Screen memory

A false or altered memory that covers a traumatic event, substituting a less-threatening narrative while preserving the emotional content and structural elements of the original. The concept predates the contemporary alien-abduction / MKULTRA discussion — Freud described screen memories in the late nineteenth century — but has been substantially elaborated by Carla Turner and Helmut Lammer to argue that a fraction of alien-abduction accounts are screen memories of human military or intelligence operations conducted on the abductees. The reframing serves both the brain’s protective tendency and an institutional discrediting function.