Friday, January 7, 2011

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 because Evan would simply not want to relive those experiences, thus allowing his brain to lock them away without his knowledge. Another fact about repressing a memory is that in some situations it can be recalled through therapy or hypnosis, etc. In Evans case he is able to recall his lost memories by rereading his journals from that time. Indeed “The Butterfly Effect” has portrayed the basis of a repressed memory correctly and well, but yet there are still flaws.
                The largest flaw of all of course is Evans ability to change the past as he recalls his memories. This is purely just an elaboration made in order to make the film more interesting, indeed there would not be a film without it. However, as in the movie our society would deem him insane, suspecting he suffered from a separate psychological disorder that would possibly create these memories in his mind. Another but smaller and less obvious flaw in the movie is that Evan has blackouts when he is not under a terrible amount of stress. It happens on two occasions, once when he is in school and then later when he is a home with his mom. In both situations nothing traumatizing happens; and the film simply explains the blackout to be due to his future mind returning to set an example or an attempt to change something but failed. Evan returns to the kitchen with his mom to try and get to the point when he is forced into child pornography but is unable. He revisits the school in order to return to the present with a scar as proof of what he can do. So although these events contribute to the movies over all story they are an incorrect example of Evans dissociative amnesia.
                Through watching this film one gains both a cognitive and emotional understanding of memory loss. It is interesting to see that the brain allows us to repress things without our conscious knowledge. In a sense our unconscious mind is more powerful than our conscious mind. The emotional understanding would be that one’s past is what shapes who they become. Although Evans past is harsh every time he tries to fix the lives of him and his friends, someone always ends up in a poor state. It is our human nature to want a perfect happy life for all including ourselves. In “The Butterfly Effect” this causes Evan to give up the reality in which he suffers with no arms and no functioning legs, but all of his friends are just fine. It is our unconscious mind that protects our emotional feeling from overwhelming tragedies that would otherwise destroy us.
                The movie “The Butterfly Effect” gives a well done example of dissociative amnesia, repressed memory, but as shown there are still flaws in order to make the film a hit. Correctly the character Evan blocks out the horrid traumatizing events of his child and teen years, and is unable to recall the events until much later in life through the use of his journals. Still his ability to change the present by changing the events of his past is improbable and some of his blackouts are senseless by the facts. So although the movie is in itself an interesting view on memory it still largely plays into the fiction of our minds. Through the movie we understand that our mind protects us from our undeniable human nature. “The Butterfly Effect” shows us that although memory loss is usually terrible in some cases like dissociative amnesia, where one represses a memory, the loss can be helpful to the overall growth of their life.

2 comments:

  1. Even painless research is fascism, supremacism, because the act of confinement is traumatizing it itself. See the link below for more info.



    #traumatizing
    www.ufgop.org


    ReplyDelete
  2. The content is very useful for our upcoming youth. I really enjoyed reading your blog. It was well explained and structured with perfection.
    “Keep Sharing”
    Visit Us: Mental Health TV

    ReplyDelete