Controversy of Recovered/Repressed Memories in Abnormal Psychology

This essay critically examines the controversy surrounding recovered and repressed memories within the field of abnormal psychology. It delves into the debate, exploring the perspectives of various researchers and theorists. The essay discusses the concept of memory repression, its potential impact, and the arguments for and against the validity of recovered memories, particularly in the context of childhood sexual abuse. It analyzes the role of therapists, the influence of false memory interpretations, and the significance of source-monitoring capabilities in the development of memories. The essay also considers the impact of traumatic events on memory, the limitations of early childhood memory, and the role of courts in considering claims of repressed memories. It references numerous peer-reviewed articles to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject, highlighting the ongoing debates and the lack of conclusive scientific support for the idea of memory repression. The essay concludes by emphasizing the complexities of the topic and the challenges involved in understanding the nature of traumatic memories.

Running head: ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
Recovered/Repressed Memories
Abrielle Tempeny
PSYC-2004-YA
Lakehead University
Professor: Susan Sajna
1 March 2019
Hi Abrielle, please look at the comments from your first 2 pages if you wish to proof and edit
your paper and resubmit it.
In italics are words, portions that can go. In blue are some of my suggestions for re-wording,
In red are my comments. First, remove right justification so your sentences don’t spread out over
the page.

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Recovered/Repressed Memories
Understanding memory, the exploration of engram has been known as the sacred grail of
psychology and neuroscience. Several researchers have been persistently seeking for
explanations to varied aspects of the way memory functions for decades. Patihis, Lilienfeld, Ho
and Loftus (2014) have noted that in the last decade psychologists have immersed themselves in
one of the most highly contentious debates to date. Some individuals have denied that repressed
and recovered memories tend to have an impact on real and impactful effect on individuals, their
families as well as legal system, an insufficient amount of reliable evidence have been found for
massive repression.
According to Patihis et al. (2014) have noted that at the end of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud
had popularized the term repression to explain a mechanism by which unbearably traumatic
events have been are pushed into a certain unapproachable corner of the unconscious and which
have the tendency to return to consciousness. Such a process, however, has been assumed to
engage certain factors other than the usual forgetting and remembering thus has been defined as
massive repression or robust repression. The following essay will critically argue on the
controversy the way repressed memories have often been overlooked and forgotten which further
raised its controversy.
The argument over the reality or of repressed memories which have been repressed into an
unconscious psychodynamic area of the mind has been continuing since Freud’s theoretical
explanations. Howe and Knott (2015) have noted that the majority of psychologists have
persuaded that repression of memories cannot occur. However, on the other hand, a number of
psychiatrists, psychologists have shown equal assertions regarding that these supposedly
unconscious memories can be recovered by suitable therapy and to the benefits and gains of the

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individual. Unfortunately, several recent discourses of the issue have become highly complex
whereby several psychologists only have been taking into account allegedly repressed or
recovered memories in the context of Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA). Conway et al. (2014)
have noted that any adult female psychological challenges have been caused by traumatic abuses
of CSA. However, unprofessional therapists have further contributed to such an influenced
attitude in which they presuppose without evidence, CSA to be root implication of adult female
clients’ problems. These factors, however, have led the therapists to claim that these abuses to
those clients tend to be acquired false memories of such assault, in the majority of cases accusing
any male members of the family. Such a controversy has turned out to be legal, taking sides and
irascible, and has not supported a rational scientific examination of the fundamental concept of
repressed memories (Davis & Loftus, 2014).
Few discussions in the history of the psychological field have been arguably similar to the
supposedly repressed and recovered memories related to childhood sexual abuse. A substantial
amount of individuals have taken into account their detrimental events of sexual abuse
experienced during childhood after not being considered on the subject of their abuse for several
years. Porter and Baker (2015) have identified two noticeably polarized interpretations which
have conquered the debate. Moreover, as per repression understanding, some sufferers of CSA
show incapacity of recalling their abuse events until it is emotionally secured for them to do so
after a significant period. As a result, a wide range of theorists promoting such an idea rightly
believe that traumatic experiences can usually be memorable by believing sexual abuse to be
highly detrimental and traumatic. Meanwhile, reports revealed by Weatherred (2015) have
claimed that for youths and children, sexually disturbing experiences tend to include
developmentally unstable sexually traumatic incidences without threatened or being exploited.

