Repressed Memories.

by Englishman 60 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  waiting

  Memory is still being researched - and is definitely not totally understood. I think we can all agree on that. As my psych. professsor brought out - how does one study something invisible, not able to be metered by a machine, and can be affected by time, place, disease, etc.? And how does one know that the study is totally unbiased? It's still be researched, just like many functions of the brain processes.

  Memory is relatively fluid - and can be influenced. How many of us have seen old pictures of ourselves as children at a party, etc. - and really not remembered that party - but another participant recounts it for us.....and we remember their account as our own?

  How many of us have no memory of an event, until someone reminds us of it - and then, we DO remember, and add our own facts to the event - and others concur. The memory just hadn't been "triggered" yet in our own brain. When this happens to me, my own family just says "that damned brain of yours, mom." (We're so affectionate)

  It's interesting that no responses are dealing with Mulan's event - which her peers acknowledged about the man too. I've had the same type thing happen to me, about several different things in my childhood. I was seriously dating a guy in HS for 2 yrs, (16 to 18) finally got engaged to him & remember having sex with him 4 times - all of which I didn't enjoy. A couple of years ago, I spoke with him for the first time in 20 yrs, and he was stunned......his memory of us was that we had sex 4/5 times a week for 2 yrs, all sorts of places. I called a couple of my old girlfriends who concurred - I had talked about it with them. They remember - because I was more *active* than them.

  I have no memory of all those times, but I'm taking at least 4 other people's word for it - and I really can't see me dating someone that long and only having sex once after first month.......and then 2 yrs later. Just doesn't make sense - also because I remember worrying about being pregnant, knowing a lot about sex, etc.....lol, I just don't remember the sex. Btw, he said he thought I enjoyed it....that's good to know, I suppose. But I have no memory of him during all those times, I have memories of dating him, but not of the sex others remember. I have no memory of a lot of serious things that others told me about witnessing/hearing from me.

  It doesn't mean it didn't happen.....it most likely means I don't remember it currently - and I've tried. I remember a conversation about my teen sex (or lack thereof) when I was 24. By that time, 6 years later - I know I didn't remember.

  Just because one doesn't remember - doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just because one remembers - doesn't mean it happened that way - or at all. Memory is a strange thing.

  Cognitive psychologists today fully reject the "repressed memory" theory. - JanH

  I don't believe that's a provable statement - and is wholly dependent on the exact definition of "repressed memory theory" - as told by which side of the argument. There are good psychologists on both sides of this argument. Many issues are tied to the "theory" .......and some of those issues have nothing to do with memory.

  waiting

  ps: edited to say that no one had responded to Mulan's post when I posted. Thus showing I'm damned slow today. *sigh* - raining here.

  Edited by - waiting on 13 October 2002 14:46:51
• 

  DJ

  Larc,

  I considered the placebo theory as well in this case. Honestly, my husband was against the idea of this working. I made him do it. LOL. His allergies never came and went. It was constant, all year long. I think that the placebo thing works a lot of the time but imo, the patient has to believe it will work. He didn't.

  Love, Dj
• 

  DJ

  (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((Mulan))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
• 

  wednesday

  Having been in therapy for a number of years, i can say from my personal experience that probably one can get some repressed memories that are accurate and some that are not. to illustrate, my paretns used to tell me a story about something i had done around age 2-3. eventually, i could see the event in my minds eye and it became so real for me-i thought i had actually remembered it. My mom heard me tell the story one time and cleared it all up for me. I had been told this for so long-i just knew i remembered it. I actulallly did not.

  Early in my therapy I had been telling my doc about my father and this picture i could not get out of my head. He used no hynosis-i just remembered it. What i remembered was my father telling me I'd forget this. With the help of my doc i was able to connect feelings and that picture i had in my mind with the event. He never proded or suggested. That memory and pictue had been with me for a long time and it eventually surfaced. It surfaced when my father was dying and i felt safe enough to remember it.

  Abut 10-12 years ago there was a big expolison of multiple personality disorder and a phd in our area that treated it. I knew someone that went to his hospital and she came back certain she had been satanically abused. It took her years of therapy to rid herself of this idea. There was even joke in the medical community that if u did not have MPD when u went in-he's make sure u had it before u left. Everyone that went to his hosptal was dx with MPD.With that said-i do beleive MPD exists.

