arose in the late 20th century about the status of such "recovered memories", particularly of child abuse, with many claiming that Freud had been wrong to ignore the reality of such recovered memories. While accepting "the realities of child abuse", the feminist Elaine Showalter considered it important that one "distinguishes between abuse remembered all along, abuse spontaneously remembered, abuse recovered in therapy, and abuse suggested in therapy". Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus has shown that it is possible to implant false memories in individuals and that it is possible to "come to doubt the validity of therapeutically recovered memories of sexual abuse ... [as] confabulations". However, criminal prosecutors continue to present them as evidence in legal cases. There is debate about the possibility of the repression of psychological trauma. While some evidence suggests that "adults who have been through overwhelming trauma can suffer a psychic numbing, blocking out memory of or feeling about the catastrophe", it appears that the trauma more often strengthens memories due to heightened emotional or physical sensations. (However these sensations may also cause distortions, as human memory in general is filtered both by layers of perception, and by "appropriate mental schema ... spatio-temporal schemata"). See also Notes References Boag, S. (2012). Freudian repression, the unconscious, and the dynamics of inhibition, London: Karnac. Jean Laplanche (1988). The language of psycho-analysis, Originally published in French as Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse [1967]. External links Translation of Freud's essay "Repression" (1915) Psychodynamics Psychoanalytic terminology Defence mechanisms