Question about repressed memories

[renata]

A long time ago I took a basic Psych course. There I learned that some believe that certain traumatic experiences become forgotten or repressed, and may reemerge later in life, when the person is capable of dealing with them. Later I read that that notion has been largely discredited, that repressed memory episodes retrieved through hypnosis is mostly invented and suggested by therapists.

So, at the fear of being flamed, here is my situation. I believe I have experienced some sort of an episode which I originally assumed to be repressed memory. In college I seemed to reexperience an episode from when I was 6-8 years old. I was not in therapy at the time I reexperienced or prior to that. Later, I was briefly treated for depression. I never took any drugs. Let me explain what I mean by reexperience. I was hurrying to class down the stairs, and all of a sudden felt that I was almost transported to my old apartment building, and was hurrying to class as a little kid. It was an uncanny hallucination. I shook it off, thinking I was just stressed, but the hallucinations came coming back with more detail. The way I established the age, 6-8 was because from 1-3rd grade we wore a blue skirt uniform, and that is how what I saw when I looked down in my "vision". The hallucinations continued when I was awake, over a period of a few months, becoming more frequent, lengthy and vivid. I will not post the details here, it is suffice to say they were of an unpleasant nature.

Finally, I decided to ask my family about this. Strangely enough some members of the family said I was making things up, but my mother and my brother supported me in it, and told me the events happened as I recalled them. As soon as this was confirmed, hallucinations stopped immediately.

I went into therapy after that, and my therapist thought it was repressed memories. Now that I hear repressed memories don't exist- what the hell was that? It has not bothered me for years, because with confirmation that I was recalling an actual event, the issue appeared resolved. Now, however, I wonder if I made it up, and my family humored me, but I am reluctant to ask them. This scares me, because I am afraid of being seriously ill- it is not fun to admit I had hallucinations! It has been bothering me more and more recently. I know it is impossible to diagnose over the web, and I am not asking for a free diagnosis, merely an explanation of what it could be.

Thanks in advance.

[Dancing David]

I don't belive in repressed memories, but I believe that hey exist next to the 'normal' memories and there is a choice to not acsess them due to the truama.

There was a study once that showed 60% of repressed memories could be verified by a family member. I think that were there not active family denial then the statistic would be higher.
I do not believe in memories recovered by hypnosis.

I had a similar experience when I began to have panic attacks in my twenties whenever I thought about a particular house we lived in, I talked to my brother who reminded me of somethings that I had chosen to not recall regularly. Then unfortunately I did remember what happened. I can not verify everything but I have been able to verify a lot by asking my brother what he remembers and comparing. There is still one incident that is a blank in my data set.

Sounds like PTSD to me, the thing about the intrusive visual memories is a hallmark of it.

Unfortunately there is alot of active denial of child abuse in our society.

Glad to read that you healed.
Peace

[Diogenes]

It's funny how I can remember that I once had more vivid memories of things I can't really visualize very well anymore. I'm sure this is part of getting older.

I believe 'repressed' memories have gotten a bad rap, but this is because people ' made stuff up ' after being fed suggestions and had professional concurrence that it was ' repressed memories '..


I feel sure there are forgotten events in our life that can be revived with appropriate coaching, but we have to be careful not to have those events created for us, by our own mind or at the suggestion of someone else.

[renata]

So far nobody tld me that I am a kook- good start! :)

Dancing David, I am not sure I understand your post. First you say you do not believe in repressed memories, and then you say they exist next to normal memories. Which is it?

When someone experiences PTSD ( I do not know much about it, is there a link a layman can understand) is it normal for hallucinations to go away and not reappear? I guess I am concerned I will have another recurrence, although 8 years has now passed.

I do not think I had any particular prompting. I was in school, and normally stressed, but I was not dwelling on the topic altogether. I am not sure what could have triggered it.


Edited to say: I am reading this link http://www.nimh.nih.gov/anxiety/ptsdfacts.cfm

It says PTSD usually begins within 3 months of the event, but if my recollection is correct, then 12-14 years passed.

[JeffR]

Renata,

Were the two family members who confirmed your experience in a position to know whether or not it really happened? What about those who said it didn't happen, and on top of that do they have a reason to deny the events?