  The human mind is a delicate thing. Memory can be altered .I persnonally am very wary of anything that is not mainstream becasuse much of it can depend on whether u believe it or not. I had a sister try and sell me on vitamins and herbal therapy with ememas and all sort of things. She Told me i must beleive that it will help me or it wont'. So much for that.

  My doc a phd , never tried to insist i remember anythng. he has been a Godsend and i will always be grateful to him. he saved my life.
• 

  Mimilly

  Gawd, I had to bite this hook.

  I loathe therapists who misuse thier 'power' over a client/patient for the very reasons larc stated.

  I've never been hypnotized. The reason? I never wanted anyone to have access to what happened to me. If they found out, I'd be locked away and eternally labelled crazy. Not just that, but it would be 'telling' for which I'd been raised to equate with certain death.

  When it became too much to hold in, I told in little pieces, always watching the therapist for clues that I was bonkers. I told a bit more, then a bit more, and then one day, blurted it out as if in a challenge - 'now you know, send me up the river, I don't care anymore'. Didn't happen. I wasn't called crazy, though I certainly felt it. Scared to death for telling, which lasted a long time.

  Therapists who are on a mission to find something that just isn't there, shouldn't be allowed in the biz, plain and simple. Thought suggestion is quite powerful to someone who is vunerable and trusts a diploma so much. I firmly believe that if a therapist does this, they oughta be charged as harshly as possible. I wish there was a productive way of policing therapists. In the end, it's all done behind closed doors isn't it.

  my .002

  Mimilly
• 

  seven006

  Jan,

  I beg to differ with a few of your comments, as Waiting mentioned the science of the brain in regard to our memories represses or not is still in it's infancy compared to it's over all potential. My thoughts derived from my reading is that the brain is more like a tape recorder than not. Everything you have experienced in your life is up there. Some have a more sophisticated ability to bring those memories back into various levels of detail than others. Some have experienced situations that in their own minds were so horrific the mind puts on a form of defense and seems to put some kind of a mental pad lock on those memories to enable those who have experienced those things to deal with them by blocking them out.

  I agree that some therapist do not do the science justice by being more concerned about the business aspects of their craft and draw out therapy sessions to increase their cash flow. This is one of the things that I read into E-mans experience. The other thing to keep in mind is if the mind records all thoughts, some of those thoughts can possibly not be experiences that we personally experienced but rather thoughts that we pondered and created in our minds. It is absolutely possible to get an actual experience and an imaginary mental illusion confused when the memory is one that was many years in the past and has in some way been manipulated by an individuals mental defense system.

  JW's have played out the experience of going through Armageddon many times in their mind. People like "You Know" have tried to process those imaginary thoughts as absolute potential experiences thus creating a real existence in mind and life. He no longer has the ability to sperate fact from fiction because his personal mental defense system depends on his delusion to be real. Without his illusion being real he himself is not real. In his mind it is fact. His mind cannot discern the difference and to him as well as a few million others it is very much a reality even though it was not an actually physical experience.

  Actual experience as well as imaginary thoughts are processed similar in the brain. At the time of the experience or imaginary thought the brain seems to be able to label which is real and which is imaginary for the majority of people. Some people with mental dysfunction have less of an ability to discern fact from imagination. Their brains see both fact and imagination as fact and does not have a normal ability to separate the two. Since what we factually experience in life is played out in a real time linear progression the only place that experience can continue on is in our mind. Once it is over the only way we can experience that reality again is in our memory, the same place that we experience our imaginary thoughts. The experience is no longer a real time reality but a simple memory, the same as our imaginary thoughts are experienced at the time we think of them but are then stored in our brains as memory. The ability to discern which WAS a physical reality and which WAS an imaginary thought is what separates us as somewhat normal people and ones who are considered delusional or crazy. The key here is the word "was." All memories are no longer physically real time experiences whether they were physically real or imaginary.

  At this time in the science of psychotherapy it is not known exactly how a person who is helping another replay his thoughts and memories can help that person "absolutely" discern which one of the thoughts they are trying to remember are absolute fact or an imagined thought. Those who manipulate a persons recall, or state as fact which is absolutely a true experience or an imaginary one are doing the subject an injustice in some cases. Those therapist who have had more experience and are more astute to using things such as hypnosis to bring back older memories can better help define a persons fact from fiction. Until more is known in the ability to separate absolute fact from fiction in regard to the recall our memory those who try to help others in the area of psychotherapy have to go by pervious experiences and study. This does not make what they do quackery, it just allows them to do what they do using the current knowledge, technology and study that is available today. Psychotherapy is not an exact science at this point, but it has done a lot of good for a lot of people.

