 What is up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and the other day on my Instagram stories I was discussing repressed memories and some of the ideas behind it some of the bad psychology and science behind it all that and a lot of you actually reached out to me and you were really interested in this subject so I was like what the heck let's do a video diving a little bit deeper into this subject all right and by the way if you're not following me on Instagram you need to all right at the Rewired Soul okay so anyways my beautiful girlfriend Tristan and I we've been really into the show Promigal Son on Fox like if you're into like serial killer stuff like it's a great show love the show it's really cool like my one critique my one critique is that it's like any other kind of crime show where it gets starts to get a little repetitive after a while like for example like the character Gill he's like bright we need you to help solve this case and Bright's like I think I know how to catch the killer and then Gill's like your methods are unconventional and you need to get off this case and then Bright's like I found the killer and then Gill's like oh my god and that just happens over and over and over again but anyways anyways one of the the main parts of the story is that the main character Bright he has repressed memories his father was a serial killer and there's this memory just stuck down in his brain and throughout the show he's trying everything he can to just yank that sucker out all right so hopefully I didn't spoil the show too much if you haven't seen it but go check it out but yeah I wanted to discuss the bad psychology around repressed memories as it comes up a lot in the show and one of the whole reasons why repressed memories are you know kind of a topic of conversation when it comes to psychology and therapy is because a lot of the ways that it's depicted in movies and TV shows all right but like I said like there's a lot of bad science around this stuff so what is a repressed memory all right so the idea is that repressed memories are based on a traumatic experience that you went through and they were just so traumatic that your brain is trying to protect you from those memories so it just shoves those down deep into your subconscious all right to keep you safe and our brains do this quite a bit our brains are regularly trying to keep us safe especially when it has something to do with trauma and our fight fight a freeze response right like for example PTSD it makes you much more sensitive to triggers associated with that traumatic event so you don't experience it again right so a loud noise might make you just take off or a sight or smell or whatever that may be so I want you to ask yourself some questions real quick if repressed memories are based on traumatic experience like let's look at large populations of people who have never had an instance of a repressed memory a great example is Holocaust survivors if you look into it if you research it there is not one Holocaust survivor who has had repressed memories and you would think you'd be able to find some because surviving a concentration camp like that is one of the most traumatic things like any human being in the history of mankind has been through right or let's look at natural disasters one of the biggest natural disasters to hit the United States was Hurricane Katrina just look at how many people died how many people survived why is it that if repressed memories are based on traumatic experiences you have nobody who survived Hurricane Katrina who just they can't remember it right like a lot of the children from Hurricane Katrina who survived like they're now adults and they're not experiencing repressed memories and here's the thing like any of you watching this video who have experienced a trauma like those of us who have experienced trauma we know the issue isn't that the memories are repressed and way down in our subconscious the issue is is that we can't get rid of those memories for the life of us like people who have been through trauma wished they could get rid of those memories right but traumatic experiences those are constantly constantly in our memory so although we might forget some of the specific details of the event that event is just imprinted in our mind okay so where did the idea of repressed memories come from well they came from Sigmund Freud and Freudian psychology like like props to the dude he helped moved you know psychology and you know into the forefront and a lot of new theories came from it so like that's awesome but the reality is is that most people today know that this dude was like a coked up lunatic and a lot of his theories were absolutely ridiculous but this was kind of how Freudian psychology was he believed that all of us have these repressed memories thoughts and emotions that are just deep down in our subconscious and it's causing us a lot of issues today all right now the problem with this is that is very bad science all right like today we have a lot of science that backs up psychology and there's bad science around these these repressed memories so logicallyphalacious.com explains unfalsifiability as this all right so unfalsifiability also known as untestability is confidently asserting that a theory or hypothesis is true or false even though the theory or hypothesis cannot possibly be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of any physical experiment usually without strong evidence or good reasons so basically somebody like Freud they would say hmm you're depressed because you have repressed memories and then you're like no i don't think so i've never been through anything traumatic or anything like that and they'd be like oh no this means that the repressed memories are just really deep down in there right like there's no way to make that person think otherwise because anything you do is just evidence that they're even more right than they thought you see what i mean like any good science has to be tested to ensure that it's falsifiable like remember that scene from like Austin Powers where he's like it's a man baby and he like tries to rip the wig off that poor old lady and then when it doesn't come off he just thinks no it's just really stuck on there and he just starts yanking her head even more you know what i mean like the difference between this this fictional idiot character Austin Powers and somebody who's trying to pull up these repressed memories is eventually Austin Powers just stopped he didn't start picking out her hairs by clumps and just saying oh this must have been one of those newfangled glued on wigs no he realized he was just wrong so now you're like well chris what's the problem what's the issue so in a show like prodigal son where uh Malcolm Bright is dealing with repressed memories like it's a fun little storyline nothing really you know has any effect on real life experiences but in real life that's not the case like in real life this whole quackery of repressed memories has ruined lives all right so when when repressed memories and they call it memory recovery therapy was really at its height was like in the 1980s early 1990s around the time of satanic panic all right so those of you who