I know someone who had a similar experience. Though she sought therapy and even underwent hypnosis, I'm pretty sure the "memories" came first. I was with her when they started and it was not a pleasant thing (for her or for me). Her parents denied the remembered events, but I think they would deny them even if they really did happen.

This was all a few years before it came to light that recovered memories might not be real. We never really questioned the reality of the memories back then. I'm not sure how my friend feels about it now. I guess until she tells me otherwise, I'll continue to think the memories were probably real.

Jeff

[renata]

Originally posted by JeffR

Were the two family members who confirmed your experience in a position to know whether or not it really happened? What about those who said it didn't happen, and on top of that do they have a reason to deny the events?

I believe all the family members would be in a similar position to know what really happened. I do not know of a reason why any of them would deny it if it really was true.

[JeffR]

Originally posted by renata
I believe all the family members would be in a similar position to know what really happened. I do not know of a reason why any of them would deny it if it really was true. That doesn't help much, does it?

I think that the fact the two family members confirmed the events carries much more weight than the fact that many deny it. Maybe they just forgot, or it didn't seem all that important to them in the first place. I'm pretty sure I remember things that happened when I was young much differently than my brother and sisters do.

Anyway, I don't think you should worry too much. People have hallucinations sometimes. Also this sounds like it happened some time ago and not since. Here's a link (http://www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/Atoz/ency/hallucinations.html) to some information that I found by searching for "stress" and "hallucination". Look at the "Causes and symptoms" and you'll see many possible causes that could effect anybody.

Jeff

P.S. As far as I'm concerned, you may come out from under the rock of shame anytime.

[kitsune]

Repressed memories are one of those tricky things... so's repression, in my opinion. I don't know if they do or don't exist. I have had loved ones suddenly remember very traumatic events in stressful situations, and I believe this person.

I have trouble with people who recover memories from hypnosis. I think some well-meaning people have hurt others by suggesting memories that didn't exist. It's rather easy to cause false memories... there's a Scientific American article that I had to read for a cognitive science class recently. It'c salled "Creating False Memories", and is a really interesting read. So is the one on hypnosis... which the name escapes me and I'm being too lazy to grab the folder with all t his information in.

Regardless of if it did or did not happen, the thought of it was obviously traumatic. The fact that you had family members confirm your memory is also a sign (to me) that it likely happened.

Memory is a funky thing. So's trauma. Glad to know that you have healed from the memory, or the thought of that happening in your past.

[Marvel Frozen]

My sister had an experience with what would normally be considered "repressed memories". Basically there were some traumatic events in her life when she was young (under 10), and she "repressed" the memories for over a decade. I don't know the exact circumstances of how she came to remember the events again, but I know it was very traumatic for her, almost as if the events has just happened recently. I know these aren't false memories either, as 4 people (including myself) can verify that the events happened basically as she remembers them. I don't know if these are actually repressed memories, but that's generally what experiences like these are called.

[renata]

I have to say I am simultaneously relieved and saddened that my experience is not unusual. Like Marvel's sister, recollection of the events were very unpainful. For weeks I thought I was losing my mind, as it felt like I was transported into the past to reenact the events.

Repressed memories always made some sense to me in this way: if a mind can't deal with something, it locks it away until the owner of said mind can deal with it. I always thought the hallucinations started because I was now an adult who could deal with the revelations.

But still I keep reading that repressed memories is first grade psychobabble, and wonder what mechanism is at work in such cases.

[Dancing David]

I don't view the memories as repressed, they are there, they are just avoided for some reason, I believe that we have memories we may not want to recall. The original idea was that somehow the tauma locked the memories away and then you had to use some techniques to unlock them.

I just don't like the idea of the ideas being retrieved by hypnosis or regression.

Soory, PTSD just came to mind because of the 'intrusive visual memories'.

Peace

[athon]

Renata,

More and more evidence is mounting against the whole repressed memory thing. Sorry - the jury is far from decided, but the idea has little support any more.

An interesting study done recently has found that memory is far from a solid, unchangable thing. It is not a warehouse of 'facts', but a library where the books are rewritten every time they are borrowed out.

