Dissociative Amnesia: Memory Replacement and Repression

Can you dissociate yourself from your true identity? Can you change your knowledge of some personal events? Well, even though it is controversial, the answer is Yes! You can blot out a memory of a single event and replace it with another. For example, If someone goes to the store and buys apples yet distinctly remembers buying pears, this would be a perfect example of this phenomenon.

The concept of repression has been the center of a foggy debate over the authenticity of “False Memory Syndrome”. The original “case” of FMS was when a woman under hypnosis allegedly uncovered a repressed memory of her father sexually abusing her. The parents championed the cause that the therapist planted the false memory in the daughter's mind when she was in a highly suggestible state.

Repressed memory is a controversial, and largely scientifically discredited claim that memories for traumatic events may be stored in the unconscious mind and blocked from normal conscious recall. Repressed memory theory claims that although an individual may be unable to recall the memory, it may still affect the individual through subconscious influences on behavior and emotional responding.

So, can you distinguish repressed memories from false ones? According to the American Psychological Association, it is not possible without corroborating evidence. Some psychologists claim that repressed memories can be recovered through psychotherapy (or may be recovered spontaneously, years or even decades after the event, when the repressed memory is triggered by a particular smell, taste, or other identifier related to the lost memory

In part because of the intense controversies that arose surrounding the concepts of repressed and recovered memories, many clinical psychologists stopped using those terms and instead adopted the term dissociative amnesia to refer to the purported processes whereby memories for traumatic events become inaccessible

Betrayal trauma theory

A prominent more specific theory of memory repression, "Betrayal Trauma Theory", proposes that memories for childhood abuse are the most likely to be repressed because of the intense emotional trauma produced by being abused by someone the child is dependent on for emotional and physical support; in such situations, according to this theory, dissociative amnesia is an adaptive response because it permits a relationship with the powerful abuser (whom the child is dependent upon) to continue in some form.

Effect of trauma on memory

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk divided the effects of traumas on memory functions into four sets:

Traumatic amnesia; this involves the loss of memories of traumatic experiences. The younger the subject and the longer the traumatic event is, the greater the chance of significant amnesia. He stated that subsequent retrieval of memories after traumatic amnesia is well documented in the literature, with documented examples following natural disasters and accidents, in combat soldiers, in victims of kidnapping, torture and concentration camp experiences, in victims of physical and sexual abuse, and in people who have committed murder.
Global memory impairment; this makes it difficult for subjects to construct an accurate account of their present and past history. "The combination of lack of autobiographical memory, continued dissociation and of meaning schemes that include victimization, helplessness and betrayal, is likely to make these individuals vulnerable to suggestion and to the construction of explanations for their trauma-related affects that may bear little relationship to the actual realities of their lives"
Dissociative processes; this refers to memories being stored as fragments and not as unitary wholes.
Traumatic memories’ sensorimotor organization. Not being able to integrate traumatic memories seems to be linked to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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