Repressed Memories

in highly generalised amnesia. One of the results of such flights is the emergence of a disorder known as ‘fugue state’. Persons who become victims of such a state assume a new identity, name, address, etc. They have two personalities and one knows nothing about the other.

Forgetfulness or loss of memory under stress and high anxiety is not uncommon. Many hard working and ambitious students aspire for high scores in final examinations and to achieve such ends they put in long hours in studies. But when they receive the question paper, they become extremely nervous and forget everything they had prepared well. Let us understand this with the help of an example.

Suppose you have memorised a list of meaningful words like hut, wasp, cottage, gold, bronze, ant, etc. in which words belonged to six categories (like places of living, names of insects, types of metal, etc.). If after a while you are asked to recall those you may recall a couple of them but if during the second recall attempt, you are also provided with category names, then you may find that your recall is near total. Category names in this example act as retrieval cues.

Besides category names, the physical context in which you learn also provides effective retrieval cues.