neurologist tapped to lead the military's new National Intrepid Center of Excellence. It will open next year in Bethesda, Md., to treat both conditions.

Yes, headaches are a hallmark of TBI while the classic PTSD symptoms are flashbacks and nightmares. But both tend to cause memory and attention problems, anxiety, irritability, depression and insomnia. That means the two disorders share brain regions.
And Hayes can measure how some of those regions go awry in the vicious cycle that is PTSD, where patients feel like they're reliving a trauma instead of understanding that it's just a memory.

What happens? A brain processing system that includes the amygdala - the fear hot spot - becomes overactive. Other regions important for attention and memory, regions that usually moderate our response to fear, are tamped down.

"The good news is this neural signal is not permanent. It can change with treatment," Hayes says.

Her lab performed MRI scans while patients either tried to suppress their negative memories, or followed PTSD therapy and changed how they thought about their trauma. That fear-processing region quickly cooled down when people followed the PTSD therapy.

It's work that has implications far beyond the military: About a quarter of a million Americans will develop PTSD at some point in their lives. Anyone can develop it after a terrifying experience, from a car accident or hurricane to rape or child abuse.

More research is needed for the scans to be used in diagnosing either PTSD or a TBI. But some are getting close - like another MRI-based test that can spot lingering traces of iron left over from bleeding, thus signaling a healed TBI. If the brain was hit hard enough to bleed, then more delicate nerve pathways surely were damaged, too, Kelly notes.
---

@BorisKitten,
It's going to be kind of hard to address something if you don't know what it is.

One week before my husband died after an 8-month battle against lung cancer, our youngest daughter (age 38) confronted me with the accusation that he had molested her and I had not protected her. We know who her "therapist" was: a strange young woman... In the weeks, months that followed, the nature of the charges altered, eventually involving the accusation that my husband and I had molested our grandson, for whom we had sometimes cared while our daughter worked at her painting. This has broken my heart; it is so utterly untrue.

Amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is a condition.

The existence of this condition is beyond dispute.


Repression is merely one explanation

" often a confusing and misleading one "

for what causes the condition of amnesia.


At least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood

will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse,

followed by experiences of delayed recall.

(Conservative estimate based on published research. See below.)

Elizabeth Loftus

University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is an accomplished researcher with expertise in eyewitness testimony, particularly how the memories of crime witnesses can be distorted by post-event questioning. Loftus is a prominent spokesperson for the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and her views have by and large been very well received by the mass media in the United States. Loftus also testifies as an expert witness on the behalf of people accused of child abuse on the basis of recovered memories. She has co-authored a book entitled The Myth of Repressed Memory.
You've probably heard of Dr. Loftus, and seen her quoted approvingly and uncritically in the popular media. No doubt, as reported in the media, she has prevented some wrongly accused people from being unjustly convicted. She has also played a valuable role by bringing attention and accountability to bear on some irresponsible practices by some incompetent therapists. Yet Dr. Loftus has also claimed that recovered memory is a "myth," and that the majority of such memories are false and implanted by therapists.
Unfortunately, thus far reporters and journalists have almost completely failed to critically evaluate her claims. Nor have they addressed three crucial facts about her work:

1. Loftus herself conducted and published a study in which nearly one in five women who reported childhood sexual abuse also reported completely forgetting the abuse for some period of time and recovering the memory of it later.

2. Loftus misrepresented the facts of a legal case in a scholarly paper and, after finally apologizing to the victim of her misrepresentations, continued to promote the article with falsehoods. (See Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus' Scholarship and Accuracy, by Jennifer Hoult, whose case Loftus misrepresented.)

3. Loftus is aware that those who study traumatic memory have for several years, based on a great deal of research and clinical experience, used the construct of dissociation to account for the majority of recovered memories. However, she continues to focus on and attack "repression" and "repressed memories," which has the effect of confusing and misleading many people.

