Memory loss a myth or reality

I hope you have seen a lot of movies that portray a character who has lost memory (The notebook, Unknown, Bourne series, Memento and many more). We do sympathize with such characters, get involved in the movie and wish them well. However, memory loss isn’t some fictional stuff. It happens in real life with real people. In movies directors or script writers intentionally create characters that would later regain their memories in order have a happy end type of movie. In life, things get a bit more complicated. Can a human memory disappear and then come back again? When does that happen? What determines that? Maybe it is a disease?

How our memory works and what it depends on

Scientists that research processes of memory distinguish a few chains of it: memorization of information (encoding), its’ preservation (storage) and ability to recall (retrieval). All of these chains are closely interrelated; complement each other by forming unity. When one of them is disarrayed, the entire memory process can fall into disarray. At the moment, it is still thought that what a human remembered, it is stored for his entire lifetime. The majority of information passes on to a level of ‘undigested’ psychical processes and consciousness retains only those that are relevant at the moment. 

Various scientists notice that daily events are remembered in a different way than those which are very painful and traumatizing. Those scholars claim that events which damage human psyche are stored separately from daily ones. Unlike usual reminiscences of daily events, reminiscences of damaging origin are unalterable, difficult to tell, automatic and not connected with other reminiscences. They often sink into subconscious psyche level and are forgotten. Until these reminiscences not realized they stay in the lists of not remembered and at the same time not forgotten memories.

Dissociative amnesia

Dissociative amnesia is memory  loss when important past events are forgotten and it is not possible to find any other medically tested proved reasons for the loss of memory and its’ scope is too big for commonplace forgetting. Scientists that study memory have noticed that dissociative memory disorders happen more often after an early psyche traumatizing event or a few events in childhood (that are depend on violence: rape, physical abuse, danger of death and etc.). It is noticed that children who had undergone painful experience and grew up in normal conditions after that often experience hyper amnesia, which is unhealthy memory strengthening. They can clearly, exactly and in detail remember violence they had experienced. Prolonged crippling situation or slow long term violence often determines appearance of big memory gaps, primitive psychological defense mechanisms such as self denial, association with the aggressor. Then other dissociative disorders are often formed.

Dissociative disorders used to be described as hysteria or hysteric neurosis. They are expressed in disarray of normal remembering of past memories, integration or personality identity. Unconscious painful memories often erupt by threatening dreams, unexpected visions and similar phenomena. They determine formation of specific behavior and appearance of unusual and hardly explainable appearance of certain body senses.

Mental clinics of Harvard university has done a research regarding physical, sexual and psychological violence experienced in the past and its’ connection to dissociative disorders and amnesia. 148 women (18-60 years old) participated in research. 83 percent of them had experienced physical, 82 percent sexual and 71 percent psychological violence. Despite the form of experienced violence all patients partly or completely had forgotten those painful experiences. It means they showed signs of amnesia. It has also been noticed that the earlier violence was experienced the deeper amnesia had developed. Most of the women that participated in the research remembered painful past experiences when they were alone at home, although at that time psychiatric and psychoterapic aid was provided for them. Some of the patients recalled the traumatic experience during practice of psychotherapy. Most of the patients admitted that they tried to find proofs of evidence regarding the returning memories about violence experienced during childhood. 

The research only confirms sightings of Austrian psychotherapist Z. Freud that we, unconsciously know how to defend against painful and traumatizing past memories by applying various means: by pushing them somewhere to subconscious mind, to negate them, reject and belittle. Or we sometimes try to fully live through our painful experience. And then forget and no longer have those nightmares. Unfortunately, that does not always help.