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Repressed Memory
Nothing has shaken the world of psychology more than the memory wars. This controversy began in the 1990s in response to the growing number of people, mostly women, beginning in the 1980s, who claimed to have suddenly remembered severe trauma in their early childhoods. At first, these accounts of horrendous actions by family members done to hapless children were taken at face value and believed by most mainstream therapists.
However, in the 1990s after several people were sued in court by women trying to get compensation for their emotional distress, questions began to arise as to the validity of repressed memory. Soon after, some of the people who had brought lawsuits against their families began to question whether their stories were true and after much heart-wrenching thought, decided to retract their stories.
This reversal of belief in the reality of childhood trauma and the resurfacing of the memories of it began a firestorm that still rages to the present day.
The History of the Term Repressed Memory
At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, psychology was in its early infancy. It was then that Sigmund Freud burst onto the scene and began to investigate the idea of there being an unconscious mind. In his work, The Unconscious (Freud, 1915) wrote:
