Amnesia Trauma Emotional Trauma and

Amnesia Trauma Emotional Trauma and Amnesia Physical brain trauma does not provide an umbrella for all forms of amnesia. Pertaining to the involuntary loss of memory, either temporary or permanent, amnesia can be applied to an understanding of some of the vagaries of the human psychological condition. The principle of memory repression suggests that the mind could respond to certain emotional stimuli in such a manner as to block access to selected or even unselected spectrums of recalled information.

Such a phenomenon, even more so than amnesia as a whole, is widely contested within its field. Difficult to diagnose credibly through psychoanalytical processes and heretofore not attributable to any detectable neurological dysfunctions, memory repression remains empirically hazy. There is no set determinant for this behavior of the brain. Provoking as many unanswered questions as providing new insights, the fact that the brain is vulnerable to amnesia through distinctly non-physiological impingements opens the discussion of memory to a diffuse field of possibilities.

Still, there are specific relationships which can be drawn between experience and the occurrence of repression. According to a set of recent studies "amnesia and/or subsequent recovery of memories have been found to be relatively common in studies of clinical populations that experienced childhood sexual and physical abuse." (Gleaves, 4) This is indicative of the long-standing relationship between trauma which does not physiologically impact the brain, such as sexual abuse during youth, and the emergence of psychological conflicts later in life.

Clinicians have consistently engaged in semantic discourse over the parameters by which repression is more or less likely under such a condition. However, through a review of the clinical history and the semantic debate over the relationship between trauma -- especially sexual abuse -- during childhood and the surfacing of psychologically distressing consequences in adulthood, it is evident that the diagnosis of repression is often misapplied.

"The term 'dissociative." As applied to these disorders, is better construed as a descriptive label (referring to loss of conscious access to memory) than any pathological process instigated by trauma." (Kilstrom, 36) This means that the 'amnesia' triggered by such events can accurately be regarded as the involuntary mode of memory loss rather than the intentional psychological conditioning to 'block out' negative experiences. To an extent, this verifies the claim that amnesia may be caused.