They did the following to support it -

A mouse was put into a dark box and shocked until it assumed a classical response of fear towards darkness.

Next they injected the mouse with solution that prevented the creation of new proteins. They put the mouse back in, and it was scared. It remembered.

A few days later they repeated the process, albeit, they reminded the rat of the box, injected it (so no protein-synthesis could occur again for a while), and put the rat back in. It showed no fear.

Along with additional experiments, they demonstrated that on being reminded of something, the brain makes the memory plastic, and it can be altered, or even removed entirely.

Hence we still have much to learn about the nature of memory. But repressed memories are slowly becoming a thing of the 90's.

Athon

[Iconoclast]

Originally posted by renata
I went into therapy after that, and my therapist thought it was repressed memories. Now that I hear repressed memories don't exist- what the hell was that?
Renata

From my understanding it's not that repressed memories don't exist, but rather that if a psychologist attempts to get a patient to bring out their repressed memories it is not possible to tell whether the patient is recalling an ACTUAL repressed memory or a FALSE repressed memory that was generated on the fly in response to suggestive questioning.

[EvilYeti]

I don't really understand the question.

Did you recall an episode that you had previously forgotten? Was any new information supplied? If not, then its not really a repressed memory.

[aggle_rithm]

I am skeptical of the claim that 60% of "repressed memories" are corroborated by family members. The figure I've heard is much, much lower. What study was done that came up with this figure? I'm willing to bet the methodology was flawed.

A few years ago it was discovered that the brain recalls actual memories by exactly the same mechanism that it confabulates false memories. Thus, to the subject, the two are indistinguishable. Only reliable corroboration from outside can determine whether a memory is real or not.

[Dancing David]

aggle: I am afraid it was something I read in a pop psych magazine like 12 years ago, so I can't find the original study. I agree that confabulation is also a serious concern.

But what about the stated fact of child abuse by children 12-16 who report child abuse that is substantiated by an adult but then denied by the whole family. Could it not be that denial is as strong as the potential for confabulation?

Peace

[BillyTK]

Memory is a bit of a slippery weasel; we tend to think of it as some kind of file storage of our experiences, and repressed memories as files which have been intentionally buried at the bottom of the file storage to avoid recall.

The problem is that memories are not objective records; they are flavoured by our thoughts, feelings and sensory impressions of the time; they’re not fixed either and can be altered after the fact by the way we reflect on them and by the way others can influence are viewpoints about events (like, was I the entertaining story-teller and all round life of the party the other night, or was I just a drunken dork?). This is a pain in the arse wrt anecdotal recall—trying remember particular people and events, but if we couldn’t do this we’d go mad; for instance, can you imagine if, every time you found a better way of doing something, you had to relearn all the steps from scratch?

Memory is not just about conscious recall; you can get home from work without having to remember the precise route or your address. It’s also elicited by your environment, for instance, you don’t have to consciously recall how to drive a car once you’ve learnt how to do it and practiced often enough, and you don’t have to explicitly think, “Okay, I need to depress the brake pedal with my foot,” when you need to at traffic lights or similar.

I think it’s the environmental element and the non-conscious aspects of recall that is involved with memories suddenly appearing in our conscious minds. To give an example, there’s a particular perfume which always reminds me of my first girlfriend; but I experience that memory as a tremendous rush of emotions and a sense of place which I couldn’t put my finger on the first time I felt it (partly because it wasn’t so much a specific place as a number of different places linked by a common emotion); more details came back to me only after the second or third time I experienced this. So why should the memory have taken the form that it did? Well, she was my first girlfriend, which was significant enough in itself, but also that period of my life was very intense anyway and the two aspects are very tangled. The “repressed” aspect of it was our relationship ended really badly, then got worse, and it was something I really tried to put out of mind at the time by focussing on the break-up and subsequent events and trying to forget our good times together. So it’s not so much that I “repressed” the good times as “practiced” the bad times so they were more likely to be remembered.

