Disasters and Amnesia

First, let us assume… that a series of cataclysms… did occur, that mankind was exposed to these terrible events and that some of them lived to deal with the consequences, particularly the emotional consequences. Second, let us assume that after a time memories of the experience, as well as the intense feelings stirred up by these memories underwent repression and yet survived, not only in the unconscious of the victims who actually lived through these traumatic events, but in the unconscious of their descendants up to the present day. I am suggesting that we tentatively accept Freud’s hypothesis of phylogenetically inherited memory, and specifically, the possibility which Freud would not have put forward that one of the chief fragments or complexes in the mind is a derivative of the overwhelming experience of cosmic upheaval. ((MacGregor, John M. “PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE WORK OF IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY.” Q-CD vol.14: Recollections of a Fallen Sky : VELIKOVSKY AND CULTURAL AMNESIA. University of Lethbridge, May 9 and 10, 1974. 73. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/velikovsky_culturalamnesia.pdf.))