There are entire fields of study dedicated to studying the long-term effects of various trauma. Unfortunately it gets mixed in with the "repressed memories" and other pseudoscience ideas, so the pop-science news articles are not good sources of information.
That said, memory repression isn't the only type of anesthesia involved in these procedures. Patients are given multiple medications, which do everything from dampen the pain signals to relax the patient.
It's not equivalent to just forgetting the pain stimulus. The pain stimulus is massively reduced, even if it were to break through to the patient's awareness.
That said, memory repression isn't the only type of anesthesia involved in these procedures. Patients are given multiple medications, which do everything from dampen the pain signals to relax the patient.
It's not equivalent to just forgetting the pain stimulus. The pain stimulus is massively reduced, even if it were to break through to the patient's awareness.