So it might be better to characterise "repressed memory" as "memories of experiences we'd rather not experience again", but the problem with this is the idea of “repression” which suggests some kind of action that a person has to take, when the opposite is more likely to be the case. But we can’t always be sure that the memory is an accurate recall of a particular experience (I think the term is “pseudo-memory”, but this a bit mad ‘cos it suggests there’s such a thing as “genuine” memory) as much as a synthesis of a whole load of different “memory fragments”, with interpretation made after the memory is experienced (which is made even worse if there’s someone else directing the recall activity)--for instance, I have a number of different “versions” of what happened between my and my first girlf; one is the “ideal” version, which absolves me of all blame and places all the guilt on her, the other is the more “honest” version which acknowledges my faults, and there’s another which is made up of comments and bits of conversations passed by our mutual friends.

[sickstan]

As far as the rat in the dark experiment, I don't think that may have anything to do with repressed memories. It sounds more like proving the biochemical basis for conditioned response (Pavlovian).

Repressed memories may exist for all we know, but I think that they are few and far between. The repressed memory syndrome for that brief period of psychiatry's insanity did much more harm than good, and the method for confirming the truth behind these recovered memories was abandoned -- the patient was believed at all cost to logic and skepticism. There are still some psychiatrists and odd folks who believe in the stories of alien abduction and ritual cannibalism and rape recovered under hypnosis. I can't remember, but there was one who wrote an entire book about aliens based on recovered memories from his patients. I strongly suspect his patients are much worse off now than when they were merely anxious or depressed.

We have many memories of our youth, some good, some terribly painful to remember. If you had a particularly humiliating event from your childhood, you may have vivid flashbacks that are almost palpable. If these are not accompanied by hypervigilance and nightmares characteristic of PTSD, then it's merely a symptom. (Remember, we all have signs of mental disorders -- as long as we don't let them affect our functioning, we don't consider them a disorder per se).

[roger]

Originally posted by renata
Repressed memories always made some sense to me in this way: if a mind can't deal with something, it locks it away until the owner of said mind can deal with it. I always thought the hallucinations started because I was now an adult who could deal with the revelations.

But still I keep reading that repressed memories is first grade psychobabble, and wonder what mechanism is at work in such cases.

I have no idea if they are real or not, but I read an explanation along these lines... What memory could be more traumatic than watching a child die, or conversely, for a child to watch a parent die? Yet there is no evidence, none whatsoever, of people witnessing these things and not remembering. You know, wouldn't it be pretty common for police to show up at a car accident, for example, and to have the survivior say "I remember nothing"? (ignoring when it happens due to physical reasons, such as concussions). Instead, the memory seems to be seared into the brain, and it takes a lot of time and therapy to train the person to stop obsessively dwelling on it and replaying it. Why is it always things that no-one else can collaborate that are repressed, not the shocking things like car crashes, war, etc?

Again, I have no expertise in this area, and it's not my argument but one I read from some unremembered source, but this argument passes the "layman's reasonableness" criteria for me. Of course, we know how useful the "layman's reasonableness" criteria are in accessing things like relativity, so there ya go! :)

[aggle_rithm]

Originally posted by roger


I have no idea if they are real or not, but I read an explanation along these lines... What memory could be more traumatic than watching a child die, or conversely, for a child to watch a parent die? Yet there is no evidence, none whatsoever, of people witnessing these things and not remembering. You know, wouldn't it be pretty common for police to show up at a car accident, for example, and to have the survivior say "I remember nothing"? (ignoring when it happens due to physical reasons, such as concussions). Instead, the memory seems to be seared into the brain, and it takes a lot of time and therapy to train the person to stop obsessively dwelling on it and replaying it. Why is it always things that no-one else can collaborate that are repressed, not the shocking things like car crashes, war, etc?


I agree. I think a lot of the "corroboration" that is claimed is simply another "recovered memory" from another person, where they KNOW what they are supposed to remember and create their own false memories.

An example: a while back a man was accused by his two daughters of satanic abuse. They "remembered" the events at some sort of seminar at their church. The father, of course, had no memory of the alleged abuse, but authorities and his pastor convinced him that it DID happen, he was just repressing it. After intense interrogation, he finally "remembered" and confessed to crimes which neither he nor anyone else had committed. Only after he went to prison did his mind clear and he realized that his memories were false. By then, it was too late to recant. I think he's STILL in prison.

A very dangerous thing, this belief in recovered memories.

