Picard - Season 2 Episode 9: Hide And Seek

Talk About Scientific Inaccuracy

Repressed Memories Are Not A Thing …

It is 2022, and still we wallow in the depths of long clutched-to, pseudo-science.

I’ve been having a fairly difficult time watching Picard as it is. The recent slaughter of Star Trek, the constant wishing that the post-Roddenberries somehow find a way to redeem themselves; but no, it seems to be ever further away.

I love the legacy of Jean Luc Picard. The Next Generation is something to cherish; and as much as I love Patrick Stewart, I have found myself cringing at least three times each episode of ‘Picard’.

This latest episode, however, takes the cake.

The current Season 2, and the latest Episode 9 (titled, “Hide and Seek”), re-fuels the fire of ignorance and scientific inaccuracy.

Repressed memories are not, have never, and will never be a thing. They are a relic of a long past era of grandiose ideas and fluff-filled nonsense.

There have been a number of studies to determine if repressed memories actually exist; and there has never, not once, been a credible study that concludes that they do.

False memories? Sure. We’ve got that in the bag. Not only do we know how to synthesize memories, but we know how to detect them (for the most part anyway). But repressed? Nope!

Repressed memories are neurologically and physiologically impossible.

The typical story is that a highly traumatic memory (keyword: ‘amygdala’), is so incredibly painful that the mind that witnessed (or experienced) this event could not bear to keep it around — so it was buried deep in the mind until the mind was mature enough to handle the experience. Only then does it begins to trickle back in to awareness.

Not so! Keyword, AMYGDALA.

When you experience a trauma, your brain (thanks to the amygdala) burns it, sears it even, into its memory banks.

“But why? Why would anybody want to relive such trauma?”, you ask?

First of all, the don’t. But it’s not up to them. It’s about survival. You see, evolution has gifted us with a most miraculous method for writing down the most terrifying memories in stone. Why? Because it makes you extra sensitive to such situations; hopefully ensuring that you will never again experience anything even remotely similar.

Don’t believe me? Well, the fact that you’re alive today, with humans all around you, should be a testament to the reality of this mechanism.

Still don’t believe me? Then do some fucking research! Here, I’ll even leave you with a link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201910/forget-me-not-the-persistent-myth-repressed-memories

What happened to the good old days when science fiction took a note from actual science?