Could You Be a Victim of Abuse and Just Not Know It?

There is an ongoing debate in the mental health field over the accuracy of repressed memories. Repressed memories are memories that cannot be recalled in response to a traumatic event . In essence, someone will forget the event ever happened. For years someone can live and have no idea that something of such degree as child abuse took place. The abuse could have been acute, or chronic. The memories will lie dormant to be recalled at a later time in life, or perhaps they will remain repressed forever.

These repressed memories can be brought about spontaneously through a smell, touch, or image. A victim can be sitting there with their own child, years later, and when they look at their child the memories come flooding back. Or perhaps they smell a perfume, or see a picture, and are attacked by the memories of their abuse as children. Often these memories are also brought out in therapy.

A therapist may try and recover memories from a patient they think exhibits symptoms of someone living with repressed memories. These symptoms may include low self esteem, an introverted personality, nightmares and sleeping problems, sexual dysfunctions, panic attacks, head-aches, trust issues, drug and alcohol abuse problems, eating disorders, and inexplicable body pains.

Therapists may use techniques such as hypnosis, sodium amytal (truth serum), age regression, guided visualization, and other such psychotherapeutic methods they may find helpful. A patient can recover these memories they have hidden to protect themselves. Now therapy can be utilized to help them deal with the previously repressed memories.

The ramifications of these revealed memories are major. The victim will now have to deal with these new memories. What they remembered as a previously happy and normal childhood has been turned upside down. There is also the impact on accusing the perpetrator. Laws that would usually hold a statute of limitations have been amended to extend the allowable years of charges to account for this time the memories were repressed. The victim can now seek justice.

But what if these newly found memories aren't real??

These "recovered" false memories are not lies. They are believed by the patient, they just never actually happened. There is not proof that all recovered memories are fake, but there is proof that some of them are.

The practice of recovering these memories can be said to be dubious. The therapist can use leading and suggestive questions to illicit details of past abuse. Questions such as "What can you tell me about the sexual abuse you incurred?" and "When did the abuse take place?" may prompt responses. Another technique may be to ask the patient to write down answers to questions they don't yet know the answer to. They will be told that even if it seems false, it may eventually prove to be true. Court cases have been based on testimony that came from such "revelations". This testimony has managed to convict men that were later to be found innocent. Many experiments and studies have been conducted to discredit the idea of repressed memories. They have not been conclusive, but many have shown evidence to suggest these memories were fabricated, or perhaps implanted by the psychologist. This is not to say that therapists are purposely implanting these memories.

This debate over recovered memories still causes much dissent within the mental health field. There are strong indicators on both sides. Getting to the truth is very important. Knowing the truth is necessary for the sake of the patient, and necessary for justice in the courts.