The Debate on Repressed Memories

However, many weak or fragile democracies also deploy digital 轉按 strategies. Generally, democracies favor using information manipulation tactics — such as disinformation campaigns — over more heavy-handed approaches, like mass surveillance or widespread censorship filtering of websites. But the notion that democracies do not rely on digital repression tactics simply is not true. We use February 2020, the month prior to the shutdown, as the reference period. Each coefficient plotted is a DD estimate between opposed and aligned areas from this period, and the estimates represent the change in repression between opposed and aligned areas compared with February 2020. If the design assumptions are valid, we would not find a large difference in repression between opposed and aligned areas prior to lockdown.

Strengthening of existing repressive tendencies in response to a traumatic condition was demonstrated in a study among women who were awaiting the outcome of diagnostic tests for breast cancer, which may be conceived as a traumatic event. An increase in the number of repressors was found after the diagnosis of breast cancer was made known to the patients, whereas no increase was found in women who appeared to be free of cancer (Kreitler et al. 1993). If you are a human being, you will experience positive and negative emotions throughout your life; that is the deal that comes with being human. While it is possible to learn how to cope with negative emotions, it may be challenging to do it alone, particularly if you learned to repress your emotions in the context of unresolved and challenging life experiences.

A negative relationship between self-concealment and repression (King et al. 1992; Ritz and Dahme 1996) has also been reported. In fact, found the lowest scores on the Self-Concealment scale (SCS; Larson and Chastain 1990) for repressors and the highest SCS scores among the high-anxious persons. Certain explanations of repression seem to emphasize the social aspect, whereas other explanations do not describe the repressive tendency as specifically socially related.

There is no reason to label repression as either positive or negative on a phenomenological level. Repressive people will generally not bother other people with their problems and may even facilitate social situations by their positive attitude (Furnham et al. 2003). In the long term repression may have negative somatic consequences, including an increased risk of various disorders.

There is no reference to social situations in the items included in the CECS . An example item is “When I feel afraid or worried, I smother my feelings”. Most of the items of in the WAI subscales (D. A. Weinberger, unpublished ) refer to social situations, such as the item “I think about other people’s feelings before I do something they might not like”. One would expect personally related repression scales to load on one dimension and scales assessing socially related repression on a second dimension . The factor analysis yielded a four-factor solution, including subscales of the CECS WAI restraint scales WAI defensiveness scales and the distress scales. We cannot explain why the WAI repression scales loaded on two different factors.

Eminent researchers like Elizabeth Loftus have demonstrated how easily the human mind forms false memories with suggestive questioning. Current scientific thought is that repression and retrieval of traumatic memories may happen, but extremely rarely. Many therapists use methods such as hypnosis as therapy, to access repressed memories, but there is no scientific evidence to support the efficacy of such therapies. If you feel you have a problem with repressed emotions, the first step may be to acknowledge it.

It is a mental framework that organizes and synthesizes information about places, objects, events, and people. A schema can be conceived as a scaffold; a blueprint describing an object, a string of events, or an idea. They can reemerge in other forms at different times, and affect mental and physical health. An individual may not remember the abuse in adulthood, but it can lead to anxiety and difficulty in forming relationships as an adult. Repression, on the other hand, is unconscious blanking of distressing memories by the brain, a way to cope with painful emotions. Repression may sometimes be confused with suppression, but there is a distinction.

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