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Thus Vriet, Hennig and Laloi (2015), drawing relevance from these assumptions have stated that
if individuals fail to recall incidences of their violence for a long period, then various distrustful,
inhibitory mechanisms must have been hindering the access to the recollection during the years
when it actually did not occur in the mind. According to the false memory interpretation,
recovered memories of exploitation failed to match up to real events. Considering disturbing
events as extremely memorable, individuals who claim to have been exclusively uninformed of
having been sexually distressed in childhood must be mistaken (Wilson et al., 2015). Those
promoting the false memory view are highly skeptical of reports of traumatic memories tend to
face during hypnosis, directed descriptions or other identical memory-recovery methods.
Repression theories have interpreted recovered memories of CSA as formerly repressed ones.
Moreover, if individuals claim to have not recalled any experienced events of abuses in several
years it thought about their abuse in many years, then it can be stated that have a certain level of
inability to remember it (Kaplan et al., 2016). On the other hand, repression theorists have
claimed that repressed memories of CSA are not undeveloped. As a result, if psychologists or
therapists believe that repressed memories of CSA have been developing psychological
symptoms in patients, then they must be aided to overcome the amnesic obstructions and
recollect memories into awareness.
Taking into account ideas regarding repression and recovered various psychologists promote
the authenticity of these memories while others have been highly skeptical. These doubts have
claimed that means tend to make individuals develop false memories of CSA. McCann and
Pearlman (2015) have identified one prospect related to a weakened source-monitoring
capability which facilitates individuals to recognize the origins of the contents of their minds.
For example, source monitoring comes into consideration when individuals tend to determine

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obtained information from print and social media. Additionally, Manzanero et al. (2015) have
noted that individuals have the propensity to develop false memories of abuse may have an
insufficiency in reality monitoring. This type of monitoring has been recognized as a form of
source monitoring essential for identifying mental contents developing from perception from
those occurring from imagination. Furthermore, individuals showing poor monitoring skills tend
to face challenges in recalling memories of former events from memories of experiences which
have specifically been imagined. McCann and Pearlman (2015) at this juncture, have shed light
on psychology counsellors who expect a patient faces mental challenges from repressed
memories of CSA and will enquire the victims to imagine scenarios of probable abuse. These
factors however led patients with reality-monitoring insufficiencies to consequently confuse a
memory of such visualized scenarios with a memory based on a legitimate event. Meanwhile, in
reality, some people primarily assume they protect repressed memories of traumatic events after
experiencing upsetting nightmares, visual or bodily sensations which tend to be understood as
perceptual, sensory fragments of covered memories of early trauma (Barlow et al., 2014). The
theory regarding reality-monitoring shortages has directed that individuals reporting events of
repressed and recovered memories tend to understand individual experiences as memories of
actual events.
Although, false memory theorists do not argue on the fact that potentially traumatic character
of CSA, however, it has been claimed that there can be identified specific disagreements on
memories of abuse which are not liable to the standards and principles controlling the process of
remembering and overlooking other emotional memories. Freud (2017) has noted that as
emotional arousals reinforce memory for the fundamental aspects of events occurred and to the
degree that an incident of CSA has drawn a higher level of distress and trauma. When

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considering these situations, it must be remembered better, not less well in comparison to other
events. These factors further have led authors to be skeptical of those who apparently recall
emotionally traumatic violence after several years of being profoundly unaware of it (Pizzimenti
& Lattal, 2015). Scholars at this juncture have shown a higher level of doubt with the
occurrence of memory during hypnosis or similar procedures. Additionally, concerning false
memory interpretations, several assumptions of scholars have shed light on the lack of credibility
of some recovered memories. Firstly, Manzanero et al. (2015) have noted that various forms of
recollections have been extremely implausible which involves members of satanic ritual abuse
and past lives. Secondly, individuals tend to remember these events and experiences only after
going through recovered memory procedures such as protected descriptions and hypnosis which
usually cultivate false memories. Thirdly, a considerable number of individuals claiming to have
recovered memories of shocking abuse has subsequently withdrawn their reports. Fourth, Kaplan
et al. (2016) have stated that several experimenters who apply guided descriptions as well as
constant recovery attempts can establish false memories of psychologically harmful experiences
such as being harassed by an animal during childhood in approximately 45% of college goers.
Edmonds et al. (2015) have claimed that informed that the memories which lack authenticity and
claiming that false beliefs and memories can essentially lead to continuing attitudinal and
behavioural changes. Thus, Kissee, Isaacson and Miller-Perrin (2014) have noted the individuals
suppress their memories of violence as the abuse was so emotionally upsetting. The
tremendously horrifying character of the experience is accurately what supposedly activates
defensive, inhibitory methods that expel it from responsiveness and prevent it from coming to
mind.

