Repressed Memories Psychological Essay

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Abstract

The status of repressed memories has become an important issue in psychology and law due to the ever increasing accounts of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. The alternative explanation for repressed memories is false memories. It is possible to create false memories under certain conditions, evidenced by research conducted on the effects of misinformation, imagination and external suggestion. While some instances of repressed memories may be genuine, not everyone responds to trauma in the same ways and creation of false memories may be a more plausible explanation.

The Malleability of Memory

Imagine this: an 18 year old woman goes to see a psychiatrist to help her overcome depression. Over the course of therapy she begins to recover memories of her father raping her between the ages of nine and fourteen. She has had no recollection of these horrific events until now. Later, however, medical examinations reveal that the woman is in fact a virgin. The question of whether people are able to create false memories is an increasingly controversial topic to psychologists and the general public. The driving force for this growing interest is the increase in the number of cases of memories of previously unreported and unrecognised childhood sexual abuse (CSA), discovered during therapy or hypnosis sessions. Is it possible for people to acquire elaborate and confident false memories? How can we ascertain whether memories of CSA are true memories or false ones? There is research to support the idea that under certain circumstances it is possible to instil false memories in some people. This essay will discuss why it is possible to create false memories of events that have never really occurred by assessing the circumstances under which it is possible. It will review how memories may become distorted and how false memories may be created through suggestibility and use of imagination. It will also review the other perspective of the recovered memory debate: repression.

There are several ways that false memories can be created. When people who have witnessed an event are later exposed to new and incorrect information about it, their memories of that event become distorted. This is known as the “misinformation effect” (Loftus, 1997). There is evidence of the misinformation effect in Lane’s (2007) study of the role of generation in eyewitness suggestibility. Participants viewed slide sequences and later read paragraphs (some paragraphs were misleading in that they described objects that did not exist in the slides) describing the slides with mention at interval, various details about certain objects. For each paragraph participants read, they were instructed to provide two details about a specific object mentioned within that paragraph. In each group, participants were more likely to misattribute the suggested items to the slides than they were to the never-presented control items. To change the detail of an already intact memory is one thing, but to implant a false memory of an event that never occurred is something different entirely.

External Suggestion from a relative, hypnotist or therapist can have powerful effects on a person’s memory for childhood events and is the reason the role of the therapist has come under close scrutiny.  The powerful and predictable effects of external suggestion are demonstrated in the ‘Lost in the mall’ study (Loftus & Coan, 1996). Two children, a teenager and two adults were led to believe they had become lost in a shopping mall when they were 5 years of age. Participants were asked to try to remember the event on several occasions. Ultimately four out of the five participants were able to recollect details of the suggested shopping mall incident. The teenager even gave specific details about how he had become separated and later rescued. In a study conducted by Strange, Hayne, & Garry (2007), the effects of photographs on children’s memories for fictitious events were examined. Over three interviews children saw three true photographs and one false one. Half the children saw an altered photo of themselves in a hot air balloon with family members, while the other half simply saw a photo of a hot air balloon. 18% of the children who saw a photo of the hot air balloon along with the suggestion developed a false memory of a hot air balloon ride and 48% of the children who saw the same photo but with themselves incorporated into the picture, developed a false memory for the same event. The results indicate that a photograph, together with a suggestion, such as “tell me about the time you went for a hot air balloon ride”, is enough to cause a child to produce a false memory. While the role of external suggestion has gained empirical support in the implantation of memories of false events, the issue at hand is whether or not this applies to real life situations such as in criminal/law interrogation or psychotherapy.

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Strong suggestion techniques as used in research studies are obviously not used during therapy or police investigations, suggestion in the form of using mental imagery or one’s own imagination, quite often does (Loftus, 2007). The act of imagining a future event increases confidence that that event has actually occurred, thus forming a false memory. This is known as imagination inflation (Garry, 1996). There is sufficient psychological literature to support this notion. For example, Garry’s (1996) study into imagination and memory of childhood events, instructed participants to imagine events happening to them during childhood that were deemed unlikely and then rate ...

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