memory - Blogs - Depth Psychology Alliance2024-03-28T18:53:15Zhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/memoryNeuroscientists Working to Develop Drugs that Erase Painful Memories---What do You Think?https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/neuroscientists-working-to2011-03-11T21:28:12.000Z2011-03-11T21:28:12.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><div><p>I just watched a 3-minute video that made me very uncomfortable. It discusses how neuroscience doctors are working to develop drug treatments that could erase traumatic memories form people's minds. In a country where 1 in 5 veterens come home suffering PTSD or depression--or perhaps in the wake of a massive natural disaster like the Japan quake and tsunami (not to mention Chile, Haiti, Hurricane Katrina and so many others)--revolutionary drug treatment like this could ease pain and suffering on a huge scale.</p><p>Part of the problem with trauma, as Robert Stolorow suggests in <i>Trauma and Human Existence,</i> is that trauma initiates a sense of loss of security and of anxiety about the unpredictability of our world after the initial event occurs. The anxiety involves the impression of <i>uncanniness</i>, or the feeling “not-being-at-home” in the world. Everyday meaning in life collapses as the world takes on a strange and alien tone, and the one who experiences trauma feels incongruent, isolated, and bizarre because he simply cannot see how anyone else could possibly experience the rupture and ensuing chaos in the same way. And we all know the potential side effects: inability to sleep, nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbing, hyperviligence, being easily startled, heart palpitations, panic attacks, depression, despair, thoughts of suicide...the list goes on. Trauma literally turns a person's life upside down. What would it be to simply take a pill and make it all go away a trauma victim can feel at home again?</p><p>Donald Kalsched, in <i>The Inner World of Trauma,</i> uses the word <i>trauma</i> to mean any experience that causes <em>unbearable</em> psychic pain or anxiety. For an experience to be "unbearable" means that it overwhelms the usual defensive measures which protect us from perceiving horror and pain. Perhaps, with a simple pill, we could prevent that overwhelm. But, do painful memories serve a purpose? And if we simply repress them, where do they go? If memories are completely repressed, the theory of the unconscious insists they will only pop up somewhere else with even greater force---demanding to be engaged.</p><p>Here's the link to the video (hint: click the "x" to close the other video ads running during playback). What do you think?</p></div><a target="_blank" href="http://www.cinemahaven.com/news/docs-work-to-erase-memories-in-war-veterans-video_8d6d43458.html?utm_source=www.cinemahaven.com&utm_medium=twitter">http://www.cinemahaven.com/news/docs-work-to-erase-memories-in-war-veterans-video_8d6d43458.html?utm_source=www.cinemahaven.com&utm_medium=twitter</a></div>Mavericks and the Dominion of Memoryhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/mavericks-and-the-dominion-of-memory2014-03-15T19:33:09.000Z2014-03-15T19:33:09.000ZPhilippa Reeshttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/PhilippaRees<div><p>I am really delighted to have found the DPA! I believe it likely to add real friends with an orientation towards transpersonal experience, and those to offer candid views and tolerant exchanges. Its ‘broad base’ has great appeal.</p><p> </p><p>This initial post is simply to introduce a book ‘Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God’ which can be fairly easily perused on this website <a href="http://involution-odyssey.com" target="_blank">Involution-An Odyssey</a> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142447680,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142447680,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="449" class="align-left" alt="9142447680?profile=original" /></a>where excerpts, readings and interviews are posted as well as much of the book itself.</p><p> </p><p>In brief it is a poetic journey through the history of Western thought to offer the evidence of its central proposal: that consciousness has been encoded in every form of matter, leading to acceleration and convergence to Man. Science has been arrived at through the incremental recovery of this encoded memory, through the inspirations of genius.</p><p> </p><p>By transferring memory to intellect science has externalised the internal, converting the spiritual to the intellect, severing mind from matter, and heart from mind.</p><p> </p><p>The writing of a poetic odyssey is to retake the journey. Its justification was perceived by a recent reviewer who said <i>‘The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</i>’ <b>( Marianne Rankin</b>- Alister Hardy Trust. Director,Communications:)</p><p> </p><p>It is available in all ebook formats and if anyone would be interested in considering undertaking a review, either for this site or elsewhere I would be happy to provide the ebook by email attachment. If so do get in touch with philipparees7@gmail.com</p><p></p><p>I apologise for this blatant announcement but the ideas ( and more tellingly the experiences that led to its conception) do lend themselves to much discussion, certainly in the current climate some controversy from orthodox scientists for whom 'nullius in verba' must now be set aside. Personal experience is shown through all the scientific mavericks who led the cavalcade. I would love to hear from the interested, the hostile, or best of all the reader!</p><p> </p></div>