PSYCHOLOGY TERM PAPER
Memory is the main faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences.
A repressed memory, is one that is retained in the sub conscious mind, in which one is not aware of it but where it can still affect both conscious thoughts, memory, and behavior. When memory is distorted, the result can be referred to what has been called the "False Memory Syndrome"(Thomas Billing Publishing
1995) : a condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships are entered around a memory of traumatic experience which is obviously false but the person strongly believes that it isn't. However, the syndrome is not only characterized by false memories alone. We all have memories that are inaccurate. Instead, the syndrome may be diagnosed when the memory is so severely disoriented that it changes the individual's entire personality and lifestyle, therefore, disrupting all sorts of other behaviors.
The means of personality disorder is on purpose. False memory syndrome is especially destructive because the person carefully avoids any confrontation what so ever with any evidence that might challenge the memory. So this syndrome takes on a life of its own, keeping itself to be alone and resistant to correction. The person may become so focused on the memory that he or she may be effectively distracted from coping with real problems in his or her life. There are many models which try to explain how memory works.
Nevertheless, we do not know exactly how memory works. One of the most questionable models of memory is the one which assumes that every experience a person has had is "recorded" in memory and that, "some of these memories are from traumatic events too terrible to want to remember"(Thomas Billings
Publishing 1995). . These terrible memories are locked away in the sub conscious mind, (i.e. repressed, only to be remembered in adulthood when some triggering event opens the door to the unconscious). Both before and