In a world first, University of Melbourne researchers along with international collaborators have used Functional Magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain function to help better understand the affects of repressed stressful memories.
The study is of patients with conversion disorder (what Freud would have called Hysteria), which is still a very common disorder though rarely discussed or researched today.
"Freud started his whole theory by arguing that patients with hysteria repressed their memories of traumatic events and that this led to their developing their symptoms (of paralysis, for example) - what he called 'conversion," said Professor Richard Kanaan from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Austin Health.
"The world has pretty much given up on that theory largely because they thought it couldn't be tested," he said.
Published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry, the fMRI findings support Freud's theories for the first time in over a century.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-01-recall-stressful-events-caught-pictures.html
Abstract of Neural Correlates of Recall of Life Events in Conversion Disorder
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