Are repressed memories real?

[Peater]

Inspired by the TRE thread, I've always wondered if there was anything to this or if it is just pop psychology. Would love to see what people here think. Can't believe i never thought to ask until now.

 

[JCastro]

Yes. I have observed people do (or their psyche `doesʼ it to them) all of the following:

• Completely deny that something awful happened to them in their childhood when several people around them witnessed it and remember. I wonder what is the degree of defense mechanism difference: denial as an emotional defense vs. neurological repression/silencing of memory retrieval where they aren't even defensive, but physically cannot remember without some kind of therapeutic retrieval help/hypnosis/EMDR.

• Alter memories to the extent that it makes them look better for bad things they have done to other people. They seem to genuinely believe in these modified (and unrealistic) versions of events and are shocked and appalled when those memories are challenged. Pseudo-repression?

• Alter memories to the extent that it spares them humiliation or shame from the true events. There is a script-like rearrangement of what was done to whom so that they cease to be the victim in their version of events and instead are either a bystander or a righteous defender. Again, a seeming genuine belief in their false version with no sign of nervousness or twinge of lying.

Neural systems underlying the suppression of unwanted memories - PubMed

Over a century ago, Freud proposed that unwanted memories can be excluded from awareness, a process called repression. It is unknown, however, how repression occurs in the brain. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural systems involved in keeping unwanted memories...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“Controlling unwanted memories was associated with increased dorsolateral prefrontal activation, reduced hippocampal activation, and impaired retention of those memories.”

“Both prefrontal cortical and right hippocampal activations predicted the magnitude of forgetting. These results confirm the existence of an active forgetting process and establish a neurobiological model for guiding inquiry into motivated forgetting.”

Suppressing unwanted memories by executive control - PubMed

Freud proposed that unwanted memories can be forgotten by pushing them into the unconscious, a process called repression. The existence of repression has remained controversial for more than a century, in part because of its strong coupling with trauma, and the ethical and practical difficulties...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“When people encounter cues that remind them of an unwanted memory and they consistently try to prevent awareness of it, the later recall of the rejected memory becomes more difficult.”

“The forgetting increases [each time] the memory is avoided, resists incentives for accurate recall and is caused by processes that suppress the memory itself. These results show that executive control processes not uniquely tied to trauma may be a viable model for repression.”

Can the Neural Basis of Repression Be Studied in the MRI Scanner? New Insights from Two Free Association Paradigms

The psychodynamic theory of repression suggests that experiences which are related to internal conflicts become unconscious. Previous attempts to investigate repression experimentally were based on voluntary, intentional suppression of stimulus material. ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“High autonomic arousal during free association predicts forgetting, with activation of conflict-related and deactivation of memory-related brain regions...during repression, explicit memory systems are down-regulated by the anterior cingulate cortex.”

 

[Peater]

@JCastro that's fascinating thank you for the real life stories you have witnessed.