Untitled Essay, Research Paper

FLASH MEMORY

PSYCHOLOGY TERM PAPER Memory is the main faculty of retaining and recalling

past experiences. A repressed memory, is one that is retained in the sub

conscious mind, in which one is not aware of it but where it can still affect

both conscious thoughts, memory, and behavior.

When memory is distorted, the result can be referred to what has been called

the “False Memory Syndrome”(Thomas Billing Publishing 1995)

: a condition in which a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships

are entered around a memory of traumatic experience which is obviously false

but the person strongly believes that it isn’t. However, the syndrome

is not only characterized by false memories alone. We all have memories that

are inaccurate. Instead, the syndrome may be diagnosed when the memory is

so severely disoriented that it changes the individual’s entire personality

and lifestyle, therefore, disrupting all sorts of other behaviors. The means

of personality disorder is on purpose. False memory syndrome is especially

destructive because the person carefully avoids any confrontation what so

ever with any evidence that might challenge the memory. So this syndrome

takes on a life of its own, keeping itself to be alone and resistant to

correction. The person may become so focused on the memory that he or she

may be effectively distracted from coping with real problems in his or her

life.

There are many models which try to explain how memory

works. Nevertheless, we do not know exactly how memory works. One of the

most questionable models of memory is the one which assumes that every experience

a person has had is “recorded” in memory and that, “some of these memories

are from traumatic events too terrible to want to remember”(Thomas Billings

Publishing 1995).

. These terrible memories are locked away in the sub conscious mind, (i.e.

repressed, only to be remembered in adulthood when some triggering event

opens the door to the unconscious). Both before and after the repressed memory

is remembered, it causes physical and mental disorders in a person.

Some people have made an effort to explain their pain.

Even Cancer, was known to form in some through repressed memories of incest

in the body. Scientists have studied related phenomenon such as people whose

hands bleed in certain

religious settings. Presumably such people, called stigmatics, “are not

revealing unconscious memories of being crucified as young children, but

rather are demonstrating a psychogenic abnormality that springs from their

conscious fixation on the suffering of Christ(Copeland Publishing 1989).

Similarly, it is possible the idea, that “one was sexually abused might increase

the frequency of some physical symptoms, regardless of whether or not the

abuse really occurred”(Peter Bedricks Publishing 1994).

This view of memory has two elements: (1) the accuracy

element and (2) the causal element. The reason why this memory is questionable

is not because people don’t have unpleasant or painful experiences they would

rather forget, nor is it claiming that children often experience both wonderful

and brutal things for which they have no right or wrong sense for and are

incapable of understanding them, much less relating it to others. It is

questionable because, (a) one is having problems of functioning as a healthy

human being and (b) one remembers being abused as a child therefore, (A)

one was abused as a child and (B) the childhood abuse is the cause of one’s

adulthood problems.

There is no evidence that supports the claim that we remember everything

that we experience. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to support the claim

that it is impossible for us to even recall to all the elements of any given

experience. There is no evidence to support the claim that all memories of

experiences happened as they remembered to have happened or that they have

even happened at all. We can never even say how accurate our memories really

are. Finally, “the connection between abuse and health or behavior does not

conclude that ill health, mental pain, is a ’sign’ of having been abused.”(Peter

Bedricks Publishing 1994).

However many psychologists don’t believe in this theory by the ‘False

Memory” experts. Here are a few of the unproved, unscientifically researched

notions that are being discussed by the doubtful psychologists: “If you doubt

that you were abused as a child or think that it might be your imagination,

this is a sign of ‘post-incest syndrome’. If you can not remember any specific

instances of being abused, but still have a feeling that something abusive

happened to you, ‘it probably did’. When a person can not remember his or

her childhood or have very fuzzy memories, ‘incest must always be considered

as a possibility’. (last), If you have any suspicion

at all, if you have any memory, no matter how vague, it probably really

happened”(Copeland Publishings 1989). It is said, that it is more likely

that you are blocking the memories, denying and that it ever happened. There have been many symptoms that suggest that they were

from past abuse. These symptoms range from headaches to irritable bladder.

In fact, there was a list of over 900 different symptoms that had been presented

as proof of early abuse. When they researched the expert view, they found

that not one of the symptoms could be shown to be a solid indication of a

previous abuse. Therapists must be careful in declaring that abuse has in

fact occurred.

Whole industries have been built up to really look into

the cases of sexual abuse of children. Therapists who are supposed to help

children recover from the trauma of the abuse are hired to interrogate the

child, in order to find out if they have been abused. But often the therapist

suggests the abuse to the child, has ‘memories’ of being abused.

Increasingly throughout the continent, grown children

under going therapeutic programs have come to believe that they suffer from

“repressed memories” of incest and sexual abuse. While some reports of incest

and sexual abuse are surely true, these delayed memories are too often the

result of False Memory Syndrome caused by a disastrous “therapeutic”

program(Thomas & Billing Publishing 1995)

. False Memory Syndrome has a devastating effect on the victim and produces

a continuing dependency on the very program that creates

the syndrome. False Memory Syndrome proceeds to destroy the psychological

well being not only of the victim but through false accusations of incest

and sexual abuse on other members of the victim’s family.

The dangers of the memory are visible: not only are false

memories treated as real memories, but real memories of real abuse may be

treated as false memories and may provide real abusers with a believable

defense. In the end, no one benefits from a memory which is untrue.

Whatever the theory of memory, if it does not support evidence and attempt

to verify claims of recollected abuse, it is a theory which will cause more

harm than good.

Carl Jung, an early Freudian disciple, extended this model

of memory, by adding another area of repressed memories to the unconscious

mind, an area that was not based on past experiences at all: the

“collection

unconscious” (Peter Bedricks Publishing 1995). The collective unconscious

is the deposit for acts and mental patterns shared either by members of a

culture or by all humans. Under certain conditions these become viewed as:

images, patterns and symbols, that are often seen in dreams or fantasies

and that appear as themes in mythology, religion and fairy tales. Under these

conditions it avoids the problem of determining whether or not a memory is

accurate by claiming that the memory is not of a personal experience at all.

It also confuses several types of mental states. It completely blurs the

distinction between dream states and conscious states by eliminating the

difference between remembering a sense experience one actually had and

remembering a sense experience one never actually had. The story of Hansel

and Gretel might be pulled in for “scientific” support of the idea. Assumptions

might be made regarding the unconscious desire of all children to be loved

by their

parents: as children, love could only be understood in terms of ego satisfaction

but as adults love is understood primarily in sexual terms. Because of our

mental restrictions, we can not bear the thought of wanting to be loved sexually

by our parents, so this desire must be expressed in a totally different way:

our parents love us sexually. But there is no

evidence for this based upon our past or current relationship with our parents,

so the mind creates the evidence by remembering being sexually abused as

a child.(Copeland Publishings 1989)

Thus, the memory we have as adults of being sexually abused by our parents

is actually the expression of the desire to be loved by our mother and father

(in most cases). It has nothing to do with any real experience; it has everything

to do with a human desire. It also serves as a convenient excuse to relieve

us of all responsibility for our

failures and incompetence.

How accurate and reliable is memory? We’re often wrong

in thinking we accurately remember things. Studies on memory have shown that

we often construct our memories from others that help us fill in the gaps

in our memories of certain events.(Thomas & Billings Publishing 1995)

That is why, for example, a police officer investigating a crime should not

show a picture of a single individual to a victim and ask if the victim

recognizes the assailant. If the victim is then presented a line up and picks

out the individual whose picture the victim had been shown, there is no way

of knowing whether the victim is remembering the assailant or the picture.

Another interesting fact about memory is that studies

have shown that there is no connection between the result feeling a person

has about memory and that memory being accurate. Also, opposed to what many

believe, hypnosis does not aid memory’s accuracy because subjects are

unconscience while under hypnosis.(Copeland Publishing 1989)

It is possible to create false memories in people’s minds by suggestion.

Why would someone remember something so horrible if it

really did not happen? This is a haunting question, but there are several

possible explanations which might shed light on some of the false memories.

A pseudomemory, for example, may be a kind of symbolic expression of troubled

family relationships. It may be that in such a position people more readily

believe things happened when they didn’t. When people enter therapy, they

do so to get better. They want to change. People also tend to look for some

explanation for why they have a problem. Victims come to trust the person

they have chosen to help them. Because they are trying to ge