[Marvel Frozen]

If you want a case of a "repressed memory" that is well corroborated, I think my sister's case fits that description. There are 3 different people who can corroborate that the events did in fact happen. And I know my memories aren't "recovered memories", I never forgot, I always remembered the events clearly.

[roger]

Originally posted by Marvel Frozen
If you want a case of a "repressed memory" that is well corroborated, Yes, it occured to me after I posted that my "never corroborated" was over the top. It should read "rare" or the like, but will let it stand to avoid revising history and making your post look like a non sequitor.

[renata]

Thanks to all who have answered. I am a skeptical sort myself, and not inclined to believe anecdotes posted on a message board. I feel like a woowoo saying- no really, I was abducted by aliens! I saw them! Why won't you believe me.

As I can tell there are several possibilities.

1. I am making this thing up for attention- if you believe that, no need to continue
2. I am telling the truth the best that I can remember and describe it.


If 2 is true, then there are once again several possibilities
a. I never had the experiences, hallucinations were brought on by stress/imagination, some members of my family are humoring me. ( Certainly according to the ones that support me, they remembered the incidents clearly- I did not have to prod them or lead them to admit it). In that case, is this a sign of some sirous illness? Could I have future hallucinations? This options scares me the most.

b. I did have the experiences, and family who are claiming I am making them up, either do not recall, or were not in position to know. In that case, what is the mechanism of my memory that caused me to blank it out for more than a dozen years and then brought them back in such a disturbing manner? If it is not repression, which I thought it was, what is it?


I understand memory is imperfect. For a long time I believed I remembered my uncle taking me out of my crib when I was over a year old and kissing me goodbye before he moved away. I could describe him, the room, what he was wearing. However, I later found out he moved to the other country before my birth- obviously this incident never happened. So perhaps I am prone to making memories up. Still, the hallucinations combined with partial confirmation makes me wary of that explanation. Frankly, I always did think of memory like a library with a secret room where bad books could have been stored. I guess I am just a layman trying to figure out what the hell could have happened, because I realize repressed memory movement is almost entirely discredited.

I suppose I am not sure I am using the correct term when I say repressed memory. As mentioned, they came back spontaneusly, not after prodding by a therapist.

[Hellcat]

Typical example of how unreliable and unethical repressed/ regression/ memories/ false memory are. Is the case involving the psychologist Piaget himself, whom was convinced he had been kidnapped as a child in Paris. This was later proved incorrect as his then nanny informed him.

Loftus also gave people false memories the 'Lost in the shopping Mall' study which she controversially used both adults and children to plant a false memory. This was later remembered and gave rise to the ethics of not only doing such things but also the validity of memory. Simple test is look at a picture and listen to other family members version of the memory of that photo brings, majority of times it is different from your own.


Just remember memories are subjective to the individual, and what you see is not the whole picture it is a partial.

[BillyTK]

Renata
There's another possibility:

3. A number of different memories but all sharing similar characteristics--smells, sounds, visual or tactile impressions--which you expereinced and which caused remember these fragments at the same time.

You might get that I'm not a big fan of the idea of repressed memory, because there's more convincing explanations. One idea is that if we're unable or unwilling to deal with a particularly traumatic event (things like bereavement, divorce and so on) the emotional side might go away in the short term, but it hangs around in our psyche until the right stimulus brings it back into our conscious minds.

[aggle_rithm]

One of my earliest memories from childhood was of a magic trick I was attempting in my room. I placed a washcloth over a toy train, pulled it away, and voila! The train had vanished!

Several weeks later, I found the train in a trash can.

What are the chances that this happened as I remember it? Zero. I don't need corroboration. I KNOW this didn't happen. Perhaps it was a dream, or a distorted memory of a memory of a memory. Shows how tricky childhood recollections can be.

[Phaycops]

Just wanted to say a couple things. First, it seems like we ought to distinguish between recovered and repressed memories. It seems like we all forget and remember things all the time. Like you and your friends are all sitting around chatting about grade school and you suddenly have a very clear memory of a fight you got into on the playground. But that's not the same thing as going to a therapist with some vague concerns, having him/her tell you you are probably repressing memories of childhood ritual satanic sexual abuse and then hypnotizing you to recover those memories.

