FFS

[silverleaf79]

I have an essay due on Monday.

I'm really having trouble persuading myself to start. I've done the reading, but now I need to start making notes and pulling stuff together.

And I just can't - I feel all overwhelmed and I don't know where to begin.

I'm going to make a deal with myself. If I write one sentence, then I'll reward myself. I don't know how

Comments

[mfantom]

Ok. Well this is an interesting subject. I am not sure if you are going to have to are for the practive of recovering memory or give an overview of the current info on the subject. Here are some links though:

http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/1999/A/199900458.html

http://psy.ucsd.edu/~pwinkiel/belli-winkielman-read-schwarz-lynn-PBR-1998.pdf

While you probably already know this stuff I found it very interesting. The problem I always had with essays was that you can generally sum everything up in a page or two with soimething like "fire bad" or "tree pretty". This one seems to be:

"Recovering Memories is a valid and useful practice made possible by new understanding in the nature of memory. Therapists (and patients) have a tendancy to try and get a different type of meaning or memory than is actually possible though and this distorts the worth of the process."

That sound about right?

[silverleaf79]

Thanks, great links! I'll certainly be adding some stuff from there.

My "fire bad, tree pretty" goes along the lines of:

"In some cases, recovered memories are indeed genuine; however it is usually difficult to corroborate memories from childhood, particularly of traumatic and inherently secret events such as sexual abuse.
Other recovered memories are false, and whilst some are recollected spontaneously, others are created by the suggestative techiques used in some psychotherapies - there is no evidence that such techniques produce accurate memories, and much evidence that they can distort existing memories and even create entirely fictional ones.
No type of memory is immune to inaccuracies of encoding and retrieval, and we have no reason to believe that recovered memories are any different."

There's more, but that's basically it. With it being a scientific essay, I'll be concentrating on the evidence for and against the accuracy of recovered memories, what circumstances would make false memories more likely, and so on.

It's getting there.

[mfantom]

I like that one. I am sure you will do just fine.

[mfantom]

AND...

You already have 102 words just with the Fire bad tree pretty version. :-)