Sunday, November 2, 2014

Repressed Memories

A psychodynamic psychologist would claim that people are driven by unconscious motives and desires. This in fact, despite the polemic nature of this point of view, is apparent in many instances of humanity.

Much of modern society protests against shunning people based on their nuanced behaviorism, but to their disdain, it happens more often than not. For example, in a normal class discussion of a widely recognized novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, classmates seem to express a collective disgust for the character Geraldine. As the discussion progressed and some important insight was brought to light, I noticed that our "quick to make conclusion" attitude slowly faded away. However, most victims are not so lucky to receive this kind of clarity.
Geraldine's dilemma, marital rape, was the source of her psychological trauma, and the reason for her sour behavior that much of the readers failed to truly acknowledge.

A simple answer to Geraldine's attempt to explain herself would be, "Oh, we all have problems". Unfortunately, this is the case in many situations. Perhaps, to avoid herself the unnecessary pain that would inflict with such a response, she avoided sharing such obvious details that let everyone know that she was being raped. Or perhaps it was a repressed memory that was revealed to the public without true knowledge of the victim's feelings. In the end, the most logical conclusion would attest to the fact that this "marital rape" resulted in the passivity of her character.

In recent times, studies have shown that such psychological trauma would result in "social withdrawal" as stated in the article below.

http://wkzo.com/news/articles/2014/oct/24/for-kids-psychological-abuse-may-leave-the-deepest-scars/

Then as a result, psychological trauma is almost deemed as genetic, as usually the case seems to play out in a "you give what you get" kind of theme. To continue with Geraldine, the story points out that her son, Junior, turns out just as cold-hearted as her. Both with a minimal backstory, and both with the same amount of negative viewer misjudgment.


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