How Might Infant Trauma Be Remembered - Coursework Example

How might personality be remembered? Name Institution How might infant trauma be remembered? Introduction The human memory has drawn significant interest among scholars concerned with understanding how people develop memory and recollect information stored in various memories. Among the many areas of concern have been the development of traumatic memories among children and the question of how individual might remember these memories. There is no doubt sometimes children go through some experience in life that traumatize them, but the concern has been how individuals might recall the memory. For instance, an infant might wake up to find their mother kidnapped, raped or beaten by strangers (Cordion et al., 2003). Given such circumstances, there has been intense interest to understand how children develop traumatic memories. Most significant, the main focus has been how might individuals recall traumatic memories developed during their infancy stage (Gaensbauer, 2002). This paper addresses the conditions that promote reconstruction of traumatic memories individuals acquired during the infancy. By outlining the structure, function, and development of implicit memory on traumatic events, this paper seeks to demonstrate the conditions necessary for the elucidation of traumatic memories. Most important, this paper posit that traumatic experiences might be remembered when individuals experience triggers such as stimuli related to a trauma. The paper also emphasizes that individuals might remember infant trauma through activation of motor and sensory systems. Implicit memory and trauma The understanding of the working of memory and how trauma occurs is critical in interpreting how individuals might remember infant trauma. This is because children have different types of memory at different levels of development, which influence how they encode traumatic experiences. There is a wide understanding among scholars that children cannot remember events before the 3 or 4 years, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. The lack of cognitive prerequisites and symbolic language is responsible for making infant not remember themselves nor position themselves in their society (Bendit, 2011). Nonetheless, children have varieties of memory that allows them to remember traumatic events, which individuals can recollect about their past in the infant stage. Infant experiences before the age of 3 or 4 years are unlikely to be remembered unless they are stored in implicit memories. According to Rubin (2000), infants below the age of 3 or 4 years cannot organize events in an explicit manner. Therefore, infants below this age cannot remember events they experience. Usually, individuals recall events using explicit memory, which is vital in describing how an event occurred. However, children below the age of 3 or 4 years lack explicit memory, but they have a profound memory known as implicit memory, which is prevalent during infancy stage. Given that implicit memory is salient in infants, it has an influence on what infant store in their implicit memory structures (Hartman & Diane, 2002). While infants under the age of 3 or 4 years have no explicit memory, they do have access to implicit memories that describe their bodily states. Research indicates that such infants experience their body movement and other senses essential in the psychological wellbeing (Stern, 2000). Since implicit memory takes a significant part of memory development among infants, there is no doubt that it could be responsible for the development of traumatic memories. Traumatic events tend to accompany individuals from infancy to their adulthood. During the development of infants, there are many experiences that become part of infants, albeit some being traumatic. Most adults walk unconsciously without realizing the genesis of traumatic memories, which tend to emerge from early experiences. For instance, some infants may have grown up with parents who were abused or depressed, which affected them, as well. The connection between traumatic events and implicit memory arise due to the development of body features such as the limbic system, which is responsible for storing information and retrieving emotional information. At the age of four weeks, after gestation, infants fully develop a limbic system, which can record emotions and behaviors (va de Kolk, 1996). The implicit memories have a distinctive role of recording the events that take during their infancy. The implicit memory has the ability to record early patterns that may include traumatic experiences by encoding them in the semantic-implicit memories. There is a crucial difference between traumatic memories and other clinical memories primarily due to their encoding. Unlike other memories, individuals store traumatic experiences in the limbic system, which plays a vital role in processing human emotions and sensations (Baird, 2008). This implies that infants who experience terror may end up storing these images in their implicit memories. This explains why some people continue to live with memories such as angers, sadness or terror, which represent implicit memories that accompany trauma (Gaensbauer, 2002). Because these memories tend to be resistant, there are high chances individuals might reconstruct them in adulthood. The development of implicit memories occurs due to the need for prototypes that help infants learn and process information at a later stage. While implicit memories are essential in enabling infants store memories about their senses and movement, it does not provide individuals with a direct means to access it, which makes cognition of traumatic events different than other experience residing in explicit memory. How