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AriannahM's picture

Memory Repression

I read the same article as “lrifkin” and I have also found the Science Times more relevant this semester! This article was particularly interesting to me because it used literature to trace the history of memory repression. One of the scientists argued that if memory repression was real, then it would have been written about in literature before the 1800s. Scientists argue that dangerous memories are remembered more vividly for survival purposes: “The scientific dispute is over what constitutes normal forgetting. Studies show that healthy people usually remember frightening or dangerous incidents more vividly than other experiences: the brain preserves these impressions because they are important for survival” (Carey 2007). Perhaps, traumatic memories are not repressed automatically, but instead intentionally “put away” by the individual. The researchers bring up this point by saying: “The brain stores the memory, stuffed into a neural drawer with a thousand other mysteries of childhood, until years later, when the repulsiveness of the act suddenly hits the person, now an adult” (Carey 2007). This point ties into input and output. When discussing input and output in class, we never discussed the amount of time it took to get from stimulus and response. Repression brings up the issue of time… could it take years to get from a stimulus to a response?

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