I know someone who says she has this "memory" of something, but doesnt remember it happening. Only the memory. Could she have gotten molested as a child?
Answer:
That not only occurs in molestation. Psychologist are beginning to under stand that the type of event you are describing happens with rape,child abuse,child neglect,war... even a bad car crash I was badly abused as a child. So was my brother and sister. I remembered a lot and thought I remembered it all. But years later I thought I was loosing my mind because I started having flash backs. We are not even sure what triggered them. My brother says he knows that big parts of his child hood memories are "just gone" no memory. My sister says she has no child hood memories ! Now I'm being treated for PTSD and I'm afraid they might have to go through the same ordeal. Your friend should have a professional evaluation. The sooner the better!
Good Luck. Take Care. :)
I know some who do.
I would say the younger they are or the most extreme it is then yes as their minds cannot deal with the situation in their mental appreciation of what logic is as it doesnt fit in with their thought of what logic is.
Your friend may have been molested but doesnt know which is very hard to deal with as they need this part of themselves open to feel whole and to reduce that feeling of incompleteness.
Although this might be the case, it could well be something much smaller happened and the child mind developed it into something bigger which the later adult mind couldnt distinguish if it was real or not.
Someone i know has a partial personality change whenever our discussion subject changes to any where within range of this topic. They just become unresponsive in a rather rude way but its a defense to steer the talk away from the subject.
Yes, frequently those who have survived abuse or trauma block out the memory, but not usually by repression, though that can be the mechanism. More commonly the method is dissociation. Others who consciously choose not to remember block out memories through suppression. All these ways of coping with trauma result in memories that are not readily accessible. Here's an excerpt from a previous post of mine that explains the differences:
Suppression is a conscious attempt to banish distressing memories out of conscious awareness, but generally they are not truly inaccessible if the mechanism is suppression.
Repression is unconscious and functions to push memories below the level of conscious awareness so that they are not willingly accessible.
Dissociation is unconscious and functions to wall off or partition memories into discrete "chunks" that are separated from your conscious awareness. It can be partial (as in cases where the emotional content is split off from the actual experience-think of the trauma survivor who can recount every detail of a horrific experience but does so without any emotion) or extremely complete (as in cases of dissociative identity disorder-multiple personality-where entire memories, emotions and behaviors are completely split off from one another and tend to function independently of one another).
The best explanation of the difference between repression and dissociation is that repression is horizontal splitting and dissociation is vertical splitting.