Belief in Unconscious Repressed Memory Persists

On the basis of converging research, we concluded that the controversial topic of unconscious blockage of psychological trauma (i.e., repressed memory) remains very much alive in clinical, legal, and academic contexts. In his commentary, Brewin (this issue, p. 443) conducted a cocitation analysis and concluded that scholars do not adhere to the concept of unconscious repression. Furthermore, he argued that previous survey research did not specifically assess unconscious repression. Here, we present critical evidence that runs counter to his claims. First, we inspected his cocitation analysis and found that some scholars support notions that are closely related to unconscious repression. Furthermore, we conducted another analysis on the basis of articles’ similarity. Again, we found examples of scholars specifically endorsing unconscious repressed memories. Second, as opposed to what Brewin reports, recent survey research now exists that bears directly on people’s beliefs regarding unconscious repression. This work reveals that large percentages of people (e.g., students and eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing [EMDR] clinicians) endorse the concept of unconscious repressed memories. The belief in unconscious repressed memory can continue to contribute to harmful consequences in clinical, legal, and academic domains (e.g., false accusations of abuse).

Trauma Processing in Israel’s Contemporary Documentary Cinema

This article investigates a new phenomenon in contemporary Israeli documentary cinema: the processing of war trauma. For the first time since the onset of the Second Intifada, films whose heroes suffer from PTSD are dealing with the processing of past experience. Using case studies, the article analyzes films directed by PTSD victims, which deal with the processing of war trauma, including among others One Battle Too Many (Joel Sharon, 2013) and Closed Story (Micha Livne, 2015). The films’ heroes are seeking to free themselves from the amnesia that is concealing the traumatic events deep within their memory. They manage to locate the repressed memory and then weave the traumatic story anew. The films propose various cinematic strategies for processing trauma, strategies that are meant to demarcate both the subjective traumatic past and the objective safe present and to place a defined aesthetic border between them. The films are analyzed by means of close reading of the cinematic aesthetic and the discussion of trauma in the Humanities. The interweaving of unrealistic and realistic symbolization practices dismantles the classic form of documentary cinema and facilitates an encounter between the viewer and the overwhelming nature of trauma.

Reports of Recovered Memories in Therapy in Undergraduate Students

Psychologists have debated the wisdom of recovering traumatic memories in therapy that were previously unknown to the client, with some concerns over accuracy and memory distortions. The current study surveyed a sample of 576 undergraduates in the south of the United States. Of 188 who reported attending therapy or counselling, 8% reported coming to remember memories of abuse, without any prior recollection of that abuse before therapy. Of those who reported recovered memories, 60% cut off contact with some of their family. Within those who received therapy, those who had a therapist discuss the possibility of repressed memory were 28.6 times more likely to report recovered memories, compared to those who received therapy without such discussion. These findings mirror a previous survey of US adults and suggest attempts to recover repressed memories in therapy may continue in the forthcoming generation of adults.

What Do People Really Think of When They Claim to Believe in Repressed Memory?

What do people really think of when they declare to believe in repressed memory? In two studies (NStudy 1 = 3158; NStudy 2 = 305) using an integrative methodology considering recent methodological discussions, we found that most participants reported to believe in repressed memory. They also appeared to think of an unconscious mechanism when reporting beliefs in repression, whereas they were more sceptical about deliberate memory suppression. Participants with no memory of childhood abuse expressed more scepticism about unconscious and deliberate mechanisms than those with such memories (Study 1). The order in which the items were presented was not associated with beliefs in the different statements (Study 2). The results are discussed along the lines of survey methodology, which is to what degree are findings about the general public’s beliefs in repression dependent on the questions asked and on design features. Applied issues are also discussed.

The Memorial ACTe

This essay examines the nature, scope and consequences of the seism of memory since its eruption in 2000 in Guadeloupe, French West Indies. In particular, it questions how the context of a multifaceted appetite for collective remembrance took the form of competing strategies for memorialization in the space. As such, it focuses on the heritage of pain, resistance and pride at the local, national and regional levels. I draw on Shalini Puri’s analysis of the repressed memory of the 1983 Grenada revolution in Operation Urgent Memory to identify in the landscape of Guadeloupe submerged, residual and eruptive ‘platforms of memory’ (Puri, 2012). In the specific case of Guadeloupe, the collective efforts of the Guadeloupean people for re-appropriating their non-French and non-European heritage on the island have turned into competitive post-traumatic approaches of the history of transatlantic slave trade. This essay eventually analyses the case of the Mémorial ACTe (MACTe) – Museum of Contemporary Caribbean Art and Memorial for the History of the Slave Trade – as constituting the most successful expression of what I define as cultural marronage, in the ambivalent postcolonial environment of the French Overseas Regions.