(no subject)
Was Repressed Memory a 19th-Century Creation?
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 26, 2007; A08
There is a pain -- so utter
It swallows substance up
Then covers the Abyss with Trance
So Memory can step around -- across. . . .
Emily Dickinson wrote those lovely words sometime in the middle of
the 19th century, probably after a love affair broke her
heart. Over the next century and a half, that same idea found its
way into countless books, plays and movies -- when a memory
becomes too painful to bear, the mind finds a way to seal it off,
to "step around -- across."
But when researchers recently mounted an exhaustive effort to find
examples of trauma-related amnesia in literary works before the
19th century, they drew a blank. If repressed memories are one way
the brain deals with painful memories, why would there be no
literary examples of the phenomenon that are more than 200 years
old?
In an unusual study, a group of psychiatrists and literary
scholars, led by Harrison Pope of Harvard Medical School, recently
argued that the psychiatric disorder known as dissociative amnesia
(often called repressed memory) is a "culture-bound syndrome" -- a
creation of Western culture sometime in the 19th century.
Pope pointed out that Shakespeare, Homer and other
pre-19th-century writers show numerous characters suffering from
other psychiatric disorders: the disjointed thinking that we call
schizophrenia, or the persistent sadness that marks
depression. Because art draws its inspiration from life, Pope
said, this shows that those disorders have been around forever. In
the opening lines of "The Merchant of Venice," for example,
Antonio vividly describes what it feels like to be depressed:
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born
I am to learn.
Pope said a wide search of literary texts in European languages,
Arabic, Sanskrit and Chinese has produced no convincing example of
a character created before the year 1800 who suffered a traumatic
event, repressed the memory and later recovered it. The scientists
recently published their findings in the journal Psychological
Medicine.
The researchers are offering $1,000 to anyone who can produce an
example to disprove their theory. (To send a suggestion, go to
biopsychlab.com and click on "Repression Challenge.") Pope said
many intriguing examples have come in, but none has been exactly
right. Besides, he says, if dissociative amnesia has its origins
in actual brain functioning, there ought to be many examples of it
-- just as there are countless examples of characters who have
epileptic seizures.
In "Shakuntala," a play written in ancient India, a king falls in
love with a woman. After a curse, the king forgets about his
love. But his amnesia, which eventually reverses itself, was not
triggered by a traumatic event.
Examples of trauma-related amnesia proliferated in 19th-century
Western literature, said Michael Parker, a professor of English at
the U.S. Naval Academy and one of Harrison's co-authors. One of
the best examples is in Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities,"
published in 1859, in which Dr. Manette is horrifyingly imprisoned
in the Bastille but has no memory of the trauma until revelations
in the plot cause him to recall some of what happened.
Movies and television have produced ever more such tales; a recent
"Masterpiece Theatre" production of "Jane Eyre" showed her
suffering amnesia after finding out on her wedding day that the
man she was about to wed was already married. Interestingly,
Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel has no reference to such amnesia;
the television version invented it.
"What that illustrates is repressed memory is such a wonderful
dramatic device," Pope said. "Film is such a perfect vehicle for
someone to have a flashback that grows back into a
memory. . . . Maybe Hollywood to some extent has kept this concept
in the foreground."
Pope's literary-based study offers an unusual take on the
controversy over repressed memory. Over the past two decades, many
people have come forward to say they abruptly recovered memories
of childhood trauma, especially sexual abuse. Some of the memories
have been proved false.
One implication of Pope's paper, said Richard McNally, a professor
of psychology at Harvard who studies reactions to trauma, is that
therapists should focus their attention on treating patients for
the symptoms they are displaying -- such as depression -- with
tools such as psychotherapy and medication, rather than assuming
that hidden memories are the source of their emotional
problems. Pope and McNally emphasized that a culture-bound
syndrome was no less "real" than a biological brain disorder --
the suffering of patients in both cases can be identical.
Indeed, many experts argue that all psychiatric disorders,
including schizophrenia and depression, have cultural aspects. For
one thing, the ways people express emotional suffering are
informed by the cultures they come from. But given that there are
no laboratory tests to diagnose schizophrenia or depression --
doctors make those diagnoses based on criteria agreed upon by
consensus -- one critic of Pope's study argued that it has the
effect of belittling dissociative amnesia when it is no less
scientific than other psychiatric disorders. Matthew Erdelyi, an
experimental psychologist at Brooklyn College, argued that his own
experiments show that human memory is indeed malleable and that
people's ability to recall distant events can decline or improve
with time.
"I think it is patronizing," he said of the paper. "What is the
claim of the article? You can't find repressed memories in
historical articles. But that does not argue to the proper therapy
for repressed memory."
Erdelyi said the paper illustrates the enduring tension between
modern psychiatry, which emphasizes the treatment of patients'
symptoms, and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic approach, which
emphasizes the exploration of past events as a way to resolve
patients' problems. Freud himself worked with patients to recover
memories of trauma. But by 1895, Erdelyi said, Freud had modified
his idea after he realized that most people were not suffering
from a single trauma.
"He started to emphasize insight," Erdelyi said. "The insight was
not, 'Oh my God, my father raped me!' but that 'There is a pattern
to my problems.' The task of therapy is not to recover a
particular point of memory, but to connect the points and to see a
pattern in what makes you depressed."