might infant trauma be remembered? How infant trauma is remembered has been a subject of debate with scholars elaborating their thought about this process. There are some scholars who believe that traumatic events are severe and can impair the memory of infants, making them difficult to process using cognitive mechanisms (Read & Lindsay, 1997; LeDoux, 2000). On the other hand, scholars like Sigmund Freud believe that traumatic stress or events do not impair the functions of memory by producing intense stimulation that limits an individual’s ability to elaborate on the event. However, traumatic events are stored in implicit memory, which traumatized individuals can bring to remembrance through the use of sensory forms, which are non-verbal. There are instances when individuals experience somatosensory hallucination, which does not allow the individual to assess its origin. This is an example of how individuals might remember traumatic events that have faced in the past. For instance, some dissociate patients can experience hallucination which can lead to reenactment of traumatic experiences that appear not to differ from the real experience (Spiegel, et al., 2011). In fact, some individuals will tend to believe that they are going through the same traumatic experience they faced during their infancy. The etiology of the process is posttraumatic and present traumatized individuals with the opportunity to recall events embodies in the implicit memory. Individuals might remember traumatic experience when they encounter triggers that arouse experiences encoded in their implicit memories during their infancy. For instance, a child may encode the experiences he goes through with her depressed mother or significant other (Freyd, 1996). When a child touches his caregiver, who then reprimands him, the child will store this event in his implicit memory. However, the traumatic event will not be recalled unless there is a similar trigger. For this case in point, the feeling of rejection can trigger the traumatic memory the child once felt during the infancy stage. The recall of the traumatic experience will appear real to the individuals despite him not knowing where it comes from in the implicit memory. In some cases, infant trauma might be remembered in cases where an early experience is repeated. This is because implicit memories records repeated patterns of traumatic experiences that form a template for evaluating future interaction and experiences. Being that individuals encode information that repeat during their infancy stage, there are high chances that emotional situations can trigger a recall of traumatic events an individual faced in life (Fogel, 2002). As an example, individuals often regard others with a lot of esteem, but when they are disappointed, they may experience significant emotional experience that might trigger a traumatic event stored in implicit memory. It is widely accepted limbic parts of the brain process emotional experiences and this influence how individual remember traumatic experience. Being that traumatic experience becomes encoded with a lot of emotions, it is possible that emotional events might trigger traumatic events experience in infancy. This might occur during the loss of someone notable such like a friend or even a minor event when someone fails to turn up for an event. Such an event will trigger the recall of traumatic events when an infant failed to receive help or attention from a caregiver or significant other. Conclusion Infants below the age of 3 or 4 years do not have fully developed memory, but they can store repeated pattern in their implicit memories. Among infants, implicit memory enables children to encode emotion experiences such as trauma in the limbic system. These experiences are stored unconsciously and cannot be accessed consciously. However, individual might remember this experience when they encounter triggers that may arouse their motor or sensory system. For instance, rejection of an individual or emotion event such as loss of a friend can trigger the reenactment of the traumatic event making the individual feel like it is happening to them again. References Baird, L. (2008). Childhood trauma in the etiology of borderline personality disorder: Theoretical considerations and therapeutic interventions. Hakomi Forum, 19(20):31- 42 Bendit, N. (2011). "Chronic suicidal thoughts and implicit memory: hypothesis and practical implications." Australasian Psychiatry 19(1): 25-29. Gaensbauer, T. J. (2011). "Embodied Simulation, Mirror Neurons, and the Reenactment of Trauma in Early Childhood." Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences 13(1): 91-108. Gaensbauer, T. J. (2002). "Representations of trauma in infancy: Clinical and theoretical implications for the understanding of early memory." Infant Mental Health Journal 23(3): 259-277. Fogel, A. (2002). Remembering infancy: Accessing our earliest experiences. Utah: University of Utah: Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 155– 184. Read, J. D., & Lindsay, D. S. (1997). Recollections of trauma: Scientific evidence and clinical practice. NATO ASI series: Series A: Life Sciences (Vol. 291). New York: Plenum Press. Rubin, D. (2000). The distribution of early childhood memories. Memory, 8, 265-269. Spiegel, D., Loewenstein, R. J., Lewis-Fernandez, R., Sar, V., Simeon, D., Vermetten, E., Cardena, E., & Dell, F. P. (2011). Dissociative Disorders in DSM-5. Depression and Anxiety, 28: 824-852 Stern, D.N. (2000). Putting time back into our considerations of infant experience: a microdiachronic view. Infant Mental Health Journal, 21, (1-2), 21-28. Van der Kolb, B.A. (1997). The psychobiology of posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of clinical Psychiatry 58:16-24 Read More

