فراموشی خاطرات ناخواسته: فراموشی هدایت شده و روش سرکوب افکار

Experimental psychopathologists have tested hypotheses regarding mechanisms that ought to be operative if victims possess skills for forgetting material related to trauma. In this article, we review research on directed forgetting and thought suppression paradigms, concentrating on laboratory studies involving attempts by individuals reporting trauma histories to forget emotionally negative material. Most studies have shown that trauma survivors, especially those with post-traumatic stress disorder, are characterized by a breakdown in the ability to forget disturbing material. Studies on individuals reporting repressed or recovered memories of trauma have not confirmed predictions regarding heightened forgetting skills for trauma-related words. However, recent research on suppressing disturbing autobiographical memories suggests that people who report spontaneously recalling childhood abuse outside of psychotherapy may, indeed, possess skills for not thinking about disturbing material.

Few debates in psychology have been as controversial as the one concerning the authenticity of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA; McNally, 2003). Some theorists assert that sexually abused children develop a dissociative or avoidant encoding style that enables them to disengage their attention from threatening events and direct it elsewhere (Herman and Schatzow, 1987 and Terr, 1994). Although this avoidant encoding style may be adaptive in the short run by enabling the child to blunt the emotional impact of abuse, some theorists believe that it may make it difficult for survivors to remember their abuse memories later in life (e.g., Terr, 1991). These repressed or dissociated abuse memories supposedly lead to psychiatric symptoms later in life. Alternatively, the memories may be encoded more or less normally, but subjected to inhibitory forces that attenuate their accessibility (See Erdelyi, 2006 on repression). Experimental psychopathologists have tested hypotheses regarding mechanisms that ought to be operative if victims possess skills for forgetting material related to trauma. In this article, we review research in this area, concentrating on laboratory studies involving attempts by individuals reporting trauma histories to forget emotionally negative material (for an earlier review, see also Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997). As clinical experimental psychopathologists, we are interested chiefly in these methods as means to answer questions about mental disorder. Hence, our review does not address broader issues about memory inhibition.