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Repressed memories:
scientific fact or romantic fiction
(November
2006 Issue)
By Pamela Berard
Two senior Harvard psychiatrists suggest that "repressed memory"
may be simply a romantic notion dating from the 1800s, and not a
naturally occurring human psychological phenomenon.
To test that hypothesis, Harrison G. Pope, Jr., M.D., M.P.H. and
James I. Hudson, M.D., Sc.D., directors of the Biological Psychiatry
Laboratory at McLean Hospital, offered $1,000 to the first person
who could find a description of repressed memory in any nonfiction
or fiction work in English or in any work translated into English,
prior to 1800.
The challenge was advertised on 25 Web sites for several months
and placed in a print ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education, receiving
mainstream media attention.
"No one anywhere in the world was able to produce an example of
repressed memory," amnesia for a specific traumatic event in an
otherwise lucid individual, Pope said. "It would be inconceivable
over the thousands of years prior to 1800 that no one would have
mentioned or even noticed the case even in passing, in any word
or language, if the phenomenon actually were happening." The psychiatrists
received more than 100 responses.
Pope cited evidence of other naturally occurring psychological
phenomenon. "There are thousands of recognizable descriptions of
delusions and hallucinations in both fiction and non-fiction works
in many languages throughout the ages," he said. "So our ancestors
had no difficulty describing the psychological phenomenon that they
witnessed."
Pope said detractors of his theory often say that just because
something was not described before 1800 doesn't mean it isn't real;
rather, perhaps it had simply not been "conceived" before then,
that people didn't have the proper language or worldview to describe
it.
But that argument breaks down, Pope said. "It isn't necessary to
conceive of something in order to describe it. Even though our ancestors
had totally different concepts of delusions and hallucinations,
you could still recognize their descriptions of it." Repressed memory
is "such a graphic, clear-cut phenomenon that you and I would be
able to recognize it, even though they may have interpreted it differently,"
he said.
The earliest case the pair can document is found in a fictional
character, Dr. Mannette, in Charles Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities"
(published in 1859), who has amnesia for large portions of his time
in the Bastille.
A more graphic example appears in Rudyard Kipling's 1896 novel
"Captains Courageous," Pope said. Penn develops complete amnesia
after losing his entire family in a tragic flood. Later, working
as a fisherman, Penn suddenly recovers his lost memory after a tragic
collision at sea.
The debate over repressed memory is one of the most controversial
in all of psychiatry and psychology today, with fervent arguments
on both sides of the aisle, Pope said. "It is an important topic
because it is of great theoretical importance in the whole structure
of psychiatric theory," he said. Such findings could also have legal
significance. "Courtrooms are interested in the factual truth, more
than the emotional truth, if you will," he said.
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