Repressed: Psychological Trauma and Memories Essay

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There can be confusion around validation for recovery of repressed memory, particularly from traumatic experience including sexual abuse. Such memories can help some clients understand the root causes to their emotional state. For others, these memories can be difficult to cope with. False memory can arise and be harmful for the client and the accuser. With this, pressing issues are not yet resolved.
The term repression was used in the 19 century by Sigmud Freud, who used the term to refer dramatic experiences that do not surface until a later period and as the memory becomes clear. According to (Boag, 2006), “It is believed that repressed memories or motivated forgetting was a defense mechanism for people who needed to protect themselves from the harmful and painful memories of a traumatic experience. There are people who believe that traumatic experiences are not forgetful and in fact true. There are others who argue against it. This debate has fractured families, made changes in legislative and as a result pushed for civil suits. Sexual abuse is a hugh an shocking incident. The biggest issue is the claim that childhood sexual victims repress then recover traumatic memories when they are adults. Many psychologists believe that some memories are false created through therapeutic methods. This is considered an outside influence. There have been scarce data on cognitive functioning in the CSA victims.
There have been studies done victims of child abuse who were interviewed years into adulthood. Some of them denied memory of the abuse. Experimental studies were also performed and have been criticized about validations of the findings. There are questions whether or not they relate to the traumatic memories and psychotherapeutic experiences. When a person suffers amnesia, outside therapy is used to recover the memory, which are likely false. Recent surveys show that a significant minority of clients in therapy may have been undergone some form of memory recovery therapy such as hypnosis, the risk of which are well documented in earlier reviews (Lindsay and Read, 1994). These spectacles are not going to be understood until there is more research and evidence is presented to tell the true memory from false memory.
Not all therapists and researchers believe that false memories are risk in psychotherapy. They argue that not enough studies have been done. Several studies have reported high percentages of the corroboration of recovered memories (Kluft, 1995) and some authors have claimed that the false memory movement has tended to conceal or omit evidence of (the) corroboration" of recovered memories (Cheit, 1998).
Obviously, not all therapists agree that false memories are a major risk of psychotherapy and they argue that this idea overstates the data and is untested. [28][29][30] Several studies have reported high percentages of the corroboration of recovered memories,[31][32] and some authors have claimed that the false memory movement has tended to conceal or omit evidence of (the) corroboration" of recovered memories.[33]
Both true and false 'memories' can be recovered using memory work techniques, but there is no evidence that reliable
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