Memory And Repression Analysis

Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder, we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully, or it can be contaminated. A case I would like to mention is the Calvin Willis Case. One night in 1982, three young girls were sleeping alone in a Shreveport, Louisiana home when a man in cowboy boots came into the house and raped the oldest girl, who was Ten years old. When police started to investigate the rape, the three girls all remembered the attack differently. One police report said the Ten year old victim didn’t see her attacker’s face. Another report which wasn’t introduced at trial said she identified Calvin Willis, who lived in the neighbourhood. The girl’s mother testified at trial that neighbours had mentioned Willis’s name when discussing who might have committed the crime. The victim testified that she was shown photos and told to pick the man without a full beard. She testified that she didn’t pick anyone, police said she picked Willis. Willis was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. In 2003, DNA testing proved Willis’ innocence and he was released. He had served nearly Twenty Two years in prison for a crime he didn’t

The novel Unfair: the new science of criminal injustice, is a collection of short pieces addressing different situations in the criminal justice world where psychology plays a major role in determining outcomes. Chapter 6, "The Corruption of Memory”, addresses the problems with the process and using of an eyewitness testimony to convict someone (108-132). John Jerome White’s real-life example is used to demonstrate the problems with eyewitness testimony and how mistakes made during the process can ruin someone’s life. In the case of John Jerome White, he was misidentified as the man who raped and robbed a 74 year old women, by the victim herself (6 weeks later), which resulted in him spending 28 years in prison. To make it worse the actual guilty man, James Edward Parham, was in the lineup one person away from Mr. White and he was not caught again until he raped another victim. Many errors were made in how the case was handled and although they were not intentional they still magnify problems in the justice system and how we view our memories. From immediately after the crime to the point a suspect is put behind bars, the questioning, interrogation techniques, line up methods, and cross examinations can all effect the victims and witness’s recollection of events. Human memories are thought to be strong but with all the information that needs to be processed they are not as reliable as thought. However, this is not accounted for in the criminal justice system and it can greatly affect the outcomes of cases like John Jerome White’s. The point of the criminal justice system is to provide justice like it says in its name and although it happens more times than not, if there are possibilities of not providing justice they need to be fixed. Chapter 6, "The Corruption of Memory”, looks at what went wrong in order to wrongly convict an innocent man which ended up costing him half his life and how psychological principles could help prevent this from happening again.

The memories were contradicted based on solid evidence such as DNA and alibis. Professor Loftus set out to prove the unreliability of supposed repressed memories. Methods Professor Loftus selected 24 mentally healthy college students. With the help of the participants' families, Professor Loftus was able to make a packet with three true memories and one false.

One article journal about repressed memory can be found in Camille Fletcher. (2003). Repressed Memories: Do Triggering Methods Contribute to Witness Testimony Reliability? The article was divided into 5 main sections: the first section was about the issues related to repressed memories in legal settings; the second section was cases of memory retrieval through different methods and how its difference affected the issues of reliability in general or in court settings; the third section was analyzing 2 ways of memory retrieval that through therapy or “through spontaneous resurfacing”; section four was some ideas to increase “value or evidentiary weight of spontaneously recovered memories, as opposed to memories retrieved through therapy”; the final section was the conclusion.

Many false-convictions have occurred because of a witness believing their memory as correct, when in actuality the memory had been altered. The Innocence Project has had numerous cases in which victims pick out a defendant from a line-up believing they are the real perpetrator, however, years later DNA evidence proved the man was innocence. While victims should be treated with respect, and have their voices heard, it is vital to take the findings in account to make sure the judicial process is as fair as possible, for both the accused and the victims. In a Ted Talk Loftus says memories are much like Wikipedia pages, we can go into them and edit, yet so can others. As Loftus’s research gave other scholars the ground work establishing memory is not as infallible as original thought, scholars should do more research for further

Also they could lie for the perpetrator so then when they get out of jail or prison they don’t come after the witness, like in a domestic abuse case, or a rape case. Many people believe that the human memory works like a video recorder like the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. Psychologists have found that the memories are reconstructed rather then played back each time we recall them. On this website (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/ paragraph 4) they state that “The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is ‘more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.’ Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate recall.” The more violent the event, the least likely it is that the witness or victim will remember the event with accuracy.

