[Gnaw]

Does anyone have experience with digging out long repressed memories?

I don't remember very much of my childhood. Just a few fragments here and there between ages 4 and 15ish. The rehab I'm in has a specialty group for people who were adopted, traumatized, abused, suffer PTSD, etc. Turns out I have earned my spot in that group under multiple categories (Yeah, I fit in!! Oh, wait.....) Anyways the head of the psychologist department wants to try some exposure therapy and "a couple of other things" to try to get me remembering.

I'm very leery of that type of stuff because I can recall (ooo irony) a big deal being made of false memory implantation back in the 80s here in the states. So have the techniques become any more reliable in the 20 some years since?

[Terez]

That is a good question. I discussed this recently with a guy who was in grad school for psychology—he's a practicing therapist now—and from what he said about it, I'd be leery still.

[Gnaw]

jeezus. ask a question and get an answer in 2 minutes. from a reliable member of the community.

My higher power at work! Or, you know, coincidence. (Being an atheist in a 12 step oriented place is difficult some days)

[EmperorMagus]

Quote

Repressed memories, also known as motivated forgetting, occur when the experience of an event is not available for recall, meaning an individual cannot access the memory of a specific experience or a series of experiences. Memories are usually repressed when the experience of an event is traumatic for the individual. This can occur with any experience that an individual feels is deeply upsetting; it frequently occurs in cases of child abuse or sexual abuse. The individual experiencing the traumatic event will suppress the memory in order to protect himself or herself from integrating the memory into his or her life experience. This can occur in situations where the individual is reliant on the perpetrator of the abuse, as in a case where a parent sexually abuses his or her child. By repressing the memory of the abuse, the child may continue to accept care without the dissonance of accepting maltreatment.
Memories that were previously repressed may later be recalled; frequently their recall is related to a visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or other stimulus related to the content of the original memory. Memory recall may be spontaneous or elicited on purpose. Recalled repressed memories may be experienced as a complete memory, as a flashback, or through dreams. They may be very specific or they may be more vague. Some repressed memories may manifest only as a feeling or sense the individual experiences.
Symptoms that an individual may have repressed memories may include nightmares, unexplained phobias, or post-traumatic stress disorder-like symptoms. Individuals may experience their repressed memories like a sense of déjà vu they experience when they are in the same location as or surrounded by the same circumstances of their original memory. There are numerous types of therapies and help for individuals experiencing these symptoms or those who suspect they may have repressed memories.
While the concept of repressed memories originated with Freud, who developed theories about the nature of the unconscious, repressed memories became more common in modern culture in the 1980s and 1990s. It was at this time that court cases commonly began to use previously repressed memories in testimony. Juries respond significantly to eyewitnesses, so these testimonies were persuasive and led to a number of criminal convictions. Because of the importance of the repressed memories of key witnesses, further research was done in the area by Dr. Loftus, resulting in her 1991 book, The Myth of the Repressed Memory, a collaboration with Ms. Ketcham. Prior to this research, it was assumed that all recovered repressed memories were true. However, Dr. Loftus's research introduced controversy to the reliance on recovered repressed memories by showing that these memories were not necessarily true. Dr. Loftus introduced the idea of false memories, whereby a memory seems real but is not.
The idea of a memory feeling real but not being true led to the creation of false memory syndrome (FMS). FMS is where individuals feel as though they have recovered a memory but instead their mind has created a pseudo-memory. The pseudo-memory is typically like any other memory. It usually involves people, places, and things about which the individual already has memories. However, this memory is created by the brain and is of an experience that never occurred. The pseudo-memory is not a lie the individual is telling; instead, it is more like a trick the brain is playing on the individual. Unfortunately, at this time, there is no way to tell the difference between a pseudo-memory and a real recovered memory. Corroborating evidence is currently used to determine if something remembered is real or an illusion.
The existence of FMS is part of the reason it is difficult to use therapy to access previously repressed memories. People are frequently persuaded by the power of suggestion, and thus a therapist asking about possible repressed memories might be seen as creating false memories. Law enforcement and child protection officers who might be called in to investigate allegations of physical or sexual abuse are also trained in how to question individuals in a way to avoid creating false memories. Two key elements of this questioning style are to ask open-ended questions that are not leading and to not repeat questions regarding specific events. Having individuals repeat their memory of events may, in itself, modify their memories of that experience.
Although controversy remains over repressed memories, any symptoms or suspicions of repressed memories should be addressed by an individual trained to work with repressed memories. Repressed memory therapy (RMT) was originally developed to help individuals who believed that they had repressed memories. This therapy uses hypnosis, visualization, and trance-like states in patients to encourage them to recover their repressed memories. Due to research in the area of FMS, this therapy is controversial because of the suggestible nature of the individual undergoing treatment and the ability of the therapist to inadvertently create pseudo-memories. Instead, individuals who suspect they may have repressed memories may see a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, psychologist, or social worker, all of whom may be able to provide counseling specific to this problem.

Source:

Sexual Violence and Abuse: An Encyclopedia of Prevention, Impacts, and Recovery
Ed. Judy L. Postmus. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013. p506-508. COPYRIGHT 2013 ABC-CLIO, LLC
Judith Leitch, pg 506


In summary: Repressed memories exist, but they are fabricated a lot of the times too.

