Dissociative Amnesia in the Butterfly Effect

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Dissociative Amnesia in “The Butterfly Effect” Repressed memory is a particular type of dissociative memory that is effectively seen the popular film “The Butterfly Effect”. The film is about a boy named Evan who as a child and teen experienced blackouts during traumatizing situations. Due to these blackouts he is asked by his psychologist to keep a journal of his day to day life. When Evan is older he discovers that he is able to change what has happened in his past by rereading his journal entries; as he changes the past he also alters the future and eventually dooms himself into not ever existing(the director’s cut is different from the theatrical version). However, there are flaws in the way that this type of dissociative amnesia is, used but over all repressed memory is the effective psychological state. Also the film gives insight to a closer cognitive understanding of why our brain works in certain ways; as well as how are emotions are fragile and can destroy us. Although with flaws, the film is effective in expressing the benefits and negatives of repressing a memory. A repressed memory is caused by stressful situations, such a being raped or beaten violently. The memory does make it through to being stored in long term memory but the brains psychological defence mechanisms prevent it from being retrieved. So although it is stored, there is an error in our retrieval process. In the movie “The Butterfly Effect”, repressed memory is only used half correctly. The boy Evan faces events in his childhood that are horrific and depressing and so it is accurate that he should repress these events. He experiences a truly things including child pornography, witnessing and participating in the death of a women and her child, as well as witnessing his dog being killed and his father attempting to murder him. These events would naturally be repressed
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