Glenn Fiscus Post #1

What interested me most about this weeks readings were the connections between psychological traumas and how the victims affected by these traumas remember them.  I depicted that more so than not, memories of traumatic events are suppressed into the subconscious mind as a means of self-defense against the psychological effects that come with it.  The problem with this means of self, mental protection is that it is made much more difficult for psychiatrists to use their psychoanalysis theories to uncover and understand the patient’s effects from trauma.  Cathy Caruth mentions two problems associated with memories, one being “false recovered memories” which became an issue when “a group made up primarily of accused parents and relatives has attempted to put in question the veracity of many assertions of traumatic recall and of the methods used to uncover memories.  It is, of course, important to learn to distinguish between wholly false, suggested memories and memories that are essentially true…”(Caruth, viii).  These doubts of credibility were most commonly brought up when legal actions were made between the victims and their accused family members. 

            These issues among any other difficulties or uncertainties in believing memories are because the traumatic events are forced so deeply into the subconscious, as I mentioned before, that they become abstract and unrealistic.  To dig deep enough to remember these events as truth is difficult enough because, as Caruth explains, “ that (memories) seem to them to be false simply because they do not appear in easily recognizable forms, and the urgency of creating new ways of listening and recognizing the truth of memories that would, under traditional criteria, be considered to be false”(viii).