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Crisp et al. (2016) have noted that individuals generally understand that cognitive memory
does not function until we are some three to four years of age. Such an autobiographical memory
tends to require that receiving information must be primarily comprehended to arrange and
encode before being stored in long term memory. Moreover, in the view of Riba et al. (2015),
infants neither possess the knowledge nor experiences. Furthermore, infants show an inability to
develop the sense of self to successfully attain implications of incoming information Crisp et al.
(2016) through assessing existing knowledge of human memory have claimed that most
memories tend to fade with time and recall of memory acts as a reconstructive process. However,
if individuals tend to recall distinct and explicit memories of certain previous traumatic
experiences in their lives and not thinking about them for certain significant time does not mean
individuals have forgotten but tend to have repressed them. Moreover, for recent highly
traumatic events, individuals typically struggle not to think about them. Thus no clear repression
process serves beneficial to individuals. Additionally, finally, Otgaa et al. (2016) have observed
that it would be beneficial for individuals to bear in mind traumatic events in order to circumvent
them in future or be prepared for any future fears or threats of related nature. However, in order
to disregard and further can generally be unable to recollect such critical prior experiences would
act as counter-productive.
Over the last three decades, courts in the United States and other states are required to consider
claims of repressed memories. However, despite the significance of these claims, there can be
identified with no credible scientific support for the notion regarding repression memories.
Moreover, there can be observed no authentic evidence in order to suggest that extremely
distressing childhood memories can be unconsciously displaced from the conscious mind and
stored in the unconscious mind during pure conditions for several years on in order to be recalled

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at the later stage (Woodiwiss, 2014). Crisp et al. (2016) have stated that the notion regarding that
mind safeguards itself by repressing or by disregarding memories of pain, fears, trauma and
rendering them remote to awareness. Universally identified memory wars, several psychologists
have argued on the characteristics of fearful and traumatic memory. At this juncture, Grünbaum
(2018) have explained that psychological scientists along with clinicians tend to discard the
notion that memories can be repressed. Furthermore, Howe and Knott (2015) have highlighted
that history has explored that incredibly traumatic memories such as memories of Holocaust
survivors about the stay in concentration camps cannot be easily forgotten. Meanwhile, few
psychiatrists and clinicians have claimed that traumatic memories tend to be resistant from the
conventional compliant nature of human memory and moreover immensely traumatic childhood
memories can be repressed in the unconscious mind for a significant period. In support of such
pro-repression view, certain advocates primarily depend on clinical experiences which stated that
inability to articulate traumatic and abusive events do not tend to align with repression. For
instance, it is possible to note that several women who encountered traumatic events showed
immense embarrassment or fear to reveal their experiences of exploitation (Grünbaum, 2018).
Moreover, several women have been extremely young when the mistreatment and abuse took
place in order to have memories of it in the original place. Woodiwiss (2014) have mentioned
that considering that forgetting has been identified as a normal process of human memory, it has
the potential that some of the women may have the naturally overlooked or cannot recall about
the abuse. Furthermore, the significant proportion of women who failed to reveal the original
child sexual abuse incident told of other child sexual abuse events (Davis & Loftus, 2014).
Moreover, a study conducted by Lynn et al. (2015) on memory for child sexual abuse revealed
that around 10% of adults had shown high inability to reveal experiences of child sexual abuse

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histories. Thus, repression has been identified as a motivating and dynamic force as to why over
40% of women could not gather the ability and courage to disclose records regarding their child
sexual abuse (Bernstein & Freyd, 2014).
At this juncture, on these grounds, specific questions undoubtedly arise regarding credible
scientific support for repression memories concerning why individuals sometimes tend to believe
that they have recovered formerly repressed memories of child sexual abuse. Brewin and
Andrews (2017) have opined that there can be identified certain non-repression explanations
which tend to justify the reasons an adult later claiming to have recovered a memory of child
sexual abuse. Explicitly, it has been possible that a child did not gain maturity during the time of
mistreatment and abuse to have interpreted the event as disturbing child sexual abuse. As a
consequence, the newly developed traumatic interpretation of the event as abuse may result in an
individual to reveal the apprehensive events of abuse. However, such new memory has not been
explained by repression (Davis & Loftus, 2014). On the other hand, Le Berre, Fama and Sullivan
(2017) have observed a potential whereby an individual claim that he or she has repressed
memories of child sexual abuse, but may have overlooked that the person had in reality retained
information of the abuse in the past. Similarly, it has been possible that an individual may
purposely try to disregard the acts of child sexual abuse. At this juncture, Allender (2014) has
noted it to be highly essential to remember that deliberate avoidance do not align with
unconscious repression. As these explanations have aided scholars to comprehend recovered
memory events, certain cases related to CSA, memories of murder in addition to brutal child
abuse have signified that recovered memories of child sexual abuse may act as a product of
psychological suggestion. Howe and Knott (2015) have claimed that these suggestions, however,
can be generated from a therapist or another source such as media, real-life cases and research

