Freud's Theory Of Repressed Memory

n 1984, Ronald Cotton was sentenced to life after found guilty of raping Jennifer Thompson, based on her repressed memory identification of him (OpenStax, 2014). Eleven years later, Cotton was acquitted based on DNA test results that proved his innocence (OpenStax, 2014). This was only one of many incidents that reignited the debates and studies on the Freudian concept of repressed memory in the 1990s. Sigmund Freud pioneered the concept that traumatic memories could be repressed and, for decades, it has been a dominant theme in psychology (OpenStax, 2014). This paper discusses Freud’s repression theory, the controversy it has drawn, and analyses a recent study that debunks the Freudian repression theory that suppressing traumatic memories
Opposing the Freudian repression theory, where suppressing traumatic events that happened in the past will result in it's revival to haunt the victims, a relatively recent study conducted by arguing that it may be, in fact, an effective coping mechanism (Gagnepain, Henson, & Anderson, 2014). Researchers Pierre Gagnepain, Richard N. Henson and Michael C. Anderson conducted a study in 2014, where participants assimilated different pairings of images and words while being connected to functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor their brain activity (Gagnepain, Henson, & Anderson, 2014). After grasping the words and images pairings, they were required to either think of the picture that correlated with the word or to suppress the memory of the picture and its correlating word (Gagnepain, Henson, & Anderson, 2014). Afterwards, the participants were requested to recognize visually distorted objects that were displayed briefly (Gagnepain, Henson, & Anderson,
The researchers' studies on memory suppression have been inspired, in part, by trying to understand how people adapt memory after psychological trauma” (Patihis, 2013). According to such research, and previously, the Freudian theory, repression resurfaces when an individual’s unconsciousness directs his/her stimulus toward rather pleasant instincts and memories, sometimes by suppressing or blocking the traumatic memories (Furnham, 2015). In contrast, other recent research, like the one analyzed in this paper, argued that the Freudian theory might not be necessarily valid. In my opinion, repressed memory theory cannot be trusted or relied on in analyzing personalities, in court, or in any everyday life aspect, for many reasons. First, my personal experience with dealing with traumatic events has been rather positive. My traumatic events included torture, threatening and in some cases deaths of close friends by the authorities for opposing the government politically. While the repression theory suggests that such traumatic events would resurface and come back to haunt me and affect my behavior negatively, the contrary happened. The group I have been working with, who suffered the same trauma, and I, have been advocating and campaigning for human rights and against torture since the events took place. Second, the repression theory is