Repressed Memory

To say anyone is stating that childhood abuse is not real is not accurate, but when referring to the commonness of childhood sexual abuse and how the abuse is recalled in the minds of adults (Loftus, 1993) is the statement most concerned with by judges and attorneys within America’s legal system. Beliefs about the commonness of repressed memories are expressed not only by those in the therapeutic community but also by legal scholars who have used these beliefs to argue for changes in legislation (Loftus, 1993).

Since 1999 state courts have continued to struggle with the admissibility of expert testimony on repressed and recovered memory (Piper, Lillevik, & Kritzer, 2008). Some of the states grappling with this question since then are South Carolina, Indiana, Utah, Arizona, Illinois, and Indiana (Piper et al, 2008). As indicated by the many unpublished opinions, the “science” underpinning repressed memory is still being challenged across the nation, even in states where expert testimony on repressed memory was admitted before (Piper et al, 2008).

In conclusion, we are back to the beginning of this paper, the existence of repressed memories. Research is out there for and against repressed memories. This paper has explained how memories are not always true to form but can be memories of suggestion. However memories can also be accurate and painful. To simply dismiss either side as being untrue would not only be wrong but it would allow the legal system to decide upon disregarding them to be true thus dangerous people would continue to hurt others. In the body of the abstract of this paper repressed memories was referred as having two sides just as a coin. This will always be the case with repressed memories. Many things need to be determined before accuracy can be declared or dismissed. Future research is really the only way to provide evidence concerning repressed memories and the accuracy behind them.

The future responsibility of psychology will be to examine the treatment implications of altering the increased accessibility of negative material and subsequent impairment in monitoring will be critical next steps to try to break depression’s vicious cycle of increasingly harmful cognition and negative mood (Joormann et al, 2009). But most leaders in the field agree that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later (APA, 1995). However, these leaders also agree that it is possible to construct convincing pseudomemories for events that never occurred (APA, 1995).