This is because research has proven that memory is malleable. The impression that memory is always accurate and is resistant to bias is an “unfortunate misunderstanding of memory” (Lacy and Stark 2) which results in steep consequences in court. Fallibilities in eyewitness testimonies, caused by memory distortions, allow for many wrongful convictions of the criminal and therefore ruin innocent people’s lives while allowing the real felon to roam

Eyewitness evidence has always been considering critical information when it comes to court trials and convictions. But how reliable are eyewitnesses? Scientific research has shown that eyewitness’s memories are often not accurate or reliable. Human memory is very malleable and is easily changed by suggestion. Relying on eyewitness evidence instead of scientific data often leads to wrongful convictions. Scientific evidence is much more reliable, and should be more important in court cases than eyewitness evidence.

The need for understanding the phenomenon of repressed memories is also very important from a legal standpoint. In recent years there has been numerous cases of people suing their parents or other authority figures for abuse that has been recalled many years after the abuse was said to have occurred. The rulings in these cases have often been controversial considering there is often not enough concrete or collaborative evidence to prove the accused to be guilty or innocent. The judge and jury are often forced to make a ruling that relies heavily on the testimonial of the accuser. This is very contentious considering there is not an accurate and reliable test to determine the validity of the accuser.

In November of 2014, Julia Shaw and Stephan Porter published a research article which further explored the generation of false memories related to crime. The purpose of this study was to corroborate a theory researchers have long suspected, which maintains the possibility to intentionally generate false memories within an individual through the use of influential tactics in a controlled setting. By attempting to generate false memories within two independent groups of participants, researchers were able to compare the success of the interviewer to induce false memories in both groups.

Many of those, who are suspects, may say what they think is right and believe who they think is telling the truth if they cannot recall the story. New York Times claims that, some suspects who falsely confess eventually accept the stories told by interrogators because they are not positive of their own memory (Brooks). Unfortunately, the problem is hard to fix if people are not able to recall their own story. One complicates fixing court system even more when they state, “It is not implausible that we might say what we know our listeners want to hear” (Brooks). Although many people who are innocent will most likely not remember what they were doing on a specific day; letting themselves accept the lies is not a solution to this

The data gathered from this research should have us question the validity and accuracy of the human memory. Although, we want to believe our memories are exact representations of an important event it is susceptible to false details and sometimes even completely distorted. Using eye witness testimony in the American court system seems unfair to its American citizens. When eye witness testimonies result in wrongly convicting someone the American court system failed the initial victim and created another victim in the process while the true criminal is still at large likely still committing crimes. The victim deserves justice and the wrongly accused do as well. American citizens should have confidence in its court system to keep them safe by correctly convicting another of a crime.

In the article “Crimes of Memory: False Memories and Societal Justice”, Elizabeth F. Loftus, a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, explores the concept of false memories and the detrimental impacts false memories and memory manipulation can have on an individual’s ability to form meaningful interpersonal relationships, health, and life opportunities. Loftus examines the role that false memories play in wrongful criminal convictions. Individuals can pick up misinformation when they are told, whether intentionally or not, an erroneous version of an event which previously occurred and from biased and leading questions. Not only are individuals accused of crimes they did not commit, but are sometimes accused of crimes that never actually occurred in the first place. The U.S. Department of Justice, due to a

There are multiple reasons believed to cause repressed memories. A very publicized one is sexual assault. Many victims of this awful crime fail to recall what happened to them, some for a decade or two, but then can recall, sometimes in vivid detail, what happened to them.

3Holmes (1990) was a sceptical psychologist known for his literature reviews on memory repression and memory recollection of childhood abuse. His reviews explore as well as criticize the authenticity of recovered memories from the past. “Holmes (1990) argues that laboratory studies have failed to produce clear evidence for repression, despite more than 60 years of attempts to do so.”4 Hence, he might agree that Eileen’s memories of her best friend’s murder are false, as she cannot scientifically prove them. Though this does not necessarily mean they are. There is some evidence that proves what she stated she witnessed to be reliable. “Media reports from 20 years before–December 1969, when the body was found–were filled with some of these