In a paper posted online in the current issue of the journal
Psychological Medicine, a team of psychiatrists and literary scholars
reports that it could not find a single account of repressed memory,
fictional or not, before the year 1800.The researchers offered
a $1,000 reward last March to anyone who could document such a case in
a healthy, lucid person. They posted the challenge in newspapers and on
30 Web sites where the topic might be discussed. None of the responses
were convincing, the authors wrote, suggesting that repressed memory is
a “culture-bound syndrome” and not a natural process of human memory.
Madame Tourvel, in Dangerous Liaisons, was the closest they found to an example, but the character did not come close enough. Here is the story.
You can submit your suggestions here, I should note I am not convinced by the lack of a winner. People can be oddly unable to recognize a pattern until they understand the pattern; just think how late in human history the first good explanation of supply and demand comes (North? Steuart? Smith? Bailey? Longfield?), and that is a fairly basic economic concept which can be taught to most high schoolers.
Umm, well… what -was- that mysterious injury in Tristram Shandy, anyhow? Hmmm? Aaand Oedipus Rex is sort of about the societal analog of a repressed memory.
Tyler says, “and that is a fairly basic economic concept which can be taught to most high schoolers.”
Where? In America?
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I don’t now they justified that conclusion from this.
Even though I’d be sympathetic to the argument that this stuff is the product of poor science or modernity generally, there are still cases like probability: no decent analysis until the last couple of hundred years despite thousands of years of gambling, cards, dice, and related activities.
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thank you very much
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