I got into a weird argument on another message board about repressed and recovered and false memories by in actuality agreeing with someone, so I know that this is a very emotionally charged topic. People who believe that they suffered some sort of horrific abuse are understandably emotional about it. But it was my understanding, according to what I've read at various skeptical sites, that people who have PTSD and people who actually did suffer terrible abuses and experience traumatic things never, ever forget and that this not forgetting is the source of their problems. I guess what I'm trying to say is I have no idea what caused renata's hallucinations except that hallucinations can just happen, and that "recovered", "repressed", and "forgotten" memories are not the same things. Just my two cents.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

There's an excellent chapter on psychoanalysis, repressed memory, satanic cult abuse, and related topics in Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, by Terence Hines (a psychologist at Pace University). You can gauge his opinion of the whole mess by his assertion that a Rorschach test is equivalent to a tea leaf reading.

I recommend the entire book, particularly for new skeptics.

~~ Paul

[jasonmccoy]

Remembering things that occurred days, months or even years ago is a fact of life. Whether you retrieve them during a hot bath, after waking from a long nap or during a moment of forced contemplation makes little difference in my opinion.


As for the authenticity of said recollections...that is a very different story. It has been well documented throughout history that memory works like a "heuristic" rather than a "photograph."
In otherwords, the process of memory is reconstructive or subjective and as such is prone to mistakes at various levels. These "sins" as Daniel Schachter points out in his masterpiece
The Seven Sins of Memory remind us of just how fuzzy memory formation and retrieval can be. In his book, Schacter draws from a large body of evidence to support his claim that memories are often unreliable. Elizabeth Loftus, formerly of the University of Washington and now at UCLA, supplies his both with a bountiful supply of evidence regarding the falliability of memory.


However, to understand just why memory often fails we must turn to neuroscience. It is a well documented fact that memories are formed thanks in no small part to the work of two major subcoritcal structures in the brain - the hippocampus and the amygdala! Both of these structures are evolutionarily old and comprise a significant portion of what is commanly referred to as the "limbic system." You may have heard of other parts of this system; cigulate gyrus, hypothalamus, thalamus, etc. Research with mice, primates and humans have supplied much evidence supporting these structures relative role in the process of memory. In a nutshell, scientists now believe that both structures are capable of creating memories independently of one another. However, it is also felt that the hippocampus creates most, if not all of the salient, explicit, or what you might refer to as memories you know - "declarative memories!!!" Which leaves the amygdala to process what might be considered "emotional information, norverbal or implicit. These memories take the form of feelings; such as fear, joy, sadness.


However, while the amygdala can create it's own memories without the help of the hippocampus (which isn't developed consequently until several years of age "5 or 6"...hence the concept of "infantile amnesia") the memories are not the detailed, "know" memories. These memories are more like deja vu!!! As for the hippocampus, as mentioned above, it isn't developed enough to create and store long term memories until 5 or 6 years of age. Therefore, even if a traumatic event occurs in a person's life while very young, they are probably not going to remember any details about it. That is not to say that they will not be "made" to remember it - hypnotic suggestion, requirements from family members to recall the incident, etc.
Moreover, it is also possible that that same individual could get a fear or otherwise anxiety reaction when a certain situation in life triggers the amygdala driven memory. They would just lack an intellectual recollection.


But what about memories that were formed at age 6-8 as mentioned in the creater of this thread's post?


As I mentioned before, memories are often not stored in the exact same way (temporally and sequentially) they were experienced. And even if they are stored accurately, factors such as time, suggestability, bias, misattribution, ect. (see Schachter's book) can have a serious impact on their validity. I will elaborate on the first factor - time. Schachter calls this the "sin of transience." Once again, it has been well documented (see Hebbian plasticity) that "neurons that fire together wire together." And since memories are no more than connections across the vast cerebral landscape, it is only with use that our memories can be reasonably expected to remain somewhat useful, let alone accurate! So, the reverse of this is that if you experienced something 10, 15, 20 years ago and recalled it little to never throughout your life span, it is unlikely that it would remain accesible to you consciously. And rememeber, even if it were the type of experience (extremely emotional) that would elicit the work of the amygdala, those aspects of the situation would be remembered as "feelings not words."


