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Was Repressed Memory a 19th-Century Creation?

There is a pain -- so utter It swallows substance up Then covers the Abyss with Trance So Memory can step around -- across. . . . Emily Dickinson wrote those lovely words sometime in the middle of the 19th century, probably after a love affair broke her heart. Over the next century and a half, that same idea found its way into countless books, plays and movies -- when a memory becomes too painful to bear, the mind finds a way to seal it off, to "step around -- across." ...
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By Shankar Vedantam