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 26, 2007; A08
There is a pain -- so utter
It swallows substance up
Then covers the Abyss with Trance
So Memory can step around -- across. . . .
Emily Dickinson wrote those lovely words sometime in the middle of
the 19th century, probably after a love affair broke her
heart. Over the next century and a half, that same idea found its
way into countless books, plays and movies -- when a memory
becomes too painful to bear, the mind finds a way to seal it off,
to "step around -- across."
But when researchers recently mounted an exhaustive effort to find
examples of trauma-related amnesia in literary works before the
19th century, they drew a blank. If repressed memories are one way
the brain deals with painful memories, why would there be no
literary examples of the phenomenon that are more than 200 years
old?
In an unusual study, a group of psychiatrists and literary
scholars, led by Harrison Pope of Harvard Medical School, recently
argued that the psychiatric disorder known as dissociative amnesia
(often called repressed memory) is a "culture-bound syndrome" -- a
creation of Western culture sometime in the 19th century.
Pope pointed out that Shakespeare, Homer and other
pre-19th-century writers show numerous characters suffering from
other psychiatric disorders: the disjointed thinking that we call
schizophrenia, or the persistent sadness that marks
depression. Because art draws its inspiration from life, Pope
said, this shows that those disorders have been around forever. In
the opening lines of "The Merchant of Venice," for example,
Antonio vividly describes what it feels like to be depressed:
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born
I am to learn.
Pope said a wide search of literary texts in European languages,
Arabic, Sanskrit and Chinese has produced no convincing example of
a character created before the year 1800 who suffered a traumatic
event, repressed the memory and later recovered it. The scientists
recently published their findings in the journal Psychological
Medicine.
The researchers are offering $1,000 to anyone who can produce an
example to disprove their theory. (To send a suggestion, go to
biopsychlab.com and click on "Repression Challenge.") Pope said
many intriguing examples have come in, but none has been exactly
right. Besides, he says, if dissociative amnesia has its origins
in actual brain functioning, there ought to be many examples of it
-- just as there are countless examples of characters who have
epileptic seizures.
In "Shakuntala," a play written in ancient India, a king falls in
love with a woman. After a curse, the king forgets about his
love. But his amnesia, which eventually reverses itself, was not
triggered by a traumatic event.
Examples of trauma-related amnesia proliferated in 19th-century
Western literature, said Michael Parker, a professor of English at
the U.S. Naval Academy and one of Harrison's co-authors. One of
the best examples is in Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities,"
published in 1859, in which Dr. Manette is horrifyingly imprisoned
in the Bastille but has no memory of the trauma until revelations
in the plot cause him to recall some of what happened.
Movies and television have produced ever more such tales; a recent
"Masterpiece Theatre" production of "Jane Eyre" showed her
suffering amnesia after finding out on her wedding day that the
man she was about to wed was already married. Interestingly,
Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel has no reference to such amnesia;
the television version invented it.
"What that illustrates is repressed memory is such a wonderful
dramatic device," Pope said. "Film is such a perfect vehicle for
someone to have a flashback that grows back into a
memory. . . . Maybe Hollywood to some extent has kept this concept
in the foreground."
Pope's literary-based study offers an unusual take on the
controversy over repressed memory. Over the past two decades, many
people have come forward to say they abruptly recovered memories
of childhood trauma, especially sexual abuse. Some of the memories
have been proved false.
One implication of Pope's paper, said Richard McNally, a professor
of psychology at Harvard who studies reactions to trauma, is that
therapists should focus their attention on treating patients for
the symptoms they are displaying -- such as depression -- with
tools such as psychotherapy and medication, rather than assuming
that hidden memories are the source of their emotional
problems. Pope and McNally emphasized that a culture-bound
syndrome was no less "real" than a biological brain disorder --
the suffering of patients in both cases can be identical.
Indeed, many experts argue that all psychiatric disorders,
including schizophrenia and depression, have cultural aspects. For
one thing, the ways people express emotional suffering are
informed by the cultures they come from. But given that there are
no laboratory tests to diagnose schizophrenia or depression --
doctors make those diagnoses based on criteria agreed upon by
consensus -- one critic of Pope's study argued that it has the
effect of belittling dissociative amnesia when it is no less
scientific than other psychiatric disorders. Matthew Erdelyi, an
experimental psychologist at Brooklyn College, argued that his own
experiments show that human memory is indeed malleable and that
people's ability to recall distant events can decline or improve
with time.
"I think it is patronizing," he said of the paper. "What is the
claim of the article? You can't find repressed memories in
historical articles. But that does not argue to the proper therapy
for repressed memory."
Erdelyi said the paper illustrates the enduring tension between
modern psychiatry, which emphasizes the treatment of patients'
symptoms, and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic approach, which
emphasizes the exploration of past events as a way to resolve
patients' problems. Freud himself worked with patients to recover
memories of trauma. But by 1895, Erdelyi said, Freud had modified
his idea after he realized that most people were not suffering
from a single trauma.
"He started to emphasize insight," Erdelyi said. "The insight was
not, 'Oh my God, my father raped me!' but that 'There is a pattern
to my problems.' The task of therapy is not to recover a
particular point of memory, but to connect the points and to see a
pattern in what makes you depressed."