How do clinical observations of repression
square with experimental evidence suggesting that emotionally arousing memories are especially
enduring? This discrepancy can be understood by examining three kinds of memory distortions
that give the impression in a clinical context, of repression. Potentially traumatic events such as
childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may be subject to ordinary forgetting. Recent research suggests
people who fail to understand the sexual nature of CSA report that they remember it less well. In
other words, the event occurred and it was forgotten, but not “repressed.” In
addition, people may be wrong about experiencing a period of forgetting, i.e. the event occurred
but was never forgotten. Finally, people may believe that a particular traumatic event occurred
and was repressed when, in fact, it did not happen in the first place. Under certain circumstances,
some combination of these distortions could lead to situations that are mistakenly interpreted as
repression.