The forgetting and remembering phenomena that Erdelyi outlines here have little to do with the concept of repression. None of the research that he describes shows that it is possible for people to repress (and then recover) memories for entire, significant, and potentially emotion-laden events. In the absence of scientific evidence, we continue to challenge the validity of the concept of repression.

Repression is one of the most haunting concepts in psychology. Something shocking happens, and the mind pushes it into some inaccessible corner of the unconscious. Later, the memory may emerge into consciousness. Repression is one of the foundation stones on which the structure of psychoanalysis rests. Recently there has been a rise in reported memories of childhood sexual abuse that were allegedly repressed for many years. With recent changes in legislation, people with recently unearthed memories are suing alleged perpetrators for (...) events that happened 20, 30, even 40 or more years earlier. These new developments give rise to a number of questions: (a) How common is it for memories of child abuse to be repressed? (b) How are jurors and judges likely to react to these repressed memory claims? (c) When the memories surface, what are they like? and (d) How authentic are the memories? (shrink)

Case histories make contributions to science and practice, but they can also be highly misleading. We illustrate with our reexamination of the case of Jane Doe; she was videotaped twice, once when she was six years old and then eleven years later when she was seventeen. During the first interview she reported sexual abuse by her mother. During the second interview she apparently forgot and then remembered the sexual abuse. Jane's case has been hailed by some as the new proof (...) of recovery of repressed or dissociated traumatic memories, and even as proof of the reliability of recovered memories of repeated abuse. Numerous pieces of "supporting evidence" were given in the original article for believing that the abuse occurred. Upon closer scrutiny, however, there are reasons to doubt not only the "supporting evidence," but also that the sexual abuse ever happened in the first place. Our analysis raises several general questions about the use of case histories in science, medicine, and mental health. There is a cautionary tale not only for those professionals who advance the case history, but also for those who base their theories on it or would readily accept it as proof. (shrink)

Counterfactual imaginings are known to have far reaching implications. In the present experiment, we ask if imagining events from one's past can affect memory for childhood events. We draw on the social psychology literature showing that imagining a future event increases the subjective likelihood that the event will occur. The concepts of cognitive availability and the source monitoring framework provide reasons to expect that imagination may inflate confidence that a childhood event occurred. However, people routinely produce myriad counterfactual imaginings (i.e., (...) daydreams and fantasies) but usually do not confuse them with past experiences. To determine the effects of imagining a childhood event, we pretested subjects on how confident they were that a number of childhood events had happened, asked them to imagine some of those events, and then gathered new confidence measures. For each of the target items, imagination inflated confidence that the event had occurred in childhood. We discuss implications for situations in which imagination is used as an aid in searching for presumably lost memories. (shrink)

After hundreds of articles on recovered memory therapy, one might have thought there was not much left to say. But a November 1997 front-page article in the New York Times headlined '"Memory' Therapy Leads to a Lawsuit and Big Settlement" suggested that the repressed memory controversy had broken new records (Belluck 1997).

Two decades of research using repeated false statements and underhanded information have shown that people can easily be made to believe that they have seen or experienced something they never did. In this paper, we discuss the possibility that the mental health professional and client may unknowingly collaborate to create a client′s false memory of childhood sexual abuse. Both therapist and client bring beliefs into therapy, and the confirmation bias shows that people discover what they already believe to be true. (...) What do people believe about memory? We asked 115 students for their reactions to various statements about how memory works; results showed widespread belief in the repression mechanism. A principal components analysis revealed that three larger beliefs explained 61% of the variance in the more specific beliefs: possible sources of memory distortions, memory for traumatic events, and the potential recoverability of memories. Finally, we discuss the ambiguity inherent in the term repression, as well as the generalizability of misinformation research to the repressed and recovered memories. (shrink)

Marketers use autobiographical advertising as a means to create nostalgia for their products. This research explores whether such referencing can cause people to believe that they had experiences as children that are mentioned in the ads. In Experiment 1, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with Mickey Mouse as a child. Relative to controls, the ad increased their confidence that they personally had shaken hands with Mickey as a child at a Disney resort. The (...) increased confidence could be due to a revival of a true memory or the creation of a new, false one. In Experiment 2, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with an impossible character (e.g., Bugs Bunny). Again, relative to controls, the ad increased confidence that they personally had shaken hands with the impossible character as a child at a Disney resort. The increased confidence is consistent with the notion that autobiographical referencing can lead to the creation of false or distorted memory. ᭧ 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Pezdek and Lam [Pezdek, K. & Lam, S. . What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “False memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition] claim that the majority of research into false memories has been misguided. Specifically, they charge that false memory scientists have been misusing the term “false memory,” relying on the wrong methodologies to study false memories, and misapplying false memory research to real world situations. We review each of these claims (...) and highlight the problems with them. We conclude that several types of false memory research have advanced our knowledge of autobiographical and recovered memories, and that future research will continue to make significant contributions to how we understand memory and memory errors. (shrink)

