Running Head: Repressed Memories
American Military University
Repressed Memories
Russell Hoskins 4102262
PSYC101 Introduction to Psychology
Over the past few weeks, we have been exploring the brain and responses from the nervous system in the brain. I decided on an article called “Are Recovered Memories Real?” This article was very interesting to me and my research in the past two weeks. The article was in Discover magazine and titled “The Brain”. The article starts with a first paragraph that reminds me of the science fiction series X-Files. Human people being probed and studied by big eyed, luminescent aliens. It tells of an unusual study that was conducted at Harvard University of alien abductions. The study was conducted with nine participants that believed that they had been part of alien abductions. The research was a six-year probe by Harvard psychologist Richard McNally. According to McNally, the participants were apparently sane people. They were very specific in their details of the events. The researchers would tape the sessions and then play them back to the participants. The researchers would then watch for signs of posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD). The participants would show strong signs of PTSD just as combat veterans (Neimark 2009).
This article became very interesting as I read more into the article. The article then discussed how recovered memories of sexually abused children that had grown up and had some shock in their system to remind them of the event. The famous Freud at the turn of the 20th century invoked the concept of repressed memories as a way of the brain and psyche to shield itself from a horrific or emotionally stressful event. McNally’s research suggests that all memories, even false memories, are more than just accessories of experience. He defines memory as experience and a neurohormonal event. Powerful emotions and a memory are burned into the synapses. This is where the controversy in the...