REPRESSED MEMORY AND FALSE MEMORY

Both the popular media and professional literature have presented many accounts of repressed memory and false memory in the past 5 years. Re pressed memory occurs when trauma is too severe to be kept in consciou s memory, and is removed by repression or dissociation or both, At som e later time it may be recalled, often under innocuous circumstances, and reappears in conscious memory, False memory occurs when a vulnerab le patient with a history of overcompliant or highly suggestible behav ior is unwittingly coached by a respected authority figure to create, as if in memory, an experience that never actually occurred, The creat ion of each phenomenon is explored in detail, as well as suggestions f or avoiding the creation of false memories in our patients. (C) 1996 b y W.B. Saunders Company