Emotional memories are vivid and lasting but not necessarily accurate. Under some conditions, emotion even increases people’s susceptibility to false memories. This review addresses when and why emotion leaves people vulnerable to misremembering events. Recent research suggests that pregoal emotions—those experienced before goal attainment or failure —narrow the scope of people’s attention to information that is central to their goals. This narrow focus can impair memory for peripheral details, leaving people vulnerable to misinformation concerning those details. In contrast, postgoal emotions—those (...) experienced after goal attainment or failure —broaden the scope of attention leaving people more resistant to misinformation. Implications for legal contexts, such as emotion-related errors in eyewitness testimony, are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper we review the factors alleged to be responsible for the creation of inaccurate reports among preschool-aged children, focusing on so-called "source misattribution errors." We present the first round of results from an ongoing program of research that suggests that source misattributions could be a powerful mechanism underlying children′s false beliefs about having experienced fictitious events. Preliminary findings from this program of research indicate that all children of all ages are equally susceptible to making source misattributions. Data from (...) a follow-up wave of data indicate that very young children may be disproportionately vulnerable to these kinds of errors when the procedure is changed slightly to create mental images more easily. This vulnerability leads younger preschoolers, on occasion, to claim that they actually experienced events that they only thought about. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate over the veracity and durability of delayed reports of early memories, repressed memories, dissociative states, and the validity risks posed by therapeutic techniques that entail repeated visually guided imagery inductions. (shrink)

In three experiments, we found that after a subtle suggestion, subjects falsely recognized words from their own dreams and thought they had been presented during the waking state. The procedure used in these studies involved three phases. Subjects studied a list of words on Day 1. On Day 2, they received a false suggestion that some words from their previously reported dreams had been presented on the list. On Day 3, they tried to recall only what had occurred on the (...) initial list. Subjects falsely recognized their dream words at a very high rate—sometimes as often as they accurately recognized true words. They reported that they genuinely “remembered” the dream words, as opposed to simply “knowing” that they had been previously presented. These findings, which suggest that dreams can sometimes be mistaken for reality, have significant implications for the practice of psychotherapy. (shrink)

Psychology's fascination with memory and its imperfections dates back further than we can remember. The first careful experimental studies of memory were published in 1885 by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, and tens of thousands of memory studies have been conducted since. What has been learned, and what might the future of memory be?

In this paper, it will be shown that Peirce was of two minds about whether his scientific fallibilism, the recognition of the possibility of error in our beliefs, applied to mathematics. It will be argued that Peirce can and should hold a theory of fallibilism within mathematics, and that this position is more consistent with his overall pragmatic theory of inquiry and his general commitment to the growth of knowledge. But to make the argument for fallibilism in mathematics, Peirce's theory (...) of fallibilism must be reconceived to incorporate two different kinds of fallibilism, which correspond to two different kinds of truth claims. (shrink)

... [T]here manifestly is not one drop of principle in the whole vast reservoir of established scientific theory that has sprung from any other source than the power of the human mind to originate ideas that are true. But this power, for all it has accomplished, is so feeble that as ideas flow from their springs in the soul, the truths are almost drowned in a flood of false notions; and that which experience does is gradually, and by a sort (...) of fractionation, to precipitate and filter off the false ideas, eliminating them and letting the truth pour on in its mighty current. But precisely how does this action of experience take place? It takes place by a series of surprises. Throughout the.. (shrink)

Pragmatic bioethics represents a novel approach to the discipline of bioethics, yet has met with criticisms which have beset the discipline of bioethics in the past. In particular, pragmatic bioethics has been criticized for its excessively fuzzy approach to fundamental questions of normativity, which are crucial to a field like bioethics. Normative questions need answers, and consensus is not always enough. The approach here is to apply elements of the discourse ethics of Habermas and Putnam to the sphere of bioethics, (...) in order to develop a normative structure out of the framework of bioethical inquiry as it stands. The idea here is that the process of inquiry contains its own normative structure as it aims to discover norms. Such an approach, which fuses pragmatic bioethics with discourse ethics, may rightly be called a "Pragmatic Discourse Bioethics.". (shrink)