don't know about satanic panic like that stuff is whoo it's nuts the whole country was just freaking out believing that there were all these little satanic cults all over the place and they were using memory recovery therapy to pull up these repressed memories of people and they were planting in false memories and making people believe that like their parents were sexually abusing them as a child and they were part of some sick satanic cult that was like making the kids like witness like human sacrifices and said they were like eating babies it was absolutely bananas so not only were a lot of parents falsely accused but there were a ton of like daycare teachers who were falsely accused right like all these like therapists and child psychologists were planting these false memories and kids and then bringing them to the surface like there was one kid who said like uh his teachers at the daycare tied him naked to a tree and had the whole class like watch and it was like right next to a busy street and like nobody could confirm that that ever happened the same kid he said that like the teachers took him on a private airplane like think about that and it was all because a therapist was coercing him into believing that he had repressed memories so like i i said like uh the whole you know memory recovery therapy it ruined a lot of lives and one of the stories that absolutely breaks my heart is the story of holly ramona all right this took place in the 90s and holly ramona who was in her 20s um she went to a therapist because she had an eating disorder as well as depression all right and her therapist said that eating disorders and even depression are the result of being molested as a child right and holly ramona was like no i was never you know abused or molested by my father when i was a child and again because this therapist is such a firm believer in repressed memories and you can't prove her wrong she sat back and she was like hmm you're saying that you don't remember any trauma that just means that the trauma is really down in there right and the therapist started pressuring her and trying to make her remember these things and we need to understand like i don't know if you're a fan of these types of shows but i suggest you watch them on netflix there's a series called confession tapes there's another mini series called the confessions killer but this happens a lot where uh interrogators plant false memories in the person's head and eventually the person admits to a crime that they never even did because they were shoved with all these different memories right so anyways in the case of holly ramona after a while of her not remembering any of this childhood sexual abuse the therapist ended up sending holly ramona to a psychiatrist who used what's the name of this drug sodium amidal is that how you say it anyways that's aka truth serum so when doused with this truth serum and uh questioned by this psychiatrist all of these false memories that were planted by her therapist holly ramona started uh remembering quote unquote that her father did molester when she was a child holly ramona also remembered that her dad forced her to have sex with her own dog all right and this resulted in holly ramona accusing her father of molesting her as a child and it completely ruined this man's life all right so thankfully this uh holly ramona's father was one of the first people to stand up for this stuff right about this whole quackery of repressed memories and he ended up suing the therapist and the psychiatrist for uh uh negligence and malpractice right and he ended up winning 500 thousand dollars and this was a landmark case like you can check it out i'll put some links down in the description below but anyways when this happened a ton a ton of malpractice lawsuits started going all over the place all over the country because so many lives were ruined based on memory recovery therapy and this whole idea of repressed memories right there were people who were being uh sent to jail based on the testimony of somebody who was coerced into believing that these things that never really happened actually happened so because of this string of malpractice lawsuits going everywhere a lot of therapists and psychologists took a step back and they're like oh my god like we need to stop doing this like what are we doing you know like like maybe maybe their depression maybe their anxiety maybe their eating disorder maybe you know whatever they're dealing with is not a result of child molestation and maybe it's something else right but unfortunately there were a lot of psychologists and mental health professionals who just doubled down on this so even though it's been you know over 20 years since that holly remona uh uh lawsuit um there are some psychologists and therapists who still practice this form of psychology and i think it's important as for any of us who go um get help for our mental health that we know which types of therapy are evidence-based and which are not right so one of the saddest parts of this uh story of holly remona that i want to share is because of these false memories that happened and because holly remona already you know accused her father like she's still estranged from that man and that family is still torn to pieces and we don't know if it's because holly remona still believes those false memories or she started to believe those false memories because if she were to admit that she falsely accused her father that would cause her to be in a in a lot of trouble you know what i mean um like have you ever lied to yourself so much that you believe that lie or you lied about something and in order to make sure you didn't get found out you had to keep selling that lie you know what i mean so anyways it's a really sad story and i'm gonna link down in the description below um there's a therapist uh a former memory recovery therapist named linda ross and she did an interview with uh this american life and the transcript i've linked it down in the description below but anyways um she she was part of bringing up these memories for a lot of people that never even happened and ruining a lot of families a lot of lives and what happened was linda ross couldn't sleep at night and she ended up going to a support group for falsely accused family members of repressed memories and she's like oh my god like what have i done you know i've destroyed these families you know what i mean so yeah like i love learning about psychology you know these different things and i really wanted to talk about this because this is something i didn't know so i'm guessing some of you didn't know about it either but if there's anything else uh any other topics uh around psychology uh or anything like that that you want to discuss let me know i read a ton of books and i'm always trying to learn so i love talking about them on the channel all right but anyways that's all i got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and don't forget to follow me on instagram i want to send out a huge thank you to everybody out there supported me on patreon as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at the rewiredsoul.com as well as the rewired soul merch you're all amazing and i'll see you next time