Here is the study almost never mentioned by Dr. Loftus or the media:

Loftus, E.F., Polonsky, S., & Fullilove, M. T. (1994). Memories of childhood sexual abuse: Remembering and repressing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18, 67-845.

Abstract: "Women involved in out-patient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. The majority (81.1%) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. They also reported greater intensity of feelings at the time the abuse happened. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives did not differ from others in terms of the violence of the abuse or whether the abuse was incestuous. These data bear on current discussions concerning the extent to which repression is a common way of coping with child sexual abuse trauma, and also bear on some widely held beliefs about the correlates of repression."

If you read this paper (and I strongly encourage you to do so, especially if you are presenting this issue to others), you will find that Loftus devotes most of it to attacking the construct of repression. If you read this paper, you will probably find it interesting and ironic that Loftus, after her sustained attack on the construct of repression, uses it to explain the recovered memories of her own study's subjects. If you read this paper and some of the other works cited on this page, you will understand that experts in psychological trauma would not explain the recovered memories of her research subjects in that way, but in terms of dissociation.

Here are the findings at issue:

"Forgetting was associated with a different quality of memory, compared to those who did not forget. Forgetting was associated with a current memory that was deteriorated in some respects. The deteriorated memory was less clear; it contained less of a 'picture,' and the remembered intensity of feelings at the time of the abuse was less" (p.79).

Notice the use of the word "deteriorated" to describe memory characteristics that most trauma specialists would describe as "dissociative." The principle that initially whole memories deteriorate over time is derived from research on nontraumatic memory. In contrast, just as dissociation involves a fragmentation of experience during abuse, subsequent memories tend to appear as fragments too " from the beginning. Thus, if a subject had dissociated during the abuse experience, such fragmentation would likely cause her memory to be "less clear," and to involve less of a "picture." Further, dissociative fragmentation during abuse typically involves a defensive attempt to split (dis-associate) physical and emotional pain from one's conscious experience. This could explain the finding that the women who had forgotten for some time, compared to those who had not, remembered the intensity of their feelings being less during the abuse. But Loftus and her colleagues, understandably wedded to their traditional model of memory and either unable or unwilling to apply the construct of dissociation, can only characterize such memories as "deteriorated."

Ironically, this leads Loftus to use repression as an explanation for these lost memories " though no psychological trauma expert would do so:

"Suppose instead we define repression more conservatively. . . . Just under one fifth of the women reported that they forgot the abuse for a period of time and later regained the memory. One could argue that this means that robust repression was not especially prevalent in our sample" (p.80).

In summary:

* Loftus has conducted and published research which calls into question her public statements on recovered memories; her own study demonstrated that the conditions of amnesia and delayed recall for sexual abuse do exist.

* She has relentlessly attacked the construct of repression in her scholarly work, in her expert testimony to judges and juries, and in her statements to the media; this behavior causes many uninformed people to believe she is arguing that the conditions of amnesia and delayed recall for sexual abuse do not exist.

* She has misrepresented the facts of a legal case in a scholarly paper and, after finally apologizing to the victim of her misrepresentations, continued to promote the article riddled with falsehoods (see Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus' Scholarship and Accuracy)

* She is aware that experts on traumatic and recovered memories, when they do employ explanatory constructs, use dissociation much more than repression to understand these phenomena.

* She has used repression to explain recovered memories reported by subjects in her own research, though experts in traumatic memory would argue that they are more likely dissociative in nature.

* For most of you, this is the first time you are learning these facts, because most members of the popular media addressing this issue have note done their homework or made any of these facts known. (For more on the unreliability and poor track record of the popular media on this issue, see Mike Stanton's piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, U-Turn on Memory Lane).

dlowan wrote:

Because it seemed to me you claimed that amnesia was always a result of PHYSICAL trauma.

Amnesia can be caused by all sorts of things, but the cause is almost always explicable. Explaining things by means of the unconscious, on the other hand, is to resort to the inexplicable.