Help Me With my Car Problem

[BreakfastBurrito]

My car is a POS. 93' Taurus with 219,000 miles. I should really get rid of it but I don't want to spend the money on a new one and I'm not savvy enough to not get screwed if I opted to buy a used, slightly better POS that I could drive for another 3 years. Anyhow, the problem.

Sometimes when driving on the highway something happens which I can only describe as the engine choking to death. The car loses power rapidly, if I floor it it can still only go about 50 mph, and it starts shaking violently as well. In addition, the brakes instantly stiffen as if I'd turned the car off and pumped the brakes a few times. If I pull over, turn the car off and restart it, it resets to normal immediately. What is this? Can it be fixed?