Essay On Repressed Memories

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Introduction to Human Psychology – PSYC 1111 Written Assignment Unit 4 University of the People Article review on Repressed Memories As stated in OpenStax College (2014) textbook, repressed memories are memories that are so viciously encoded, in the childhood age mostly, that the brain squeezes them into a corner where it will be very difficult for someone to recall them. When in adulthood some or all of the memories can return triggered by an irrelevant stimuli, but they might as well never come to surface at all. According to Loftus (1993), during the 80’s and the 90’s many cases of repressed memories that came to surface, were reported. These reports ended in court with convictions of guilty but of innocent people as well. The cases are numerous and the controversy is holding, as …show more content…

The way the jury holds against or in favor of these accusations as well as the part of psychotherapists to the matters, as of the memories being true or false is well elaborated. By referring to many cases of reported repressed memory, valuable information is collected about how these memories retuned, at what age, when did the action take place etc. The study shows that although many reported cases came to surface there is no tool to rely on of how accurate and true those claims are. Socially the acceptance of repressed memories as valuable, even in court made the people to act suspicious at accusations and the ones that had the memories were afraid of the consequences of such accusations. Without being able to safely reach a verdict the controversy is still on the table. Unless future research and invention of accredited tools, to help on the true or false determination of the returned memories, are here there will not be an ease in mind of possibly wrong verdicts. The study has strengths and limitations as well. The amount of reported cases brings to the study many points of view and a lot of background information on the subjects. On the other