I hope this helps a bit.

[Zombified]

Originally posted by renata
If 2 is true, then there are once again several possibilities
a. I never had the experiences, hallucinations were brought on by stress/imagination, some members of my family are humoring me.Those family members may not be humoring you; confronted with something that seems vivid and real to you, they may be honestly looking for things they can confirm in order to be helpful. They may be remembering real things that confirm only parts (and perhaps not the most important parts) of what you saw, or their memories may be mixed up and susceptible to your suggestion. Memory is a funny thing even for people who don't have hallucinations or recovered memories. I guess it depends on precisely what details your family members are confirming.

There's no way for me to know if that's what happened, I'm just suggesting that if it was a hallucination, that doesn't mean your relatives are being dishonest.

[jasonmccoy]

Originally posted by athon
Renata,

More and more evidence is mounting against the whole repressed memory thing. Sorry - the jury is far from decided, but the idea has little support any more.

An interesting study done recently has found that memory is far from a solid, unchangable thing. It is not a warehouse of 'facts', but a library where the books are rewritten every time they are borrowed out.

They did the following to support it -

A mouse was put into a dark box and shocked until it assumed a classical response of fear towards darkness.

Next they injected the mouse with solution that prevented the creation of new proteins. They put the mouse back in, and it was scared. It remembered.

A few days later they repeated the process, albeit, they reminded the rat of the box, injected it (so no protein-synthesis could occur again for a while), and put the rat back in. It showed no fear.

Along with additional experiments, they demonstrated that on being reminded of something, the brain makes the memory plastic, and it can be altered, or even removed entirely.

Hence we still have much to learn about the nature of memory. But repressed memories are slowly becoming a thing of the 90's.

Athon

Probably no more relevant than the info above but...a great pbs.org clip nonetheless on memory, emotion, and adrenaline.
Remembering What Matters (http://pbs-saf.virage.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=pbs-saf&template=template.html&query=Pieces+of+Mind&category=0&viKeyword=Pieces+of+Mind)

[Cinorjer]

The problem with "repressed memories" is that it is a theory that runs counter to how we know memory works. As anyone familiar with Post Traumatic Distress Order knows, traumatic experiences have the opposite problem: they are intense, overwhelming, and incapable of being forgotten or ignored. Given the track record of therapists who use hypnosis and suggestion to "recover" past traumatic experiences from sexual abuse to Satanic rituals to alien abductions, it's about as disproven as any psychological theory can be.

Childhood memories are notoriously unreliable and subject to reinterpretation later in life. Some people have the mistaken belief that our minds are recording machines, and somewhere inside is a record of our daily lives, if we only learn how to access it. Memory just isn't like that. Everything is filtered through our beliefs and expectations and desires. Emotionally significant events are burned in while trivia goes in the junk drawer, even if that trivia turns out to be important later on. Too late, then.

Saying "My sister remembered _____ and I know it was a repressed memory because I remember it that way and so did others" raises warning flags for the skeptic. If the family remembered an event all along, then obviously your sister could have been exposed to people talking about the event. How significant is the memory? Is it something you would expect her to never forget? People do access memories by association, something that "jogs their memory". That's why multiple choice tests are easier than essays.

Jerry

[renata]

Thanks for everyone's assistance. I fully understand the skepticism- it is one of the reasons I posted this in the first place. I find it oddly disconcerting that this event, which was so vivid to me may never have happened, as I was pretty sure it did. However, I find it best to deal with reality as it is. Luckily, I had no recurrences since the damn things stopped, and it has not seriously affected my life since. I was just quite curious as to what they might have been- and although I learned quite a bit on this thread, I still don't know if the memories were real or not. However, I suppose it does not really matter, as I made no decisions affecting my relationships with others due to these "memories"

Thanks again, all.

[davefoc]

Renata,
I also had a few halucinations during the time I was attending college (about 30 years ago now). This is the only time that I have ever had hallucinations.

The difference between mine and yours was that my hallucinations were so improbable that I had no trouble discarding them once I broke out of the hallucination. In one of them I saw the cars in front of me have giant arms with hammers come out of the roofs and attempt to squash my car. I think it is extremely likely that my halucinations were the result of sleep deprivation. I was working a graveyard shift and attending college at the same time.

