Repression, Memory, and Abuse

Imagine a situation: An adult seeks therapy because of distress about personal relationships. In the course of treatment, the individual comes to recall traumatic experiences from childhood--in particular, of being sexually abused by a family member. Recalling these experiences seems to produce therapeutic benefit--but also leads the individual to seek criminal prosecution of their presumed tormentor. The incidents seem to have happened more than twenty years previously, and there is no corroborating evidence. What should the individual do? What should society (in the form of the legal system) do?

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this situation would not be considered unusual: in essence, the therapy has led to remembering traumatic events which were repressed. The concept of repression is fundamental to Freud's theory, since it provides the basic explanation of how thoughts and experiences end up in the unconscious. Freud encountered such reports many times in his clinical practice--though he ultimately concluded that most such reports represented fantasies, not real experiences. As noted in the text, both his original interpretation (that many adult problems relate to childhood traumas, including abuse) and his subsequent reassessment (that most such reports are fantasies) have attracted controversy. Today, given increased awareness of sexual abuse, many mental health professionals tend to support Freud's original view, that most reports represent repressed memories.

While our society has become more sensitive to abuse of children, the attempt to seek justice through the criminal law, rather than simply therapeutic release, has made the issue more controversial. Although circumstances sometimes lead to independent evidence to indicate the repressed memories are true, the situation is more problematical in instances where there is no corroborating evidence, but simply therapeutic reports of experiences decades earlier. Not surprisingly, individuals who are accused of such crimes tend to vigorously defend against the charges, and the concern arises as to whether the events really happened or not. (Recall Freud's doubts.). In some cases, the defendant will draw upon expert testimony by cognitive psychologists like Elizabeth Loftus, who notes that recall can be distorted and--at least in the laboratory--people can be induced to recall events that never happened. (See text, and Cognitive Approach.) Thus, critics have argued that at least some reports of repressed memories of abuse represent fantasies misinterpreted by inept therapists.

In the end, the issue involves both scientific questions about the nature of memory (represssion vs. reconstruction) and social questions about the justice system (burden of proof vs. false accusations). As the links below discuss, there is no absolute answer--some reports are doubtless true, but some may well be distorted or false, and there is no simple way to determine which is which. Indeed, the nature of memory makes it unlikely that we can find a technique to assess uncorroborated reports of abuse which will fully satisfy the needs of the justice system. As a result, the controversy is unlikely to disappear in the forseeable future.

Resource: http://www.ryerson.ca/~glassman/psychdyn.html

References

Benjamin, L. T., Jr., & Dixon, D. N. (1996) Dream analysis by mail: an American woman seeks Freud's advice, American Psychologist, 51, 461-468.

Freud, S. (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams. Reprinted as Vol. 6 of Strachey, J. (Ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Pschological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press, 1960.

Publications Related to the Psychodynamic Approach
Free Associations: Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere--On-line journal edited by Robert M. Young of Sheffield University.

International Journal of Psychoanalysis--Provides effective search tools, with some on-line content and access to contents pages in archive.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association--Provides archive of contents pages, but not full texts.