Suggestions or real recovery?
I am currently taking an online class titled Cognitive and Affective Processes and this week we had to complete a group project (an online group project, a very novel and laborious process!) and my group decided to talk about pressed and false memories. I was responsible for the implication section and a question that is associated with the topic.
Well to make a long explanation short, repressed memories are those memories that are so traumatic to the individual that they are pushed into the unconscious (as indicated by the psychodynamic thought). Usually these memories are only recalled when the individual is emotionally able to deal with the event or issue. However, since these memories are usually unearthed long after they are buried, it is difficult to ever be sure what had taken place when the event first happened.
So I came up with this question for the class: Is it ethical for a therapist to suggest to a patient that they have repressed memories? Why or why not? Which to my surprise everyone who is not in the group participated in the discussion.
I started thinking while responding to some of my classmates’ comments. Since these memories are very fluid and can be easily affected by suggestions from the therapist, what the therapist says to the patient then becomes very important. The therapist can mislead the patient one way or the other depending on how they work with patients.
I came to the conclusion that since everyone has different life experiences, another can interpret the way you state a thought as something very different. As you can never be 100% sure of how others will take your comments. No matter how clearly you think you have expressed yourself, there’s always that chance that someone can take it very differently. So I started to wonder if the mere act of talking with a patient about their repressed memory actively altering that memory? No matter now neutral a therapist is while exploring the topic.
I don’t have an answer to that question, but it’s certainly an interesting thought.
posted by Vivian @ 11:39 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Hi Vivian, I'm enjoying reading your blog. I agree about the suggestive qualities of the therapist/patient relationship. So many things are picked up subconsciously through body language, voice tone, etc. that a therapist is impacting a patient constantly during therapy. And it is true that repressed memories are very fluid and unreliable.
Hi Jeannie (a.k.a. Mrs. Ammon?)
Thanks for commenting!
It's interesting that you mentioned body language. I went out with a new friend of mine tonight and he was asking me about how I like working with children? (Since I had just started working at a camp with a small group of children.) He couldn't really tell about my body language so he assumed that I am not that excited about children. Somehow my body language did not convey the message that I would say verbally. It’s very interesting.
As a Real Estate agent I have discovered my greatest talent is in reading body language or very subtle speech nuance. There is a lot of psychology in salesmanship. I find it fascinating.
I think you can find psychology is almost everything in everyday. From the moment we wake up to the moment we rest. Well there's also science in dreams when we sleep! It is facinating.
Science in dreams? Please explain. I'm reading a book right now about the NDE of children. It is fascinating. What is your take on NDEs?
As Freud would say, dreams are manifestations of what you think about in the day. It is your unconscious wishes and desires morphed into other images that appear in dreams. Since most of these unconscious wishes and desires are actually not acceptable in daily life. Take nightmares for example, they are usually extensions of fear and sometimes anger. With that said, I do think that images are highly individualized. There are people that tried to come up with systematic way of explaining these images, but personally I think it is still very subjective.
Although I don’t completely agree with psychodynamic theory, they do have their usefulness.
Now, what does NDE stand for? I am not sure I know what it is to answer your question :p
Sorry, It is near death experience. There have been quite a few studies done.
I think there's certainly something to say about near death experiences. Personally I think there's some science to it. I think to a certain extent everything is about energy. Also, some of these experiences are viewed as more likely in some cultures than others depending on bliefs.
I think just because we can't prove something scientifically it doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. I am not in touch with this topic that extensively, but it would be interesting to investigate.
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