Repressed Memories Essay

580 Words2 Pages

According to the textbook and film, there still seems to be a controversy between repressed memories and false memories that deal with childhood sexual abuse. Most of the time childhood sexual abuse is done by the father or other close relatives in the family, which gives a reason to repress the memory and try to forget that traumatic occurrence. Sigmund Freud is the one who made known the notion of repressed memories. Repressed memories are the reminiscences of a traumatic occurrence that get kept in the mind for several years, which eventually affects the aspiration, action, and conscious thoughts of these individuals. As said by Freud, repressed memories are a coping mechanism because these memories are made unconscious for many years. The …show more content…

On the other hand, false memories are the recollection of events that did not actually take place. False memories tend to deal with childhood sexual abuse that arises from suggestions of the therapists or other techniques such as hypnosis. Some methodological problems that were noted throughout the two films in order to tap into the repressed memories are hypnosis and clinical therapy. The issue that arises from these two methods is that they are divisive owing to the risks of therapists generating and embedding false memories. Hypnosis requires the incentive of relaxation, attentiveness and focus of their clients dealing with repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. It tends to be used to recover recollections that were made unconscious in the mind for a long period of time. The human brain has the ability to repress memories of traumatic experiences. Clinical therapy has been a well known technique that is used with the purpose of recovering repressed memories from their client’s. These therapists assist their client’s in explaining how memories work, discussing a variety of options that could be the cause of distress, and help the client’s reach out to their families so as to put everything together and reach a solution.

Open Document