Repressed Memory

A common condition that many people suffer from for many reasons is when they repress their memories. Repressed memories, also known by the diagnostic name dissociative amnesia, are memories that have been unconsciously forgotten due to the memory being associated with a high level of stress or trauma. Before the idea of repressed memory was even created, the prominent British philosopher John Locke had already disputed the idea. Locke believed that if one cannot remember an experience then they never had that experience. Many years later psychologist Sigmund Freud created the theory of repressed memory however Freud later stopped believing in the idea. In the 1980’s the idea resurfaced through a Swiss therapist named Alice Miller and within …show more content…
Psychoanalysis would be a lengthy process, involving many sessions with the psychoanalyst.”
Alice Miller was born in Poland in 1923 and lived until 2010, she was a Swiss psychologist and psychoanalyst who specialized in parental child abuse. Miller practiced psychoanalysis for over 20 years and believed that memory of childhood abuse is repressed quite often. She believed that repression blocked the person from living a fulfilled life emotionally:
“To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his …show more content…
She believed that psychoanalysis was not a viable treatment and that it made treating the victims of child abuse impossible. Although Alice Miller believed repressed memory was a serious condition that child hood abuse victims go through, she different from Sigmund Freud in how to treat the condition.
Since the discovery of repressed memory, or dissociative amnesia, there have been many different treatments used to help recover those memories. One of the most popular of course is psychoanalysis which was created by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis is described as,
“A system of psychological theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind.” Other popular treatments include hypnotism, guided imagery, dream analysis, automatic writing and fantasizing. All of these treatments have their strengths as well as their weaknesses. They all fall under the category of Recovered-memory therapy or RMT and most of these therapies are either controversial or