Understanding Recovered Memories: A Neurological Perspective

To understand the concept of recovered memories and their validity, we must first understand to an extent how memory works. The Medial Temporal Lobe is the name we give to structures in our brain necessary for memory, this mainly includes the hippocampus, however the amygdala and the frontal lobe also play important roles. The hippocampus is where our long-term memories are stored in the brain, with age this becomes more dysfunctional. The amygdala and frontal lobe both work to encode our memories into our brain, however the frontal lobe also maintains agendas, refreshes and rehearses information, aids in resisting distraction, and directs our attention to certain features (2). When we think of our memory we like to think we remember everything

Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century the validity of recovered memories has been hotly debated by the psychoanalytic community. Recovered memories are forgotten memories of traumatic experiences we remember later on in life often by psychoanalysis or psychotherapy that can lead to the possible creation of a pseudomemory. Freud believed that these recovered memories of possible sexual abuse were the solution of problems of the origin of hysteria and obsessional neurosis (1), this is stated in “Seduction Theory” a hypothesis suggested by Freud himself. Seduction Theory, a hypothesis suggested by Freud stated “A repressed memory of an early childhood sexual abuse or molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessive symptoms with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight”(1). This theory was abandoned after only a year after proposing it, as a result of coming to terms with the fact that the memories of his patients were predominantly false, and could have been caused by the suggestive methods he used in their psychoanalytical therapy. Freud’s first case in the study of recovered memories was of Miss G. de B, she came to him at the suggestion of her cousin with a stuttering speech, and after psychoanalysis lead Freud to proclaim that she had been sexually abused by her father despite the fact she had no recollection of such events taking place, at first she whole heartedly believed him until