Rumination on Memory and Emotion, Part 7: Repression and Psychogenic Amnesia

All of the studies on memory and heightened emotional states have led to a great deal of research on memory and trauma. The repression of traumatic memories is a widely discussed concept in psychology; the idea that an event can be so shocking that the brain hides its memory deep in the unconscious, only for it to be later recovered through therapy. Repression is said to take place over the course of multiple years, so it is difficult to discern whether a memory is unable to be recalled as a result of repression or if it may be that someone simply has not thought about it in a long time. “A central issue concerning recovered memories is whether they can be independently corroborated.” (Otgaar, Howe, Patihis, Merckelbach, Lynn, Lilienfeld, Loftus, 2019 unpaginated) Over the years, professionals have used memory therapy techniques such as hypnosis, guided imagery, and careful questioning to help their patients unearth repressed memories. However, “many psychologists have warned that certain therapeutic techniques may inadvertently foster false memories of abuse in distressed patients (e.g., Poole et al., 1995). One such technique is guided imagery. Misguided therapists who believe that patients with certain symptom patterns harbor repressed memories of abuse will ask these patients to visualize abuse scenarios that might have happened, hoping that the content of guided imagery might trigger recollection of the blocked trauma. Unfortunately, repeated visualization of imagined events may increase confidence that the events actually occurred (Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, 1996; Heaps & Nash, 1999).” (McNally, Clancy, Barrett 142) Additionally, many studies analyzing repression have yielded inconclusive results. For example, studies done by Williams in 1994, as well as Goodman et. al. in 2003, consisted of interviewing sexual abuse survivors (assessed through medical evidence and assessed through their involvement in legal proceedings pertaining to sexual abuse respectively), and in both studies, some of the participants denied ever being sexually abused. However, neither study later clarified if these subjects had truly forgotten the abuse, or were simply reluctant to verbalize the memory. The complication in these studies of distinguishing what memories subjects report versus what memories they actually retain was made “in a study on young adults with documented histories of physical abuse[.] Femina, Yeager, and Lewis (1990) found that all subjects who had denied (or minimized) their abuse during an interview later acknowledged that they had not forgotten it when originally questioned by the interviewer. Subjects who had earlier denied their documented abuse later said that they did not wish to discuss such upsetting experiences or did not like the interviewer.” (McNally, Clancy, Barrett 133) If confronted with proof of a traumatic event taking place, or even clarified if they had truly forgotten, the aforementioned 1994 and 2003 studies may have supported the exact opposite findings from what they concluded. Many professionals today agree that emotion is enhanced for traumatic events, and as such these events are likely candidates for tunnel memory, i.e. the prioritization of central information and impaired recollection of peripheral information. 

Studies of amnesia point to the fact that strong emotional charge can act on memory in both directions: not only do extreme feelings heighten memory consolidation, they can obliterate it as well. Psychogenic amnesia results from psychological stress rather than neurological injury, and it is not caused by ingestible substances. (American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, 2013, 298) Similar to repressed memory, psychogenic amnesia (also referred to as dissociative amnesia) has received close scrutiny and it is a controversial topic in psychology, so research and study of this topic must be conducted with care. “Definitions of both dissociative amnesia and repressed memory share the idea that traumatic or upsetting material is stored, becomes inaccessible because of the trauma, and can later be retrieved in intact form.” (Otgaar, Howe, Patihis, Merckelbach, Lynn, Lilienfeld, Loftus, 2019 unpaginated) Dissociation is distinguished from repression, however, through its sudden occurrence, while repression gradually occurs over a long period of time: “In cases of psychogenic amnesia, say, after the death of a loved one, the person develops complete retrograde amnesia shortly after the shocking event, accompanied by loss of personal identity. Psychogenic amnesia seldom lasts for more than a few hours to a few weeks. Typically, memory and personal identity return abruptly without any psychotherapy. In contrast, cases of traumatic amnesia, say, of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, have no clear onset, never involve identity loss, may last for years or decades, and often gradually return piece by piece during the course of psychotherapy. Moreover, the amnesia selectively blocks retrieval of trauma; it does not blot out the entire person’s life and identity.” (McNally, Clancy, Barrett 135) “Swihart, Yuille, and Porter (1999) have described cases of “red-out” in which a person murders a loved one in a fit of rage but experiences amnesia for the murder itself. Swihart et al. suspect that these cases may be genuine, not malingered. Indeed, the murderer often phones the police and immediately admits to committing the crime despite claiming not to have remembered the actual attack.” (op cit.)

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2017. 

Mcnally, Richard J., Clancy, Susan A, and Barrett, Heidi M. “Forgetting Trauma?” Essay. In Memory and Emotion, edited by Paula Hertel and Daniel Reisberg, 129-185. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010.

Otgaar, Henry, Mark L. Howe, Lawrence Patihis, Harald Merckelbach, Steven Jay Lynn, Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Elizabeth F. Loftus. “The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 14, no. 6 (2019): 1072–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619862306. 

Swihart, Gayla, John Yuille, and Stephen Porter. “The Role of State-Dependent Memory in ‘Red-Outs.’” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22, no. 3-4 (1999): 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0160-2527(99)00005-9.