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I read the same article in the New York Times called A Study of Memory Looks at Fact and Fiction as lrifkin about the debate over whether it is possible for humans to suppress painful memories only to remember them years later.  My initial reaction to this notion was that it was total hogwash.  How is it possible for you to totally forget something and then one day remember it out of the blue?  How do we know that these new memories aren’t the fabrication of someone’s over-active imagination?

Many researchers believe this condition is a social construction and argue that if this was possible, there would be documented cases of this condition dating back for centuries.  As it stands now, most of there seems to be a rise in the number of these cases in the 19th century.  That being said, our world has changed dramatically in the last few hundred years.  Perhaps we always had the ability to develop these conditions, but our environment did not stimulate the proper input.  After all, other conditions (totally unrelated to this kind) such as autism have dramatically increased in recent years.  Does this have something to do with our environment or the way we live?  The brain harbors vast uncharted territories.  Perhaps there is a break in the chain of boxes that results in this delayed response to these traumatic events.  Perhaps we have the ability to control inputs on a much greater level than we know or are able to comprehend.