Theorists of democratic politics have long noted the importance of citizenship to the realization of liberal norms. Citizenship provides an artificial identity to members so that they may meet as equals in the public domain. The constraints of equality dictate that this identity will have a unitary face: citizenship must be a single status if it is to serve its stated purpose. However upon examination, citizenship appears to take multiple forms that reflect a range of political statuses that exist within (...) the confines of democratic politics. The civil, political and social rights of citizenship as well as the status of nationality come unbound from one another in ways that create multiple forms of partial, or semi-citizenship. Semi-citizenships provide states with opportunities to organize and govern otherwise "illegible" or "irrational" sub-sections of the population. They also often offer individuals the chance to adopt identities that diverge from those referenced by classic notions of the citizen. ;This dissertation combines a theoretical inquiry into the realities of modern citizenship with focused case studies examining instances of semi-citizenship. Each case study demonstrates the degree to which semi-citizenship is inevitable in democratic politics both by looking at various national contexts and by recalling the presence of such statuses throughout the history of the modern state. The statuses held by non-nationals, GLBTs, children and convicted felons demonstrate a unique set of state responses to forms of membership that do not correspond to the categories of citizen or non-citizen. Each of these statuses has existed in a wide range of temporal and geographic circumstances. Deprived of nationality, civil rights and political rights, these groups exist in democracies without being governed democratically, yet in some cases they are able to turn such statuses to their advantage. States compensate in a variety of ways ranging from special or additional rights, to benign neglect, to paternalism. While vulnerable to critique, these compensatory measures indicate an acceptance of the fact that citizenship is composed of several distinct forms of membership and may also provide opportunities for tailoring citizenship to meet individual needs. (shrink)

An apparent tension persists in Peirce’s philosophy between the purpose-driven nature of inquiry, destined to achieve truth in the long run, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fact that inquiry depends upon musement (or the free play of ideas), which is purposeless. If there is no purpose in musement then it would appear there is no rational self-control in musement, and thus, irrationality lies at the center of Peirce’s theory of inquiry. I argue that in musement (...) the individual sets off without a purpose, thereby opening herself to noticing novelty, and that noticing is itself a form of creative thought insofar as it allows the individual to discover new wonders and anomalies. Not all creativity in inquiry aims at solving problems or formulating new hypotheses. Some creative thinking is about noticing what is already there or possibly there. Such noticing in musement is purposeless, and yet the individual retains some rational self-control within this thought process. She controls the entry into the activity, and, prior to musing, she controls the adoption of the ideals which are inevitably employed in musement. This adoption of some ideals rather than others can explain why some people notice things while others do not. (shrink)

New technologies in germ–line engineering have raised many questions about obligations to future generations. In this article, I focus on the importance of increasing freedom and the equality of freedom for present and future generations, because these two ideals are necessary for a just society and because they are most threatened by the wide–scale privatisation of GLE technologies. However, there are ambiguities in applying these ideals to the issue of genetic technologies. I argue that Amartya Sen's capability theory can be (...) used as a framework to ensure freedom and equality in the use of GLE technology. Capability theory articulates the goal of equalising real freedom by bringing all people up to a threshold of basic human capabilities. Sen's capability theory can clarify the proper moral goal of GLE insofar as this technology could be used to bring people up to certain basic human capabilities, thereby increasing their real freedom. And by increasing the freedom of those who lack basic human capabilities, GLE can aid in decreasing the inequalities of freedom among classes of people. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's ideal of "keeping the conversation going" requires a further distinction between genuine conversation and simply "going through the motions" if we are to make the most of this recommendation. I argue for a requirement for the conditions of conversation, which draws on Rorty's emphasis on the importance of hope for defining our social vocabularies. On this view, hope is a belief about what is possible for the future. In conversation, hope for the conversation actually conditions the questions one (...) asks in the present. And, in genuine conversation, the participants share a common hope in answering a question. (shrink)

Many commentators of the "Republic" see the conformity to authority, emphasized in the early education, as a hindrance to the development of the critical skills necessary for the philosopher. Furthermore, they see the theoretical training of the philosopher as detached from morality. I argue that Plato does not view philosophical training as separate from morality. Rather Plato views intellectual training as integral to the philosopher's overall pursuit of the Good. Philosophical knowledge is moral because the objects of such knowledge are (...) closer to the divine. Philosophical development is a moral and spiritual quest aimed at becoming god-like. (shrink)