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Concept
Flashback (psychology)
Summary
A flashback, or involuntary recurrent memory, is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual has a sudden, usually powerful, re-experiencing of a past experience or elements of a past experience. These experiences can be frightful, happy, sad, exciting, or any number of other emotions. The term is used particularly when the memory is recalled involuntarily, especially when it is so intense that the person "relives" the experience, and is unable to fully recognize it as memory of a past experience and not something that is happening in "real time".
Flashbacks are the "personal experiences that pop into your awareness, without any conscious, premeditated attempt to search and retrieve this memory". These experiences occasionally have little to no relation to the situation at hand. For those suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), flashbacks can significantly disrupt everyday life.
Memory is divided into voluntary (conscious) and involuntary (unconscious) processes that function independently of each other. Theories and research on memory, dates back to Hermann Ebbinghaus, who began studying nonsense syllables. Ebbinghaus classified three distinct classes of memory: sensory, short-term, and long-term memory.
Sensory memory is made up of a brief storage of information within a specific medium (the line you see after waving a sparkler in your field of vision is created by sensory memory).
Short term memory is made up of the information currently in use to complete the task at hand.
Long term memory is composed of the systems used to store memory over long periods. It enables one to remember what happened two days ago at noon, or who called last night.
Miller (1962–1974) declared that studying such fragile things as involuntary memories should not be done. This appears to have been followed, since very little research has been done on flashbacks in the cognitive psychology discipline. However, flashbacks have been studied within a clinical discipline, and they have been identified as symptoms for many disorders, including PTSD.
Official source
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