Posted by pseudoname on April 20, 2006, at 14:00:29
In reply to Re: historic CSA *trigger*, posted by harrisonpope on April 20, 2006, at 13:08:40
Dr Pope, thanks for taking an interest in our thread and taking the time to post at length here.
This is not a rebuttal to your points, but a question about something you didn't address.
As I finally understood it, the argument several people were trying to get through to me is that (in my words) the *technology* for recovering allegedly repressed memories did not exist until the development of introspective psychotherapy and hypnosis.
It is true, as you say, that we would still expect instances of dissociative amnesia to be reported in historic literature, if it is a real process, even if the victim never recovered his own memory of the trauma. But your contest ALSO demands that the historic report indicate that the memory was RECOVERED later (requirement #4).
If recovery requires techniques developed or popularized since 1800 (by Mesmerists or Freud or whatever), then RECOVERY would not be expected in the old literature, even if reports of REPRESSION still would be.
If you doubt that even repression alone was ever historically reported, why do you have that extra requirement for RECOVERY of the memory? And since you do, I wonder how you reply to those who say that the technology for recovery was not available before the 1800s.
Thanks again.
poster:pseudoname
thread:629255
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/635302.html