Repression

Repressed Memories

While reading the news recently I have read a lot of article that review the accusations of a twenty seven year old man on a defrocked priest. Supposedly the man had memories of being molested by the priest that were pushed into his unconscious mind because it was painful. This process has been talked about in the psychology world and is referred to as a repressed memory. The idea of this was first introduced by Sigmund Freud who said that our minds will push painful memories in to our unconscious. Bringing these "repressed memories' up as evidence in a court case is controversial because there have been many studies that show that memory can be off. One of the main theories that state this is called the misinformation effect. This says that memories can easily be changed by prompting in the environment. On the other hand, many other peoples repressed memories have been show to be correct.

The things that I read in the article that made me believe the man was the fact that he kept a journal and was able to provide graphic and complete details about the situation. The thing that made me think that the man was a scam was the fact that he got money out of the situation and was a bum living on the street before the case.

I don't agree with the verdict that the man won 500.000 dollars because I don't think that there was enough hard evidence besides the mans repressed memories to show damage to the man. I think that the man was probably trying to scam the church and get some free money.

I think repressed memories should be allowed in court cases only when there is more evidence to back up the claim. I think repressed memories should be grounds for a further inspection into the matter to see if there is some hard evidence to back up the claim.