by Tiffanie Jones

Created on: May 15, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I do believe that amnesia can be caused by emotional trauma because I am pretty sure that I have experienced it. My father died in a car accident when I was six years old. As a result, my mother, sister and I moved to another town to live with my grandparents for a while. I remember a lot of the time that I spent with my family members those years after the wreck, but for some reason I have never been able to remember anything at all that happened at school between the first and fourth grade. I don't remember my teachers, classmates, principal, recess, lunchtime Nothing. The funny thing is that I remember going to piano and twirling lessons in the evenings and hanging around my grandparents' video store after school. I also remember playing with the children in the neighborhood. It is just the school day that I cannot recall. Halfway through fifth grade my mother remarried and we moved back to our hometown. I remember most of fifth grade, and pretty much everything that has happened since then. This might be related to the emotional distress from the death of my father, or it could be something completely unrelated. At this point I don't see any of those memories ever returning and I am not bothered by that.

There are however, heartbreaking cases of people who have recovered false memories, hurting themselves, their friends, and family members. The large number of cases of false memories of abuse suggests that maybe we don't repress or suppress memories; maybe some people are just very susceptible to suggestion and can form false memories. Research has even shown that it isn't possible to reach back to non-verbally stored memories and describe them in words. Some people argue that there are psychologists who even plant these memories in their clients in order to make more money off of them, and there is documentation of several psychologists who have lost their license for that very reason (FMS Foundation Newsletter 2002).

There are several arguments about the existence of amnesia caused by emotional trauma, and although there's little or no scientific evidence, researchers do have some ideas how this type of amnesia could be physiologically possible. Jacobs, Laurance, Thomas, Luzcak, and Nadel (1996) suggest that stress has an effect on the hippocampus and the amygdale that may account for the memory loss. They claim that in the presence of stress, the hippocampus is less active, and memories are saved as disorganized fragments. This could be why some memories are missing or inaccurate. Bremner (1999) further supports this idea by stating that people who had a stressful childhood for whatever reason have a smaller hippocampus that can lead to a delayed recollection of childhood events.

References

Bremner, J.D. (1999). The Lasting Effects of Psychological Trauma on Memory and the Hippocampus. Retrieved April 12, 2008 from http://www.lawandpsychiatry.com/html/hippocampus.htm .

FMS Foundation Newsletter(2002), 11(6). Retrieved on April 12, 2008 from http://www.fmsfonline.org/fmsf02.n01.html

Jacobs, W. J., Laurance, H. E., Thomas, K. G. F., Luzcak, S. E. & Nadel, L. (1996). On the Veracity and Variability of Traumatic Memory. The International Electronic Journal of Innovations in the Study of the Traumatization Process and Methods for Reducing or Eliminating Related Human Suffering. Retrieved April 12, 2008 from http://www.fsu.edu/~trauma/art3v2i2.html.

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