ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what is known about how people forget things that they would prefer not to remember. Motivated forgetting encompasses the term psychogenic amnesia, which means any forgetting that is psychological in origin, and not attributed to neurological damage or dysfunction—forgetting that is psychological in genesis. Theoretically, controlling unwanted memories may be accomplished by intervening at any stage of memory. The simplest way to avoid remembering unpleasant events is to limit their encoding. People seem to regulate their memory to protect their self-image, especially when feedback poses high levels of threat to that image. List-method directed forgetting illustrates how when people no longer wish to remember events, they can intentionally reduce their accessibility. Hypermnesia is largest on free recall tests but has been found on cued recall and recognition tests.