[Tsundoku]

Makes sense. I mean, we can already convince ourselves what we believe is true, old memories slowly altering to fit how we prefer to see ourselves so that later in life what we (think we) remember bears little resemblance to the facts/truth. Probably helped along with external input as well (eg shrinks "leading the witness" during therapy).

Is this phenomenon related to why Police prefer to rely on evidence and not witness testimony?

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 30 April 2016 - 02:28 AM

[Mentalist]

Repressed memories are VERY iffy things.

it's one thing where a therapist tries to get you comfortable enough to make you face the stimuli that may becausing you an averse reaction.

But when people try to "force" you to "recall" memories that you may have "repressed"... well, there's many things wrong with that. Humans are incredibly suggestible. And our memories are super-malleable.

As someone who did a seminar in Eyewitness psych in undergrad, I can tell you horror stories about eyewitness accounts.

I'm not super-current on therapy techniques (I never did much on the therapy side, my degree was more of sciency-type), but my understanding is, it involves a form of hipnosis so as to "lower your resistance"... yeah, I'd take it with major scepticism

[amphibian]

I would be very wary of a program that's exploring this so soon after giving you tools to cope with what you're dealing with.

I would table this for now and make sure that you can cope with current workload, then maybe go back and explore.

As many have said, memory is a flexible thing and it may be less of what happened than a way for you to work through things. I believe you in that some of these things are awful and gnarly. But you gotta figure out a way forward that your comfortable with and with professionals you trust. That may not be this crowd at this time.

Hope you get something good outta this.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Yes, though fortunately I had already read a lot about FMS and in my case the traumatic memories weren't really "repressed". Don't expect "repressed memories" to be factually accurate. They could be pure fantasy, or unconscious conjecture. But emotional and implicit memory traces from childhood, even if they're not connected with accurately recallable explicit memories, can significantly impact our adult lives; and "recovered memories" can represent emotional truths, or symbolize aspects of our unconscious frameworks that may have been shaped by past traumatic events. As an atheist, you can treat their specific "factual" content with almost the same skepticism you'd apply to past life regression (I don't believe in past lives at all, but I still found past life therapy interesting and therapeutic) or to pure speculation about what your childhood experiences (and fantasies, and cognitive frames) could have been. (For example, I'm pretty sure I wasn't forming long term explicit memories in the womb, but I had been told about something traumatic that happened to me there (umbilical cord wrapped around the neck, which could have contributed to my later excessive anxiety about suffocation and drowning), and during age regression my unconscious mind spontaneously speculated about what it might have been like.)

Can working with "repressed" (pseudo-)memories, by reframing or changing their emotional content, actually change or erase the emotional memory trace, the way propranalol appears to in people (and rats) with phobias? My personal experience (after having done hypnotic age regression several times with different hypnotherapists, and repeating it through self-hypnosis many times over the last 10 years) has been that it helped me gain perspective and triggered a strong emotional release, but I had to do self-hypnosis every day to go without symptoms. The self-hypnosis (not so much the age regression, I think, as the more present and future focused forms) did help me get over alcoholism (I had gotten to the point where I felt I needed at least five drinks just to feel comfortable leaving my apartment or being around people, and I was drinking all day).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 01 May 2016 - 04:17 PM

[Terez]

Gnaw, on 30 April 2016 - 01:35 AM, said:

jeezus. ask a question and get an answer in 2 minutes. from a reliable member of the community.

I am subscribed to this forum so I get an email whenever someone posts a new topic. Then I decide whether I want to subscribe to the thread itself. I have too many message boards to browse all of them, and I stopped browsing Malazan years ago. It's probably my favorite board at this point, but it's too busy for me to keep up with, so I subscribe to the forums I care about this most. (This one, and the RJ/Brandon subforum, and I think I'm also subscribed to the GRRM forum. Very rarely do I wander outside those forums.)

This post has been edited by Terez: 03 May 2016 - 09:18 PM

[HiddenOne]

I recommend that you approach meddling with your own mind with a high dose of caution.

[LinearPhilosopher]

Tsundoku, on 30 April 2016 - 02:26 AM, said:

Makes sense. I mean, we can already convince ourselves what we believe is true, old memories slowly altering to fit how we prefer to see ourselves so that later in life what we (think we) remember bears little resemblance to the facts/truth. Probably helped along with external input as well (eg shrinks "leading the witness" during therapy).

Is this phenomenon related to why Police prefer to rely on evidence and not witness testimony?

pretty much, there a multiple instances of police sketches or line ups (when they lineup suspects for id) as being misleading as you are forcing the brain to remeber something it can't so itll do the less stressful thing which is to frabricate something.

[Vengeance]

Gnaw, on 30 April 2016 - 01:31 AM, said:

Does anyone have experience with digging out long repressed memories?

I don't remember very much of my childhood. Just a few fragments here and there between ages 4 and 15ish. The rehab I'm in has a specialty group for people who were adopted, traumatized, abused, suffer PTSD, etc. Turns out I have earned my spot in that group under multiple categories (Yeah, I fit in!! Oh, wait.....) Anyways the head of the psychologist department wants to try some exposure therapy and "a couple of other things" to try to get me remembering.

I'm very leery of that type of stuff because I can recall (ooo irony) a big deal being made of false memory implantation back in the 80s here in the states. So have the techniques become any more reliable in the 20 some years since?

Scientology uses a type of " repressed memory therapy" in order to help you remember when the thetans invaded your body and did things with your private areas. Personally I would avoid that like the plague.

[marilynmoss]

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[Macros]

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