However, children below the age of 3 or 4 years lack explicit memory, but they have a profound memory known as implicit memory, which is prevalent during infancy stage. Given that implicit memory is salient in infants, it has an influence on what infant store in their implicit memory structures (Hartman & Diane, 2002). While infants under the age of 3 or 4 years have no explicit memory, they do have access to implicit memories that describe their bodily states. Research indicates that such infants experience their body movement and other senses essential in the psychological wellbeing (Stern, 2000).

Since implicit memory takes a significant part of memory development among infants, there is no doubt that it could be responsible for the development of traumatic memories. Traumatic events tend to accompany individuals from infancy to their adulthood. During the development of infants, there are many experiences that become part of infants, albeit some being traumatic. Most adults walk unconsciously without realizing the genesis of traumatic memories, which tend to emerge from early experiences.

For instance, some infants may have grown up with parents who were abused or depressed, which affected them, as well. The connection between traumatic events and implicit memory arise due to the development of body features such as the limbic system, which is responsible for storing information and retrieving emotional information. At the age of four weeks, after gestation, infants fully develop a limbic system, which can record emotions and behaviors (va de Kolk, 1996). The implicit memories have a distinctive role of recording the events that take during their infancy.

The implicit memory has the ability to record early patterns that may include traumatic experiences by encoding them in the semantic-implicit memories. There is a crucial difference between traumatic memories and other clinical memories primarily due to their encoding. Unlike other memories, individuals store traumatic experiences in the limbic system, which plays a vital role in processing human emotions and sensations (Baird, 2008). This implies that infants who experience terror may end up storing these images in their implicit memories.

This explains why some people continue to live with memories such as angers, sadness or terror, which represent implicit memories that accompany trauma (Gaensbauer, 2002). Because these memories tend to be resistant, there are high chances individuals might reconstruct them in adulthood. The development of implicit memories occurs due to the need for prototypes that help infants learn and process information at a later stage. While implicit memories are essential in enabling infants store memories about their senses and movement, it does not provide individuals with a direct means to access it, which makes cognition of traumatic events different than other experience residing in explicit memory.

How might infant trauma be remembered? How infant trauma is remembered has been a subject of debate with scholars elaborating their thought about this process. There are some scholars who believe that traumatic events are severe and can impair the memory of infants, making them difficult to process using cognitive mechanisms (Read & Lindsay, 1997; LeDoux, 2000). On the other hand, scholars like Sigmund Freud believe that traumatic stress or events do not impair the functions of memory by producing intense stimulation that limits an individual’s ability to elaborate on the event.

However, traumatic events are stored in implicit memory, which traumatized individuals can bring to remembrance through the use of sensory forms, which are non-verbal. There are instances when individuals experience somatosensory hallucination, which does not allow the individual to assess its origin. This is an example of how individuals might remember traumatic events that have faced in the past. For instance, some dissociate patients can experience hallucination which can lead to reenactment of traumatic experiences that appear not to differ from the real experience (Spiegel, et al., 2011).

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