ABSTRACT
We address several questions in the present article. What happens to human memory under conditions of trauma? And how can trauma be modeled and understood? At the outset, it is necessary to say what trauma is. Classen, Koopman, and Spiegel (1993) consider trauma to be “… an abrupt physical disruption in ordinary daily experience, often with loss of control over the body. Natural disasters, war, rape, and other frightening experiences cause discontinuities in both physical and psychological experience. Trauma renders a person helpless as the world suddenly becomes unpredictable, threatening, and assaultive” (p. 179). Events that are life threatening, threaten personal integrity, or reproductive success (Buss, 1994) appear especially liable to produce trauma. Regardless of the cause of the trauma, the physiological result is altered levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephine. Trauma anchors the high end of a stress continuum, which may include less severe, but still emotional, experience.
