Repressed Memory
26th December 2007
Read it. Don’t remember being abducted by aliens? Well, then, you must have repressed it.
The researchers then offered a $1,000 reward—posted in three languages on more than 30 Internet websites and discussion groups—to the first person to identify a case of dissociative amnesia in any work of fiction or nonfiction prior to 1800. They received more than 100 responses, but none met the “repressed memory” criteria. Although many early texts describe ordinary forgetfulness caused by natural biological processes, as well as instances of individuals forgetting happy memories and even their own identities, there were no accounts of an inability to recall a traumatic experience at one point and the subsequent recovery of that memory.
In other words, it’s pseudo-scientific bullshit. And yet there are people in jail even as we speak because of it.