[dbspin]

The problem is not that memories can't be repressed. There's plenty of research demonstrating repression does exist as a defence mechanism. The problem is that even highly evocative memories can also relatively easily be falsified, or modified through elicitation and reframing. Since there's no neurological stenographer, there is no mechanism even in principle to identify the difference between the two. With potential consequences like the satanic panic of recovered and elicited memories of sexual abuse. That's what Elizabeth Loftus and others have shown, and shown so thoroughly that eye witness testimony should never be trusted.

[saltcured]

As a counterpoint to this, I am replying here because I can't make myself write a polite response to the GPP.

Yes, witness testimony is always potentially flawed.

But knowing "some repressed memory recovery is false" does not justify saying that repressed memories are not a real thing. Repressed memories do happen. They do come back sometimes. When they do, they are just as valid as any normal memory that a person thinks they always had.

I know because I had them myself. Mine were of trauma in the age range from 5-9. I had a high "ACE score" when I eventually looked into this. I did not have any therapy session prompting the recall, I just remembered them spontaneously around age 15 when I was empathizing with a schoolmate who told me about domestic violence. It was a sickening feeling to have this whole phase of my past come unlocked.

Amazingly, it submerged into repression again. I next remembered it at about age 20. In between, I had years of basically not remembering/knowing that I had any of this trauma or that I had experience the earlier recall. They all came back together, again triggered by an empathetic moment in college. Again it was disorienting to have this whole aspect of my past reopen.

At that later point, I confronted people who were around my childhood and got enough of a painful discussion, confession, and apology to know that these memories were not invented.

I had other forms of childhood trauma that never submerged. I don't know why this one section did.

I find it very offensive for someone to make broad statements that these phenomena do not exist.

[blauditore]

Distancing yourself from a trauma (as a coping mechanism), not having any thought of it for years, and then have it re-surface is not the same as fully suppressed, inaccessible memories as discussed in the article.

If it takes long, intense therapy to "bring back", it's almost cerainly untrue or falsified. There was a case of accused childhood abuse among close relatives of me, by someone who found out about this in therapy. It tore apart the family. I cannot take any sides because I was not there and cannot know the truth, but it checks all the boxes of falsified memories. It has destroyed multiple lifes. That's how I even learned about that stuff, and why I care.

Btw, better source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory (I originally mostly read stuff in my native language, so I didn't what to look for initially)

[oceanplexian]

You might "think" you had a repressed memory but it could all be completely made up. You might even get other people to believe it, because human memory is incredibly faulty. Shared delusions are literally a "known bug" of human biology. Wikipedia has a whole page on them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux). The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi...) is yet another example

The thing that changed though is since the 2010s everyone has a high definition camera in their pocket. Everything you do is recorded online. Kids that grew up in the last few years will have their entire childhood recorded in some way or another. Every movement tracked by GPS. Therefore, while I don't agree completely, I wouldn't be surprised if some assumptions about psychology are upended and a great deal of so called repressed memories turn out to be bogus when we can easily disprove them.

[JohnMakin]

The person you’re responding to said they did the work of verifying themselves with third parties. Do you not believe that too? People dont suddenly just admit to committing severe abuse because they were convinced to do so. In fact, usually the opposite happens with abusers - they delude themselves into thinking the abuse never happened and believe/defend this very aggressively.

This whole thread is gross. I’d say you should be ashamed of yourself but you likely lack the prerequisite self inspection.

[saltcured]

Malicious suppression and gas-lighting are also known functions of human biology.

Yes, real life is messy and ideals like justice are quite difficult or impossible to achieve.

Don't assume you can cleverly deduce a nice, absolute and comfortable answer. That's just another coping mechanism called rationalization.

[eiginn]

This mirrors my experience as well of multiple instances over my life of repressing childhood trauma and some event or conversation suddenly bringing it back to the surface.

[jimmaswell]

Not to minimize your experience or anything like that, I'm just thinking out loud: What's typically the delineation between repressed and "not on the mind at the moment"? We naturally "forget" things all the time because there's no need for them to be in our current context window, e.g. I can't recite every coffee shop I've been to, but maybe if you start talking about a coffee shop with uncomfortable seats, I'll remember the one I went to with uncomfortable seats. Not a comparable experience in general of course, but one wouldn't say I repressed the coffee shop. Is it more like if I started at "uncomfortable coffee shop", nothing came to mind, but then I later remembered only after smelling some special flavor of coffee beans they had had?

[saltcured]

A repressed memory and its associated knowledge and entailment is "not there" until triggered properly. To the extent that our autobiographical memories construct our sense of identity, repressed memories have been censored from ourselves. And, I think it is censored for a purpose, not because it was one too many bits of trivia to keep in ready memory. I think it is a coping mechanism like very deep and targeted denial or dissociation.

When such memories come back, it can be like a mini identity crisis. You suddenly know things that are counter to your self-identity from the moment before. Once I was able to absorb the whole picture and not recoil back into repression, it became a permanent and unpleasant part of my self. .

There can be flashbacks of related events, some of which I also might feel are remembered for the first time in a long time. Those little flashbacks might be like remembering your specific uncomfortable cafe. The overall memory recovery is like suddenly realizing I spent years in a theater of war, that happened to have such cafes in it.

[JohnMakin]

IME for me repressed is “not on the mind at the moment” but like so constant that any attempt to access it, your subconscious fights to divert your attention from it. it’s kind of like dim stars you can only see out of the corner of your vision.

the craziest one I had, my reaction wasn’t “oh my god i never knew i had this memory” it was “wow, i cant believe i havent thought about that in 25 years.” I knew and had known it was there all along, I just literally never thought of it to the point my other thoughts just didnt collide with it, ever. It’s almost like your brain just puts it in storage in a dark corner of your garage.

I understand it isn’t the same for everyone, but that was how it felt for me.

TLDR for me it was dissociation, and the only treatment that ever worked was scraping the corners of my mind for stuff like this and it got so much better the issues basically went away. I used a great deal of meditation, particularly tibetan buddhism.

[mrsvanwinkle]

I can objectively say your reply minimizes the previous two posts who shared childhood traumas by the objective fact that you are implying (if they are not able to satisfy your Scientific Endeavor) that, if there is no delineation, then their repression of childhood trauma is equivalent and minimized or perhaps exalted if coffee is your religion to the repression of your religious experience of this coffee shop. If you were perhaps a child victim in this coffee shop maybe? You literally erased the trauma part. That is the delineation if you still need to think about this out loud

[mrsvanwinkle]

Thank you so much, the parent thread was truly an uncomfortably disturbing read and your post is a necessary contrast to "rational" "objective" "minds" armchairing something so delicate with gross finality.

[JohnMakin]

Thanks so much. I was wanting to write a scathing response as well but you calmly explained what I wanted to. I had severe childhood abuse that was documented by third parties I’d completely forgotten about - when I remembered them in therapy, my therapist thought they were fake or delusional too and sorta gaslit me about it. I had to go hunt down the receipts, which for me was traumatic in and of itself and permanently severed a few relationships with my family members, which didn’t have to happen. I fired her over it.

The comments in this thread are indeed disturbing. Clearly many on this forum have led blessed lives and can’t imagine people having it differently,

[blauditore]

Repressed memory due to trauma is "scientifically discredited" nowadays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory