Memory Inhibition - Amnesia For Trauma or Abuse

Amnesia For Trauma or Abuse

Amnesia, the forgetting of important personal information, usually occurs because of disease or injury to the brain, while Psychogenic amnesia, which involves a loss of personal identity and has psychological causes, is rare. Nonetheless, a range of studies have concluded that at least 10% of physical and sexual abuse victims forget the abuse. Some studies claim that the rate of delayed recall of many forms of traumatic experiences (including natural disasters, kidnapping, torture and more) averages among studies at approximately 15%, with the highest rates resulting from child sexual abuse, military combat, and witnessing a family member murdered. A 1996 interview survey of 711 women reported that forgetting and later remembering childhood sexual abuse is not uncommon; more than a quarter of the respondents who reported abuse also reported forgetting the abuse for some period of time and then recalling it on their own. Of those who reported abuse, less than 2% reported that the recall of the abuse was assisted by a therapist or other professional. Other studies show that people who have experienced trauma usually remember it, not forget it. (McNally, 2001) found that women who report having either repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse have no worse memory for trauma cue words than women who have never been sexually abused. Similarly, McNally (1998) found that women who were sexually abused as children and who developed PTSD as a result of their abuse will not have any more trouble recalling trauma related words than healthy adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse or women who were never abused as children.

Although the rate of recall of previously forgotten traumatic events was shown by Elliot and Briere (1996) to be unaffected by whether or not the victim had a history of being in psychotherapy. individuals who report repressed memories are more susceptible to producing false memories than individuals who could always recall the memory. Williams found that among women with confirmed histories of sexual abuse, approximately 38% did not recall the abuse 17 years later, especially when it was perpetrated by someone familiar to them. Hopper cites several studies which indicate that some abuse victims will have intervals of complete amnesia for their abuse. Peer reviewed and clinical studies have documented the existence of recovered memory; one website lists 43 legal cases where an individual whose claim to have recovered a repressed memory has been accepted by a court. Traumatic amnesia, which allegedly involves the forgetting of specific traumatic events for long periods of time, is highly controversial, as is repression, the psychodynamic explanation of traumatic amnesia. Because these concepts lack good empirical support, psychological scientists are skeptical about the validity of “recovered memories,” and argue that some therapists, through suggestive techniques, have (un)knowingly encouraged false memories of victimization.