this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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I remember reading about a case or two, where a little girl had extremely traumatic dreams about being sexually assaulted by her father, and then later everyone found out that those weren't just dreams, they were actually memories.
And what's remarkable, is that those memories were from when she was less than 2-3 years old, even if that shouldn't have been possible for her to remember.
My understanding is that memories form at that age but accessing them becomes very difficult as certain higher order functions come online, language chief among them. It may not be that we can't form long term memories (the fact that early trauma has long lasting effects is evidence that we can) but rather that we cannot access those long term memories on demand using our most common memory accessing techniques. That would explain why we see people accessing those memories in dreams, or through hypnosis, or in response to new trauma, etc.
I think that's an excellent and accurate explanation, and that's the conclusion I have arrived to as well.