I bring this up because I think it is at least possible, based on my experience, that hallucinations during our college years are common when sleep deprivation is common and not much to worry about.

It seems like the only issue here is the degree to which your hallucinations reflected anything real in your life. My own uneducated opinion is that jasonmccoy was exactly right. Memories don't really last forever. We remember events distant in time because we remember recollections of these events and not the actual event. For me this simple experiment is an example of what I am talking about. Try to think of an event in your life that happened 15 or so years ago. Now try to remember a detail about that event that you have not previously recalled. Maybe what kind of shoes you had on or some such thing. I don't think you will be able to do it.

In a similar way, I would be very skeptical of events that are distant in time that you only recall as the result of an hallucination. It may be too late now, but getting close to an answer probably involves not asking leading questions so that it is clear that the people you are talking to have independent memories tht are consistent with yours. Otherwise you won't be able to tell the difference between an independent corroboration and a corroboration that has been influenced by your questions.

I hope something I have said here is of some interest or value. I was afraid as I was writing this that I was saying things that I wasn't qualified to talk about at all and what I have said may not be of any value. At any rate, at least, you have a sample of one of a person that had some hallucinations and never had them again.

[Soapy Sam]

Any repressed memories I may have are lost in the mass of stuff I've simply forgotten. Like high school maths.

Here's a memory question. The "Tip of the tongue" phenomenon. You know- someone asks you about some fact you've known for years , but you can't access the answer, till three hours later when you are trying to get to sleep.
I wonder. Is it that you can't ACCESS the data, or that you just did (about 1/50th of a second after being asked) , but then sent the answer to your visual cortex / left armpit / stomach etc instead of the verbal bit of whatever brain substitute you use and now can't access it again, because the file is already open and still trying to be read by your lower intestine?
(Im kinda vague about neuroanatomy these days. I forgot it all in 1987, or was it '97? I'll remember in a second...)

[Julia]

There was a signifigant day in my childhood that I remember well, except for a small portion that is like a black hole in the day.

My father died during Thanksgiving dinner when I was four years old. I remember the events prior - like going to the store with him for milk, greeting our guests and playing with my cousins, being seated next to him at the table and sitting on something like a phone book to be higher.

Also, I have some pretty clear recollection of being grabbed by my Aunt and taken to the next door neighbors. A girl about my age lived there and I remember playing with her and some toys. I remember trying to fall asleep that night and staring at the pink ruffles of her bed spread.

What I have been told is that just after I was seated at the table my Father slumped forward. There was a great frenzy as someone raced to the phone, my Mother held him and they spoke some, an Aunt grabbed me to take me next door . . .

I guess what I am wondering is; if I blocked his death, why do I recall the rest of the day so clearly? Are there things I could do to specifically recall that portion of the day? Personally I see no reason to bring this memory back. Just curious I guess . . .

[Soapy Sam]

Oof. What a horrible experience.
Might it be the case that you simply failed to take in at the time what was happening? A four year old knows nothing about sudden death after all. I know from my own past I can think of several events at which I was present where the "main" event simply passed me by, because I was interested in something else at the time. Memory trainers often make the point that one reason we "forget" things is because we simply failed to pay attention in the first place, so never actually formed a memory.

I don't think a mechanism of repression is required to explain your experience, just simple inattention at the time to the significance of the event. You were also immediately swamped with attention and other experiences which you did attend to and so can recall clearly.
I agree that any attempt to "recall" the event could do no conceivable good at this stage. You could never be sure it was a true memory and not an artifact of what you have been told since.
And why would you want to?

[aggle_rithm]

I think the issue of repression is not whether it exists or not, but whether it exists in the robust form claimed by the recovered memory movement. Certainly, if a memory is uncomfortable, we can block it out until it is forgotten. Once it is forgotten, however, there is no evidence that it can be retrieved. A "recovered" memory of such an event is likely to be confabulated.

PS, My father had a stroke on Thanksgiving Day...judging from the traffic in the emergency room, it's unfortunately a more hazardous day than most people think.