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investigations demonstrate that several suggestive techniques can lead individuals to create false
memories. Additionally, a substantial amount of scientific research has illustrated that
individuals can acquire false memories of experiences which can develop false memories of
events which never have taken place to them earlier. Specifically, Gorski (2017) has led a
considerable level minority of subjects to wrongly believe or recall that during childhood many
children have experienced life-risking situations of being nearly drowned and had been rescued
by a lifeguard which had been observed by their parents having a physically violent fight.
Drawing credence from these pieces of evidence, Bernstein and Freyd (2014) have noted that
betrayal trauma theory has primarily focused on the driving force for forgetting abuse. However,
Brewin and Andrews (2017) have argued against the chief trauma models which characterize
fear as the motivator for trauma reactions. Moreover, similar to attachment trauma theory,
betrayal trauma theory chiefly has claimed that there can be identified varying responses towards
fear and traumatic events which rely on the attachment relationship between the sufferer and the
perpetrator. Le Berre, Fama and Sullivan (2017) have claimed that it has been the social context
specifically the proximity of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator which
establishes whether abuse can be overlooked. At this stage, studies conducted by Knight (2015)
has noted that children have higher propensity to disregard or overlook incestuous abuse in
comparison to acts of exploitation perpetrated on children by individuals with secluded or no
association to them. Furthermore, betrayal trauma theory has mentioned that the disregard of any
form of abuse has been identified as an adaptive response as it facilitates children to sustain an
attachment to caregivers who play a highly decisive role in their lives. Moreover, drawing
significance of betrayal trauma theory, a meta-analysis on the variables related to the disregarded

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abuse has found an association between the victim-perpetrator relationship and the extent to
which children overlook such acts of childhood sexual abuses (Davis & Loftus, 2014).
Shaw and Vredeveldt (2019) have noted a major characteristic of experimental psychologists to
reduce several theories and processes have claimed that individuals do not remember events for a
period of time. Freud disavowed his sexual abuse theory by applying his highly established
conflict model. Even though Freudian theoretical assumptions have drawn relevance from the
etiologic significance of sexual abuse, Kassin (2017) at this juncture has asserted on a certain
extent of bias reflected from Freudian theories toward interpreting certain types of incest
allegations as fantasies or false memories. Moreover, Otgaar and Howe (2014) have stated that
Freud primarily referred to his former lack of ability to discriminate between genuine cases along
with the deceptive memories of hysterics concerning their childhood and the memory-traces of
actual events. Rather, Freudian theoretical assumptions chiefly reinstated disturbances of
infantile sexuality for sexual trauma and reserved sexual visions as well as psychic reality for
objective realism. Comprehensive studies of Vriet, Hennig and Laloi (2015) have noted that
actual memory tends to manifest to repressed memory in addition to symbolic explanation of
disturbing sexual fantasy. Nonetheless, the role of actual trauma has not been overlooked in the
field of psychoanalysis.
On the other hand, other explanations related to why certain situations cannot be disregarded
which includes weakened encoding into memory during the occurrence of the event, inadequate
cues to hold the memory of the individual related to the event in addition to usual deterioration
of childhood memory. Allender (2014) has stated that the theory of enthused forgetting has
received significant prominence amongst experimental psychologists as a credible explanation
for disregard of certain memories. This theory, however, has suggested that individuals tend to

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purposely overlook when motivated to do so to retain unlikeable or fearful memories out of
awareness. According to Pelisoli, Herman and Dell’Aglio (2015), gathering the enthusiasm to
overlook few traumatic events aid individuals to uphold their emotional state, sense of self and
welfare to focus on resolutions. Thus, Grünbaum (2018) has assumed that motivated forgetting
chiefly entails a process of dynamic recovery suppression and thus has been constantly engaged
and becomes unconscious over time. However, Woodiwiss (2014) has noted that strategies
which have led individuals in psychology experiments to acquire false memories of such slightly
fearful, traumatic and peculiar events have drawn similarities to the techniques that have
typically been used by recovered memory therapists. Otgaar, Scoboria and Mazzoni (2014) have
drawn relevance to these evidences and claimed that indicative techniques primarily include
interpreting an individuals’ dreams to signify their events of abuses, positioning an individual
into group therapy where they can be listen to others’ accounts of child sexual abuse and further
reliving individuals’ past through directed descriptions and offering false feedback to individuals
stating that these symptoms suggest they have possibly been victims of sexually abuse.
Furthermore, the implementation of such strategies tends to advance an individual to acquire
incorrect or false memories of child sexual abuse.
Otgaar and Howe (2014) have noted that concept of recovered memory essentially presumes that
the memory did not have its occurrence during an extended period when the subject has claimed
to be unable to recall it. However, some individuals show the possibility to recall events of their
abuse on previous occasions, but then disregard having done so. Furthermore, overlooking prior
recollections tend to generate the illusion that the memory had not surfaced in years. Kissee,
Isaacson and Miller-Perrin (2014) while taking into account certain substantiated recovered
memories had found that individuals presupposed that the memories did not occur in many years,