  Dave
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  Undecided

  There are times when I have to really think about an event to remember if it was a dream or a reality. Some of my dreams are so real. I have had to do this several times recently. I can understand how you could mistake a dream for reality when you recall it years later, especially if you were having emotional troubles. The brain can do strange things sometimes.

  Ken P.
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  termite 35

  Hi Eman; good comments so far; I watched a programme not long ago about memory, and it did seem to prove that our memories are very open to 'suggestion' and can easily be convinced that they are, indeed, fact when they are not.

  The Repressed Memory title of this thread brought back one particular one from jw days...I can't remember how long ago it was, i'll guess at 7 or 8 years; but there was either an article in the awake or perhaps a talk that spoke of brothers and sisters reporting recurring 'visions' of represses sexual abuse, and that brothers were being accused of abuse because of those experiences.It was basically stated that these memories wer'nt reliable and that anyone accusing someone of this is being manipulated to bring reproach on Jehovah

  .I wonder if this was all at the start of a large number of accusations of paedophillia and whether the repressed memory story was just that; a story to disprove the allegations as they were occuring more frequently as others gained courage from the 'safety in numbers 'feeling.

  It left me feeling very uneasy ; a nagging feeling that what was believed depended on the hearer and now I wonder whether many were silenced by the throwing around of the repressed memory theory; when in fact; they were just deciding to report.
• 

  Sentinel

  Eman,

  Repressed memories can be trigered by different things. A picture. Smell. Sound. Surroundings.

  I too had a deep memory. It tried to surface many times, but I pushed it back. It was too painful to face. I felt guilty and ashamed.

  Recently, I was reviewing a "healing" cassette tape, which suggested to the listener to "unburden" themselves by allowing whatever is "hidden" to come out. This would give a release to the inner soul and allow for unhindered spiritual growth. This is something we have to ask for.

  Let me tell you this. It works. I turned the tape off and said a pleading asking that whatever it was in my young life that was haunting me, that it be revealed to me so I could be healed, and went to sleep. I awoke later and was thirsty. When I got back in bed, I didn't even lay down. It came to me so fast. There was no doubt to the message. It was like a "link" to something deep inside was opened up for me to see. It was a gift to finally "know". It gave me so much peace that I was able to forgive my father, and understand all the fears and guilt of those childhood years. It freed me in such an unbelievable way. The way it was presented to me was not in the ugly, distorted, painful way I had "put it away in". It was revealed in love and understanding.

  My life has changed so much since that awakening. The way I see "me" is different. The way I view my father is with both pity, love, and understanding. I forgave him. Since he had already passed away, I could not forgive him in person. I believe if he were still alive, I could not even approach him about it. He could never forgive himself, and it affected our relationship as father and daughter from the time I was five all through my life. Now that I truly understand, the puzzle of my life takes on a clearer picture. I can move past all of this and live a healthier existence.

  Sometimes, we do need a nudge. We need a bit of help. Asking is the first step to receiving, and remembering that we have to be able to accept the answers that come.

  Perhaps your grandfather "found" religion after this incident (s) with you in order to appease his guilt. Older people tend to think that young people forget. We never really forget. And, we can't forgive until we really remember.

  Sentinel
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  larc

  Seven, one of the problems with some therapists, is that they had no interest of the science of psychology only in application. Therefore, they are not familiar with the underpinnings of their craft. This problem is further compounded if they have a master's degree are less and, thus, are not well grounded in the field. As years pass after graduation, they are less and less aware of contermporary findings. Put this all together and you have the ingedients for incompetence. Now, regarding memory, it is more like a copy of a copy of a copy. With each copy, the image is less perfect. In the same way, some of our memories is our last memory of our memory. Sometimes there are gaps in memory. When this happens, the tendencey is to fill in the gaps with information that seems logical even if that information wrong. Our memories are far from perfect even under the best of conditions. Sentinal, the way you went out exploring your past seems to be a good one. It was done with a neutral stimulus. What I object to, is a therapist pushing a person in the direction of the therapist's preconcieved conclusion. Patients can be very suggestible and can be easily damaged.