Studies in Hysteria

Breuer and Freud believed that traumatic memories were lost to ordinary consciousness either because “circumstances made a reaction impossible,” or because they started during “severely paralyzing affects, such as fright.”

Because memory loss and delayed recall of traumatic experiences had never been documented in the laboratory, some cognitive scientists adamantly denied that these phenomena existed23 or that retrieved traumatic memories could be accurate.24

The specifics of Freud’s reconstruction have not found much favor with Egyptologists, but his arguments about memory and history have been very influential. Freud suggested that, much like individuals who have suffered trauma, societies repress the memory of horrific events in their past because these are too painful to confront or document directl

When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are reexperiencing and reenacting the past—they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen.