THERE HAS BEEN MUCH RESEARCH ON MY PART SINCE I FIRST GAVE THIS TALK; I HAVE ALTERED NOTHING IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT, BUT IT IS DISTINCTLY POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF THESE EARLY VIEWS CONCERNING MEMORY FORMATION, ESPECIALLY THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS OF IT, MAY BE CONTRADICTED IN SOME OF MY LATER WRITINGS.


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LECTURE NOTES - True Lies - problems with recall

Imagine, as vividly as you can, a trio of skinhead-type hooligans standing on a street corner, lager tins in hand, tattooed knuckles, DM boots - the lot. When a middle-aged man comes out from a door opposite, carrying a briefcase, one of the skinheads yells something at him, launches himself across the road, hurls himself at the man and wrestles him to the groun, grabbing at his briefcase.

What do you believe you have just observed? A mugging, maybe? That's the most obvious answer. Or perhaps the skinhead lived in that house and knew that the man was a burglar. Perhaps, even, the skinhead was a plain-clothes detective and the man was someone the police have been after for months. Or maybe a film was being made. It could even be that it was nothing more than a boisterous joke and the man was his father - or his lover!

The facts were always the same - but the interpretations are vastly different. Every memory you have is like that - the result of perception, beliefs, knowledge, interpretation and re-interpretation, all based very loosely on fact.

It's an extremely unreliable mix and the bad news is that it's the best bit of what our clients bring with them to the consulting room as their contribution to therapy.

The good news is - if we understand certain facts we can be more effective and therefore help people more easily. The understanding of the memory process is an important tool for a therapist.


THE NATURE OF MEMORY.
Nobody knows for sure the process that goes on in our minds or brains that lead to the recall of an event.

It used to be believed that memories were stored somewhere in the brain in a complete symbolic form of some sort, or an maybe an electrical charge, or coded image sequence - so that various issues may be taken out and looked at at intervals.

MEMORIES ARE RECREATED.
But there are many pointers to the fact that that the images which we call memories are actually recreated each time we think of them. And the fact is, nobody knows how this happens. We can speculate that it may be a highly selective chemical process, but nobody knows for certain. I've got an interesting theory, though, more of which later on.

TRANSIENT/LONG TERM
There must be something that governs whether a memory remains merely transient, or whether it persists to become long term.

It's not random. And it's certainly not governed purely by a scale of importance. If you hear a good joke like I told you to start off with, lasting about a minute or so, it will stay in your minds in considerable detail until the next day, the next week, even the next year.

Some of you - mostly men - will remember it for far longer than that. Yet it's hardly what you would class as important.

GREAT TRUTH = MORE DIFFICULTY!
But If I'd read out a 1 minute tract of some great truth about therapy - about 150 words or so - you'd all be scribbling it down and still, for the most part, be struggling to recall exactly what was said.

So what's going on here? It's not necessarily linked to importance or shock - when a world class event is reported, most people will have forgotten much of the detail in a relatively short time. More than that, most will soon have forgotten that the disaster had actually even happened, never mind remember the details of it.

INVOLVEMENT
Unless they were involved in it. And that provides us with a clue. Involvement. The more directly concerned with your ego an event is, or the more you are impressed by it, the more vividly it is imprinted onto your mind.

The more it alters your belief system, your knowledge of how you fit into the world, if it changes or reflects upon your personal status in some way, either for better or worse, then the more likely it is to be incorporated into your long-term memory. And if it's a new experience, then it's even more likely to become incorporated into your thinking processes. But if it's decidedly non-impressive, then it's gone from your thoughts quite quickly. And all this might partly account for why old people tend to have poor short term memory.

Their egos are less responsive, less sensitive, and their belief system is harder to change, because they've experienced many things and discovered the one great truth in life: Nothing is as good or as bad as it is first reported to be.

It's things that matter that stick. To an old person, when they had their last bowel movement is more important than the fact that some politician is bonking half of Westminster or that their home help has told them she's going to call in the afternoon on Wednesday instead of the morning.

MEN REMEMBER JOKES
To get back to that joke for a moment, I said that it would be mostly men that would remember it, and that's because men are more likely to retell it.

And the fact that a good joke is easy to remember is probably because of ego - if we remember it, we can tell it and make other people feel good so that they like us - it's LINKED TO OUR SEARCH FOR LOVE. So the more insecure a man is, the more easily he is likely to remember jokes. This is actually not news - what does it tell us about comedians?

Now, I'm sure this is not politically correct but I find that women tend to remember what we call gossip more readily than men for much the same reason - it helps to make you popular, even important, as the bearer of news that puts all of your crowd up by putting some other unfortunate individual down.

DIRECT IS EASIEST
It's a very direct thing and all we have to do is pass on the story - it's straightforward and requires no great skill, therefore no great risk, on our part. But trying to learn something which we then have to apply to some other mode of behaviour is decidedly indirect. In itself it will be less important to our ego and will therefore be more difficult for us to be involved with and correspondingly more difficult to latch into our memory systems.

EGO AFFECTS ALTER THINKING PROCESSES
So if an event affects your ego, positively or negatively, then it is going to alter your thinking processes. If it impressed you for some other reason than ego - maybe because it was unexpected or simply because it contradicted a currently held belief - then it will also alter your thinking processes.

The event that has affected your thinking process will become part of your thinking processes in some way or another - in reasoning, logic, survival, pleasure-seeking, creativity, self-imagery, or any other of our mental and emotional processes.
EVERY CLIENT MEMORY HAS BEEN A FORMATIVE INFLUENCE
So by this criteria, every single event memory your client produces during his or her session has been a formative influence in some way, however small, because that's exactly why it has become a long term memory.

Maybe those events aren't so important to the psyche these days, but they certainly were when they occurred, which means they were responsible, or partly responsible, for part of your client's thinking patterns and belief system. Treat them all seriously, because from those memories come truth, your client's beliefs. They really are the keys to neurosis.

ROTE MEMORY
But we don't get only event memory from our clients. We also get what I call rote memory, by which I mean recalls of a behaviour pattern without actually recalling any one time/event within that behaviour pattern. 'I used to go into the sweetshop on the corner of my road every day on the way to school', is an example of rote memory. So is 'I remember how I used to feel on my way to Church every Sunday.' But if your client says 'I used to go into this sweetshop every day and I remember this one time when I stole a packet of polos', then that's an event memory of course.

Where there is a persistently recurring recall of a rote memory, there is frequently an event within it somewhere. You can sometimes get to this by asking 'What about that one time when something was different about that visit to the sweetshop?'

They may not remember that time instantly, but they may well feel some emotional reaction which may surprise them. But be very careful. You wouldn't say 'what about that time when you stole some sweets?' for example.

PERIOD MEMORY
If rote memory is somewhat distant from what we want, then the period memory is even worse. 'I was always unhappy at that school,' is a typical period memory. I deal with it in a similar way to rote memory. I say: 'But there was one time that was the unhappiest of them all, wasn't there... tell me about that.'

Again, be careful. You shouldn't never be specific, even if you're sure that you know what you're talking about. Understanding has to come from your client's own mind. It's his enlightenment we're after, not our own.

SCENIC MEMORY
Scenic memory is another alternative - 'I'm just looking around the house where I used to live...' I deal with this by asking 'What part of that house really stands out in your mind?'

When you get a client whose childhood recalls are sparse, you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that they have repressed everything. It may well be that they simply took everything in their stride, that nothing drastically altered their thinking processes at any one time of their life. They might have repressed stuff, of course, but then again - they might not.

MEMORY IS DYNAMIC - CHANGEABLE
Memory tends to be dynamic - each recall of a specific event is slightly different, if it is an honest recall. If it is identical, or nearly identical, every time, it is probably a lie. Now, the reason for that is quite simple.

When a story is fabricated or partly fabricated, there is only one thing to be recalled the next time - what was said. But if an actual event is being genuinely recalled in it's entirety, then there are an awful lot more things to be remembered, and what actually comes forward is going to be affected by our mood at the time, by what has been discussed prior to the recall, what's going on in our lives at the time...

And who we're telling the story to, of course. Which is why analysis might seem to fail for a client with one therapist, but be wildly successful with another. So you can sometimes get a good result from someone who has already tried another therapist without success.
        
ANAL, ORAL, GENITAL memory behaviour.
One of the difficulties with recall concerns personality groups, especially when we are aware that there might be another element to a memory, something they've missed. The Oral, the nice, kind, obliging Oral is easy. They are will usually quite willingly have another think about an event, genuinely looking for something they might've missed and adaptable enough to accomodate it into their current consciousness when they find it.

HYSTERIC
The Hysteric - well, he knows straight away what's required. He'll go and have another look and embellish what he told you last time, often adding a very tasty tit-bit for the therapist. It doesn't matter much, because he has at least gone and had another look and sooner or later he'll blunder noisily into his problem.

ANAL
But the Anal - hah! The last thing he wants to do is to have another genuine look at that same memory. What he wants to do is to say: 'I've already told you all about it and I can't be bothered to go all through it again.'

If you let him or her get away with even a hint of that sort of behaviour, then you might as well discharge him from therapy. You're going to get nowhere at all, because he's going to tell you the same thing that he told you last time. It didn't cure him then and it won't cure him now. Do the same thing in the same way, and you get the same result.

ONLY A CURSORY LOOK
Now the chances are, he's had only a cursory look at his recollection, then goes no further because he believes implicitly that he already knows everything about it.

But that's not a memory of the event. That's a memory of what he remembered last time he thought about it and as far as he's concerned, that's perfectly satisfactory.

For instance, he might remember that he felt vaguely uncomfortable when he told you about the barbecue they had on his thirteenth birthday. He's not actually examining the memory of the barbecue itself, although he'll say something like: 'Oh it's that barbecue again, you know, when I was thirteen.'

GET HIS MIND BACK THERE
So you push. Get his mind back there, even if only by asking what the weather was like at the time, what was he wearing, etc. It's never easy, because they genuinely do believe that there is 'nothing else there'. And when they do find something, the Anal character has the darndest temptation not to tell you.

BIO-FEEDBACK
That's when a Bio-feedback meter - see John Hudson for details - really comes into it's own. Body language can show it, too, and I'll talk about that a bit later on.



MEMORY IS NOT DETAILED.
Memory is not generally very detailed. If you remember a day out at a pleasure park, for example, what you'll actually remember is that you went there, along with a few 'stills' as it were from your visit, rather than remembering the whole visit from beginning to end.
If you remember a visit to a shop, how much detail could you recall about the other customers? Or the colour of the till? Or the type of wristwatch the assistant was wearing?

STILL FRAMES
You can study a 'still' frame in your mind's eye for sometime and not be certain, and it's that vagueness which gives us all sorts of problems, because, often, logic comes into play to fill in the gaps without us even knowing that it happened.

TEMPLATES - MEMORY ARCHIVE
The mind works on a series of templates - in this context, templates are images that have become familiar to us - that we've stored away in a sort of memory archive.
We identify things and experiences by reference to these templates, and provided that the experience roughly matches one of our stored images, we can make sense of it.

Where something doesn't fit, it stands out a mile as being new - or even wierd, if it conflicts with enough of existing knowledge.

Have you ever watched Michael Jackson or any of his emulators doing the 'moonwalk'? This illustrates the 'templates theory' quite well. The legs and feet positions and overall movement suggest that the body movement should be forwards - and yet it is clearly moving backwards. So it matches two opposing templates, moving forwards and backwards at the same time - which is exactly how it looks to most people. Sometimes, logic will tell you that the performer is walking forwards - on a surface which is actually moving backwards.

The contradiction tells you that something is not as it seems, and leads you to question what you think you've seen.

WHEN EVENTS MATCH
But when an event matches - or seems to match - one of our stored templates, we tend not to question it at all, because we already 'know' what that experience is. It makes sense to us.

Hence those notices that some people put outside their houses, painted in blue and white and saying: 'POLITE NOTICE - no parking'. The idea, of course, is that the eye of the beholder perceives 'POLICE NOTICE'. It works sometimes, until you've seen the twist. Then you can't not see it - because it's formed a new template.


TRUTH V. FACT - Not the same thing at all.

FACT ... Perception + interpretation + belief or disbelief gives you an IMPRESSION

IMPRESSION .... coloured by imagination, experience, understanding, self-interest
and re-interpretation gives you TRUTH

TRUTH gives you BELIEF. And if you truly believe something, you know it's a FACT.
And, of course, the fact get acted on by Perception, interpretation and...




CLIENT'S TRUTH
But it's Truth, the client's truth, that's important, even though the therapist may be aware that the facts are different. And of course, we are in the business of altering beliefs, and when we are successful then our client's conception of what is truth is also likely to change.

TRUTH IS DYNAMIC
Like the whole of memory, truth is dynamic, not static. Only facts, or rather, the impressions gained from them are static, and it's the reinterpretation of those impressions which can help create new and more acceptable truths for the client. Often, of course, we have to release those truths from the grip of a repression before they can be re-interpreted.

A CASE HISTORY OF REPRESSION
Eddie was claustrophobic - particularly so if he was not able to face the door in any room he found himself in. He was also extremely homophobic. And there was something else which he felt was a distinct oddity - the feel of fur touching his skin could induce a panic attack. During analysis, he recalled several occasions when he and a friend went shop-lifting and remembered that they used to go to a wooden hut of some sort to share out their spoils. During one session he suddenly remembered that the hut was on a golf course near some woods, then started to tremble and sweat. My bio-feedback meter climbed vigorously. Then he said 'The maniac!' several times before he gave this huge shudder and a kind of little yelp - then burst out laughing. It appeared that there had been rumours of a maniac roaming the woods and attacking small boys, and on this particular occasion, he and his friend had suddenly become aware that someone was outside the door of the hut. They both knew it just had to be the maniac and serve them right for stealing - here was retribution. But it wasn't the maniac. This hut was, in fact, a store shed and the individual who entered was nobody more sinister than the green keeper from the golf course. But they didn't know that, and in that moment of involuntary fantasy, a repression was born. The green keeper gave them a mild ticking off for invading his domain, then sent them on their way, but Eddie had remembered nothing of these events until that day in my chair. So, the claustrophobia was explained, as was the need to face the door, the homophobia too - but I wasn't too sure about the anxiety over fur. He thought about it for a moment, then grinned. 'It's that bloody Sooty puppet!' he said. 'I'd nicked it. It was made of some sort of orange fur and I had my hand in it when the bloke came in!'

FANTASY WAS THE TRIGGER
So the trigger of repression there was nothing more than fantasy. But Eddie was just about as ill as he would have been if it really had been the maniac.

Because at the moment of repression the truth, Eddie's truth, was that he was about to suffer some diabolical fate.

THE WRONG IDEA
I bet some of you, at least, got the wrong idea about what might've happened to Eddie, especially when I said that the feel of fur touching his skin could induce a panic attack.

If you did, then theory, expectation, imagination, and knowledge all led to your erroneous assessment of possible causes. It's an illustration of how your own belief system is prone to error. Improving your knowledge base does not necessarily improve on that state.

LIFE IS MISLEADING
OK, maybe the way I brought it in was slightly misleading. But life is misleading sometimes. If I'd jumped the gun and somehow conveyed the possibility of some sort of sexual event to Eddie we might not've got to the repression at all.


PLACE OUR LOGIC ON HOLD
So we have to find a way to place our logical interpretative systems on hold while conducting analysis - and if we can't, then we have to resist acting on them, because if we do act on them, we might seriously hinder our client's attempts to get to the real truth.

We might, in fact, seriously endanger our client's opportunity to achieve emotional and psychological well-being.

MOTTO
We should all have a motto: Be careful, be patient - and be quiet.

There is a time for us to to rationalise, but it's definitely not during analysis. Some branches of therapy advocate continual rationalisation, but it's death for the analytical process. It's more the domain of the counsellor.

SCREEN MEMORY - will often arise in analysis.
I'm sure you all know what a screen memory is, but just in case - a screen memory is best thought of as the erroneous association - an event that comfortably explains why your client has his/her symptom, and which attempts to screen the REAL problem from consciousness.

And I'm convinced that the COMPOSITE MEMORY - a combining of two or more different impressions - is a type of screen memory, a screen of confusion for the subconscious to hide the truth behind, where an image or impression has been distorted by the addition of elements from another time and another place in order to confuse the conscious and occupy it's energy with something innocuous.

DISCUSSION APPEARS TO DO THE TRICK
Discussion of the screen memory with your client, especially under hypnosis, can sometimes appear to bring about an emotional discharge and accompanying relief from his symptoms - but that's simply another part of the mechanism of repression and the 'cure' certainly won't be a permanent one.

So when you think you've located your client's problem originating in young adulthood - beware, because you probably haven't. With very few exceptions, our client's emotional and psychological difficulties have started in childhood.


ADULT REPRESSION - AMNESIA
Adults can suffer repression, if the trauma is great enough - and it must be a huge surge of emotion to create adult repression. It's usually called amnesia, and there're problems here for the unwary therapist.

Unless you're absolutely certain you know what you're doing, don't even consider trying to remove an amnesiac block from a client. We should always remember that a repression is a naturally occuring event, otherwise it wouldn't happen.

It occurs, because at the time of the repression it's the only way that trauma can be dealt with without our emotional system going into overload.

If we remove a repression, we need to be certain that our client can deal with the trauma this time round, either because of better resources, maybe because of the passage of time, or perhaps because we can give them a different viewpoint.


SAMMY - A CASE HISTORY
When I hadn't been in practice very long, and I was still at the stage of 'I can do that' that some of us go through, I had a young man called Sammy come to me two years after a serious motor bike accident in which his best friend had died. Sammy had broken a lot of bones and been in hospital for some considerable time, and had no actual recall of the event at all. He had not worked since and was suffering from depression, anxiety and poor concentration, among other symptoms. His doctor had referred him to me, assuming that, since he had been a confident and happy person before the accident, it must have been this that had caused his problems. I was inclined to agree.

FLASHBACKS
For the first three sessions, not a lot happened. There were a few 'flashbacks' to times that he and his best friend - whose name was Nick - had shared, and a very brief memory of the morning of the day of the accident. Sammy started to feel worse, and expressed doubts that this type of therapy would work for hiim. I assured him that it would, in time, and he duly presented himself for his fourth session with me.

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
It was during this session that we came to the moment of truth - that magical moment of enliberation and enlightenment. Only it wasn't; well not at first, anyway.

The first thing I knew of it was when his hypnotic flush began to deepen. Then his voice became a whisper as he remember getting onto the pillion seat of his friend's machine outside the school. Nick had told him they were taking the usual route home, which meant that at a certain fork in the road, they would take the left fork.

THE WRONG WAY...
His face began to contort as he remembered Nick driving at 80mph in a 30mph area; Sammy was very scared, but had not wanted to admit this to Nick, so had hung grimly to the underside of the seat. Then they approached the fork in the road, far too fast.

For some reason or another that would never be understood now, Nick decided to take the other direction - the right fork. Only, Sammy, who was by now very frightened indeed, threw himself to the left... and felt the bike slip, then buck. He screamed out and clutched at the arms of my recliner as he 'felt' himself become airborne, then a moment later felt the pain as he hit the ground and slid for a good few yards. And it was then that he collapsed in a flood of sobbing, gasping and retching. 'I killed him!' he shouted. 'Oh no! Oh no! It was all my fault, I leaned the wrong way! I killed Nick!' Nick had catapulted of the bike, head first into a post and was killed outright.

Now I didn't believe that Sammy's leaning the wrong way had been the cause of the accident, but he certainly did. It was his truth.

NO NEW RESOURCES
And that's when I realised I was in trouble. Because this young man had no more resources now to deal with his guilt feelings than he had at the time of the accident.

You see, when we release a repression that's been created in childhood, it's easy. The adult can view the event with adult resources, adult understanding, and from a distance of years.
Hindsight more often than not allows him to deal with thow whole thing there and then.

Sometimes, we need to work through it, but overall, the client will do most of the work.

But young Sammy was already adult at the time of the accident with precisely the same level of understanding and resources as he had now. Those resources were ineffective enough that in order to preserve sanity, the memory had to be repressed.
And he was my responsibility now, weeping and shivering in my recliner and waiting for me to perform some magic cure. I had to somehow alter his belief system.

LUCKY
I got lucky; my own subconscious came to the rescue, as if some far wiser soul than I was guiding me 'Why did you lean to the left?' I asked. Sammy sobbed, not answering. I asked him again, then again, until he finally muttered that he'd thought they were turning left. I made him tell me again, then I repeated: 'You thought you were turning left. Why did you think your were turning left?' Because Nick had said so, was Sammy's reply. 'So,' I said quietly, 'Why on earth would you have leaned to the right?'

He actually started to say: 'Because Nick turned - ' before the penny dropped. 'But I couldn't've known,' he whispered. 'I couldn't possibly have guessed. I can't even think why he did turn to the right... Oh God, it wasn't actually my fault at all, was it?'

By the end of the session, he had a new belief - that Nick, for reasons we would never understand, had very nearly killed him. This was obviously more tolerable than the belief that he had killed Nick. I asked him if he could forgive Nick his mistake and he readily did so; This was a bit crafty on my part, because the act of forgiving his friend clearly absolved Sammy of any sort of blame whatsoever.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL...
So it all turned out all right in the end. But supposing Sammy really had done something that had caused the accident? Supposing I hadn't got lucky enough to find a 'solution'? Because it was luck. Thinking on your feet stuff like that doesn't necessarily work out and it's certainly not a recommended way of working.

So if you get asked to deal with adult repressions - amnesia - watch out! It might very well turn nasty unless, as I said, you know exactly what you're doing.


FALSE MEMORY
So much has been said about False Memory Syndrome that it's difficult for anybody to find anything useful new to say about it. But I'm going to have a go, all the same.

Salvador Dali, the artist, had something to say about it, too. He said that the difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Well, I happen to think that needs a bit of qualification. I believe that it is always the false ones that sound the most real, the most brilliant, to the listener. Now, if we are to believe much of what we read, it's not necessarily the client telling the therapist - it's often the other way round, either directly or indirectly.

TRUTH - NOT MEMORY
Much has been made, in fact, of what is usually referred to as the 'terrifying ease' with which these false memories can be created. Several experiments have been documented and quoted.

Now, I believe that even if a hypnotist can create an impression in his subject's mind that seems like reality, that feeling of reality will last for only a very short time. But what is eminently easy to create is the absolute belief that an event has happened - a truth, if you like, but not an actual memory.

The more influence one individual has over another, the easier it is to create that belief. Some of these experiments were carried out on very young schoolchildren by teachers and others who repeatedly asked things like 'Do you remember when you got your little hand caught in that mouse trap?' Eventually, the children were responding with confirmations that yes, they did remember. Sometimes, they even embellished the tale and the researchers, who certainly were not impartial, were triumphantly shouting about their 'proof'.

As far as I can see, those experiments were worthless because of the leading question element. The children quite obviously believed that teacher knew something that they had forgotten and so incorporated it into their own belief system. They are used to adults reminding of things they've forgotten. But that's a false belief, not a false memory.

I want you to imagine something for a moment. I want you to imagine that some relative or another has dug out an old photograph album and in it, to your surprise, is a picture of you, at about four years old or so, with your arm in plaster. Now you don't remember anything of this, so you ask your relative, who tells you that you had fallen off a swing and broken your arm. Now you have a belief, but it's not a memory. But you'd still vigorously defend that knowledge that you'd broken your arm, because you've seen the photo, and your relative, has confidently told you what happened, so it must be so. And you'll remember the belief.

ELDER AND CHILD
Now let's shift things around a bit. In analysis, who's playing the part of the wise elder and who's playing the part of the child? Now, let's assume that your client displays a particular symptom, and you assure him confidently that it's often connected to a specific event. As far as the client is concerned, you're the one who knows. So you must be right.

Now your client has a belief that he or she may vigorously defend, but they still don't have a memory! Now, before you start congratulating yourself that you'd never put any idea into your clients' minds, I want you to think very carefully about something.

BELIEF SYSTEM - AGAIN
If you believe I've been talking about false memories of sexual abuse, then you're about to realise just how easily your client can get the idea into his or her head... because I've not made any mention of sexual matters at all until this moment.

OK, I've been talking about false memory syndrome and it's usually associated with sexual matters because that's the sort of false memory that's been causing problems, but that's merely a conditioning factor which your clients have been exposed to as well, because it's been in the media so frequently.

IF YOU TALK REPRESSION...
So if you talk about repression to your client during your initial interview and go on to explain that a repression is a memory which had been hidden up til now, you've almost certainly already got them thinking along sexual lines.

For what it's worth, I usually tell them that we're searching for unfinished childhood business which can be minor, or maybe not so minor, but either way it's something which bothered the child so much that they simply kicked it under the carpet, so to speak, where it still lies.

Then I tell them that the subconscious has no idea of time and will do everything it can to avoid them having to face that unfinished business, because it believes that they still won't be able to deal with it. So it will try to make sure that they turn away from anything remotely connected with it, and that's what causes their symptoms.

Then I quote them a couple of case histories which are decidedly non sexual to illustrate more clearly what I'm talking about. Sometimes, they ask me if I think it could be anything sexual. Sometimes they ask me if I find much sexual abuse as a cause of people's problems.

I always say the same thing. I tell them that I find such a wide variety of causes of my clients problems that I long ago gave up speculating about it and prefer to wait and see instead.

There was a newspaper report the other day about the father of a 22 year old woman being arrested in October 1993 after she accused him of rape and incest. The prosecution suddenly dropped the case this week when it came to light that the accusations were made while the girl was undergoing treatment at a mental hospital. It also turned out that the psychiatrist treating her told her that her father had abused her. He told her father, too, who asked if the girl could be hypnotised to get to the truth. The psychiatrist refused, but offered to hypnotise the father instead. This was presumably a NHS psychiatrist.

Apparently, there is abundant proof that the father is innocent, though we obviously cannot be certain about that ourselves. The girl had apparently suffered from anorexia and bulimia since she was 17 years old, when she had gone on a strict diet.

But think about about it. A sick woman in therapy is told about repression, and told that her symptoms show that she's been abused. She hears it and she believes it, because the wise man has assured her that it is so. She believes it as a result of an unresolved Electra crisis. This unresolved issue, this unfinished childhood business, makes the whole thing feel as if it might be real, even though she cannot actually remember the event.

But even though all she has is a vigorously defended belief giving rise to a hazy scenario that doesn't actually feel like a real memory, she has to say she remembers it, because she has to make accusations. But it doesn't matter, because the wise man clearly knows something she's forgotten. He's reassured her that that hazy half-memory, which might feel like imagination, is genuine truth, still half-buried but which will become real. Direct suggestion.

It actually is even more serious than that. If the event didn't happen, then there is no emotion associated with it. And if she cannot discharge associated emotion, the belief, which she will eventually accept as a memory, simply will not fade back into the past, because it was never there in the first place.. So how on earth is she going to get better? And this situation will be worsened if a court convicts the accused, because she will observe that as a proof that she was right all along.

And there's also the likelihood that she actually has been abused - but by somebody else. So what happens if she spontaneously remembers who the real culprit was? Who'd like to try to shift that burden of guilt?

Actually, I believe that the only true false memory of this sort is the negative one - a memory that absolutely nothing of that sort ever happened. That's not to say, of course, that when someone is certain that nothing ever happened then they are necessarily wrong.

Now, of course, we do find memories of sexual abuse surfacing. For our purposes here, I'm talking about sexual abuse in it's most obvious and elemental form, the truly sexual event in a form which the average person in the street would recognise as such. So - we're talking about groping, fingering, enforced masturbation, and penetration or attempted penetration of mouth, anus, or vagina.

There are several possibilities to consider.

        1. Has been abused and knows it.
        2. Has been abused but does not know it.
        3. Has not been abused as such.
        4. Does not want to discover abuse.
        5. Wants to discover abuse.

There are probably quite a few other 'possibles' but these are the main ones.

        1. They've been abused, they know it, and our job with that client is to get them to release the guilt connected to it, because it's that which has been repressed. I've not yet had a client with this memory who had not got repressed guilt and fear. They let go of these emotions readily as a rule and we're unlikely to find ourselves with any real problems here.

        2. When they find it, they are incredulous at first, often thinking it's imagination. I usually say that it might be, but stay with it anyway, if it's what their mind wants to do. If it's a true memory, it will soon become real enough.

I never try to convince them that imagination is a true memory. I don't want belief before we've got a memory.

There's usually huge emotional release - if you use a bio-feedback meter, you can't miss it, I promise you. Sometimes, the emotional arousal appears to be missing at first - no mystery, if you understand the nature of abreaction.

I'm sure you know how important it is to discharge all of the emotional content, so I'm not going into that here. Handled carefully, again we're unlikely to find ourselves with any real problems with this one.

        3. If they get the idea into their head that they have been, they might begin to act accordingly, because those that latch onto the idea are usually Hysterics.

The giveaway is a too-ready acceptance of the memory as reality with out of balance emotional responses. Again, the bio-feedback meter comes into its own, because if any arousal shows, it's going to be below the level you'd expect from the evidence of your eyes and ears. Trust the meter.

This type of client will not usually be able to sustain their reaction long enough for it to carry conviction. Once they seem to be really into the memory - and not before - I suggest that it could be a memory of a dream or a film or something similar if I'm not convinced.

If it's a real memory, then you're going to get a very sharp answer from that client at that point, I can promise you, because they will know. There's some danger with this type of Hysteric client if a belief becomes entrenched, because they're never going to admit that they can't actually remember the event as such.

And guess who's going to get the blame when they start making accusations? So to guard against this, watch out for contradictions and encourage your client to keep an open mind.

        4. It's often there, but you'll have difficulty getting them to face it, and sometimes a fair degree of negative transference, manifesting as anger, when they do. Once they have discharged the associated emotions, though, they'll usually announce that they don't feel anywhere near as bad as they had always believed they would if they found such a thing.

In fact, they don't feel bad at all... in fact they feel quite good, really... and of course they'd always had their suspicions... and so on. This type of client is more often than not Oral by nature, and you won't usually get any serious problems.

        5. The dodgy one. He or she will seize on the tiniest shred of what they perceive to be evidence. They are usually Anal personalities and will attempt to get you to tell them that they're looking at abuse here.

Of course, they won't succeed! The bio-feedback meter will usually show little or no excitation at all and the emotional responses will be all wrong. The problem here is often that they have got repressed abuse memories, but they're not actually accessing them.

These people are dangerous to us, because if they make some sort of accusation about a relative somewhere along the line, only to discover that they could not possibly be right, then they're going to insist that their therapist must've put it into their mind. And do you know what? They'd be believed. The best thing you can do with this type is to get them out of therapy, because you're unlikely to get any real success with them anyway.

WELL HE WOULD, WOULDN'T HE?
As a matter of interest, I find it astonishing that when someone is accused, so much is
made of the fact the he or she denies it. Like Mandy Rice-Davies once said: 'Well, he would, wouldn't he?'

Here's something for you to think about, and it's something which should be thought hard about by all of us. Michael Yapko, the famous American therapist, says: 'False memories that are detailed and dramatic may be accepted as true (by the therapist) because of the therapist's pre-exisiting beliefs.'

It may be that your client is seeking your confirmation of a false belief that they've held for years but not been able to verify.

So we really do have to be emormously careful. A child is dependent upon adults for their survival and their intention is generally to please. Their false beliefs may very well be detailed and dramatic, if they think that's what you want.

Again, who is playing the role of the elder and who is playing the role of the child during analysis? If you allow your client one tiny sniff of what you're seeking, then the chances are that you'll find it. And you're then doing them and yourself a grave disservice.
You've attempted to cure their symptoms with your beliefs, and/or your repressions.


LIES IN ANALYSIS.
Every single client in analysis is going to lie to you at some point. It may be conscious, it might be subconscious, or it might even be a strange combination of the two, the preconscious lie, where the client knows something is wrong with his or her story, but doesn't really know what.

In this type of untruth, the teller has told the story that way for ages and can't really see any reason for changing it now. Whatever type it is, the lie is designed to protect integrity, so it's not going to be admitted to readily.

As far as the subconscious lie is concerned, it shouldn't really be called a lie at all, because it is the truth as your client consciously perceives it as an adult. But that truth, that belief, differs vastly from the reality of childhood. It's often revealed by over-compensation and exaggeration, so that you might be told frequently that 'Daddy was a wonderful, wonderful man, he really was a lovely man, who would never hurt a fly...' and so on.

You have to get underneath that, keep them thinking about Daddy, and look out for contradictions, either in their behaviour or his. When you find it, you point it out to them, but gently, if you don't want to risk losing a client. And don't jump to conclusions here, because the wrong-doing by Daddy might be only your client's perception of wrong-doing.

'CRIME' IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
One lady told me several times about her wonderful, loving, supportive and kind father who was always there for her. It turned out that his 'crime' was to die when she was fourteen.

As a matter of fact, I spotted this as a result of the revelation of a preconscious lie when she told me about his sudden death and how she had been devastated beyond belief for years.

Body language gives the game away in this sort of lie, any body language that could conceivably be linked to the fight, flight or protection reflex. Sudden folding of arms or crossing of legs, clenching of fists, moving the hands to cover the genitals, turning the head away are all common signs. In this lady's case it was sudden foot movement - her feet wiggled vigorously.

I believe that to be the running reflex in operation. I asked her to tell me exactly how it had felt when her father had died. She seemed incredulous and asked how I thought it felt. I replied that I knew how it would have felt to me, but I wanted to be sure that I knew exactly how it felt to her. She burst into tears and blurted out: 'Bloody cross! I was so bloody angry! How dare he leave us! The rotten sod!'

GUILT AND RATIONALISATION
After a few minutes of this, the guilt set in and she cried even harder. Then she said : 'Oh my God, how could I be so selfish!' over and over again. This release of emotion allowed her to finish the grieving process that had been hindered by guilt for years, so that by the next week she had stopped wearing the ankle socks that had always been part of every outfit she wore.

They were rationalised, of course - she'd insisted she had 'funny feet' and that they had to have only cotton next to the skin.. Father's death wasn't the only cause of her problem, which was depression, but it was a large part of it. And of course, now that she had released this guilt, free association became easier for her, because there was now no need to guard against memories where her father might have been involved in a less than favourable light - punishment and so on. The same applies to unresolved adult grief so you should be prepared to work through this if your client has suffered a bereavement from which they have not yet recovered.

The conscious lie can be difficult to deal with, because your client has a conscious self-interest in holding back the truth. It might be that he thinks you won't treat him if you find out his grim secret, it might be because of shame, it might be because he thinks you won't believe some part of his story or any one of a whole lot of other reasons, but he knows he's not telling you the truth.

And where there's a no-go area, our sort of therapy comes to a grinding halt, because it's odds-on that what we're looking for is coupled up with it.

The biggest clue comes from the telling of the story associated with it - it's always the same - same words, same phrasing, same remarks, same everything. There are also changes in body language patterns. This story is not a memory, it is a rehearsed evasion technique and there is absolutely no free association going on at all.

After a while, you can feel when you've got this problem with a client. There's no sure fire way to deal with it, other than by letting him know you know he's holding back and telling him that therapy will have to stop unless he gets on with the job properly. This is best done during normal consciousness, at the end of the session. Even then, he may look wide-eyed at you and insist that he really isn't holding anything back, especially if he's a predominantly Anal personality. There's no hope for that sort of client.
Of course, personality groups come into it a bit. The Conscious lie is usually from the Anal group, while the preconscious and unconscious lie is nearly always from the Oral.
Hysterics don't usually bother to lie at all, except by exaggeration, and it's usually obvious.


THE MIND/MEMORY AS A 'TOTAL LEARNING' MACHINE
We've all had that experience of going into another room for some purpose only to discover when we get there that we've forgotten what it was. So we retrace our steps and when we get back to our original location, the memory returns. It's not difficult to see why, because the learning process is total. Returning to our original location puts back the original sensory input that was part of the thought process that prompted our action. In other words, it reminds us of what we thought, because it replaces more of the original memory.

The more of the original there is, the more likely we are to recall the whole. And that's enormously important to a therapist, at times.

During analysis, when our client is 'stuck' on a recall, we can sometimes help by getting him or her to remember some of the more mundane details - weather, clothes, other people present, and so on, although it has to be admitted that the memory of these less important details does tend to fade over the years.

SUGGESTION AND THE CONSULTING ROOM
But where you really need to remember that the brain is a total learning machine is during any suggestion work. Some therapists find suggestion peculiarly ineffective, others find it works unbelievably well. What you have to remember is that your consulting room is part of that learning process... your consulting room is a part of the suggestion itself.

Unless you do something about that, you could give a client a dozen brilliantly observed and beautifully phrased positive suggestions for, say, quitting smoking, and find them working for only a day or two.

But if you disociate those suggestions from your consulting room and link them up to other elements in your client's life - his house, his hobby, his place of work - they will 'gel' far more readily in his subconscious and greatly increase your chance of success.

SUGGESTION AND THE SMOKER.
I'm going to take a couple of minutes here to digress slightly, to something I've been using lately in my quit smoking presentations that you might find useful. I point out that the urge to smoke comes from the automatic response part of the mind - the area where habits and skills are stored. Most people are only too well aware of that, already. I then point out that habits are only skills by another name, something we are able to do without a great deal of conscious thought. Then I ask them what happens to a skill if it isn't practiced. They all say it 'goes off', becomes less efficient.

If they drive, I ask if they've ever switched from manual to automatic, and how long it took their left foot to stop jumping for the clutch whenever they braked. Mostly, they agree that it didn't take very long. I explain that that was because the stimulus to work the clutch pedal could not be answered, so it simply went away. Their left foot learnt a new habit - doing nothing. I point out that quitting smoking is very similar - that if they simply stop responding to the stimulus to smoke, the stimulus soon ceases to be. I do several other things in the same vein, including some talk about learning and automatic memory, and conditioned response patterns. Then, as I've already said, I link the suggestion work into their life and environment. I get them to visualise themselves being non-smokers at work, at home, doing their hobby, and I do this as indirectly as possible. I'd estimate my success rate as about 90% in one session. Anyway, to return to the matter in hand...

FREE ASSOCIATION - OR IS IT?
Just because we've got our client nicely hypnotised and talking on our couch, doesn't mean they're doing what they should be doing, which is, of course, free associating.

It's worth noting that there are three distinctly separate types of memory process, each of which has many subdivisions. They are: Comparitive, Cognitive and Associative. Briefly, Comparitive, as the name implies, is when we are scanning for a match for something that is already in our mind.

Cognitive is recognising and placing - names, faces, locations, etc. We need to persuade our clients to suspend as much as possible of the comparitive and cognitive processes, because they are linked to analytical and logical thought, which we don't want.

Associative, of course, is what we want - one memory or sensation prompting the next because of some linking element which can be conscious or subconscious.

All too frequently, if we allow them, our clients will come up with one memory then go from there into one of those two unwanted areas, then back to associative; but, of course, the true free association process has been interrupted.

Sometimes, they'll consciously be directing their thoughts towards the things that they think will impress you, or maybe make you feel sorry for them. It's all resistance, of course, and we all recognise it. But I bet everyone of you here that's in practice has sat listening to random ramblings from time to time. I know I have. But I got a grip on it, eventually - after I actually fell asleep in the middle of a particularly rambling analytical session!

I teach the client how to perform free association on their first session after the tree shaker. I praise them when they get it right, and I remind them if they ramble. And if they still haven't got the idea by session four then I read them the riot act. I tell them that they absolutely must get the free association process under way by next session or I won't be able to help them any further. I'm nice about it, and they generally get it right. I give them examples of freely associative thought, too.

If they're doing the job properly, you should have some idea of the linking process between their thoughts most of the time. Personally, I'm very suspicious of the sudden quantum leap from their next door neighbour's garden shed to the running track at high school.

I want to know why they suddenly thought of running and why their mind was so anxious to get out into as wide open a space as possible.

There's only one way that free association is going to get the results you want time after time, and that's if you ensure, as far as possible, that your client keeps talking and keeps free associating.

Keep them doing that, and they have less time to justify their own thought processes, less chance to rationalise what's going on in their mind. Anybody can get success with one client now and again. But if you're effective, you will get good results with almost all your clients, and more importantly, you'll know you got a good result.


REPRESSION - A NEW VIEW.
Earlier, I said I had an interesting theory about memory and remembering, and here it is. The theory that memory images are created afresh each time we view them also allows us an interesting new hypothesis on repression.

I want to assume, for a moment, that each memory image is composed of a unique combination of chemicals, or a unique formulation of a chemical string, each linked to a kind of biological index file.

You can think of it like a bar code, each element of which triggers different response areas in the brain, creating different images.

TOUCH TASTE SIGHT SOUND SMELL + RESPONSE
II III II....................................................................I 0 I 0 I 0 I 0

There is a precedent in nature to this idea of a chemical bar code - in DNA, the material that provides our genetic code for life itself. The permutations of DNA strands are infinite enough to carry the message that its life form is to be anything from a single cell amoeba to a human being, from a virus to an elephant. And within each species the same infinity of combinations gives rise to individual features and allows certain traits to passed on to successive generations.

For the record, a DNA chain is composed of a twisted pair of strands known as a double helix, each made up of alternating sections called nucleotides, each of which are composed of a phosphate and a sugar. The two strands are joined by hydrogen bonds, and the sequence of nucleotides determines individual characteristics and the function of that particular cell, so it could be said that each cell has its own intelligence, its own memory.

This complexity is found in just one molecule, inside the nucleus of every single cell of the organism to which it belongs. Size is not a problem here. There are billions of cells in the brain, any one of which may receive information from as many as a thousand others. And just in case you're still in doubt, the possible number of combinations, using binary mathematics, of only 20 different codes is over one million. With 32, it soars up to 4294967296 - and if anybody is familiar with binary mathematics you'll find it easy to check those numbers. Otherwise - you can take my word for it.

Now, continuing with our assumption, this hypothetical memory string is created by the brain - not the mind - but by a chemical reaction in the brain, in response to various stimuli.

These stimuli are provided by our five sensory input channels - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. But there is another input that contributes to the impression, and which determines whether the memory becomes long-term or not, and that is our emotional response, which creates what we'll call a response tag, without which the memory cannot be latched to our thinking processes. It remains merely a transient memory.

RESPONSE LEVEL EFFECT
Now, let us assume further that the level of this response has some effect upon that identifier code, so that if it is too high it changes it in some way so that it's no longer recognisable to any of our normal memory processes. Maybe that response tag switches from alkali to acid, for example. It's a sort of 'lockout' code.

Now refer to the chart above illustrating the 'bar-code' pattern and imagine that, because of an 'excitation overload' an extra 'I' is added to the right hand end of it, under 'RESPONSE'        . To make it easier to understand, we'll say that's an alkaline element, where normally there would be an acidic one. That's changed the pattern quite a bit. In addition to the alkalinity content of the string, it now has 9 elements instead of eight; reading from the right, it starts with a 'I' instead of a '0'; it divides into clusters of 3, instead of clusters of 2; and opposite ends of the string match where before they did not. So you've now got a memory that cannot easily be accessed, unless something happens to render that code recognisable.

In the normal way, that memory is going to be ignored, invisible, because it doesn't comply with the usual format.Yet it cannot be discarded because it clearly has importance - it has an emotional response tag.

We need one more assumption. When we're searching for a memory, we usually have some idea of what we're looking for and this idea provides a vague and very flexible temporary chemical chain, a sort of temporary template, for use as a comparison test. So we search the templates that we have stored, and those that match start to modify the test chain, which continues to change until it closely matches that formed by the original impression and it begins to feel 'right'.

Sometimes, we're not sure we have got the right memory, and there is a continued conscious search for verification, looking for 'landmarks' as it were, to confirm or deny it. There will be a margin of error, because there has been nothing in evolution that has made it necessary to have 100% accurate recall most of the time - in fact, the opposite is probably the case, but that's a different story all together.

This error margin may account for why recalls change from time to time, if every time a memory is recalled, it has the new chemical string attached to it, in addition to, or perhaps modifying, the original.

It's also the reason why lies tend to become more developed each time they are recalled - more and more templates are searched, fit the fantasy, and so are incorporated into it.

So, the chemical chain created by the original impression is reproduced somewhere in consciousness, though with less intensity. But let us suppose that if we keep on thinking about it, the amount or intensity of that chemical chain, slowly but steadily increases. Or maybe the number of bars in the bar code is gradually added to as we scan more templates.

That actually would account for the fact that the memory often gradually becomes clearer, wouldn't it? And why inaccuracies suddenly begin to seem like truth.

Now, if we keep thinking about it for long, one of two things can happen. We may get used to it and it will cease to have very much effect upon our psyche; emotional stimulation has to be dynamic and on-going, or it simply stops being a stimulus. It becomes normal.

But if that memory - or even a fantasy, possibly - happens to be about something that is similar to our inaccessible memory file, the one with the acid content, the subconscious cross-referencing process will recognise that similarity and put us on red alert, giving a pronounced boost to our chemical memory chain.

We will become more excited, rather than less. And when the level of excitation is high enough, what happens? That identifier component eventually becomes acid instead of alkaline by the same process of change as before. Suddenly, it's recognisable and in a blinding flash we have access to that other memory associated with it - the repression.

The emotional stimulus starts to fade instantly, albeit only slightly, because the original repression was created during a time of on-going trauma - continued stimulus - but it's being recalled in a static, relatively safe environment.

And as the emotional stimulus fades, so does that acidity associated with it, and now it can be recalled again and again, worked through, looked at, cried over, rationalised, mitigated, or whatever other method you choose to help your client deal with it.

The relevance of all this to us as therapists is simple. We may not know what those chemical codes might be, or how they're constructed, and the whole thing is only a theory, anyway. But it answers an awful lot of questions about the mechanisms of memory and if you assume that it is accurate - it works!

It works, because we are then more insistent on keeping our clients working properly in analysis; our entire belief and conviction increases and when the therapist's belief is high, so the results he or she gets are improved.

You need conviction and belief to be effective, and if you're not satisfied with the results you're currently getting, then your belief system may be to blame. If someone gave you a sack of hay and asked you to search to see if there was a needle hidden in there, it wouldn't be long before you decided that there probably wasn't. But if you'd seen it put in there, and if you had a good incentive to find it, then you'd keep looking until you did. You may not have been around when your client acquired his particular problem, but you certainly know that its there or he wouldn't be on your couch. And if you can't work out what the incentive is for you to find it, then you shouldn't be in this business.

You have to make sure your client keeps talking to you, because vocalisation, especially when that old favourite guilt is involved, will force up that level of excitation. It effectively answers the vexed question of why vocalisation is so important. Talking about excitation increases excitation.

If you allow your client to lay quietly on your couch, that excitation level is never going to be reached, because they are allowing themselves to relax, allowing the excitation to drain away faster than it is being stimulated. Put bluntly, you'll fail your client, because you'll not get the mind and brain to create the chemical that creates the blinding flash of realisation.


THE SUBCONSCIOUS SEARCH PROCESS.
And now consider this. Supposing that each recall leaves it's chemicals in consciousness, in an internal virtual reality arena of some sort, for a short while. Then as successive memories are recalled, so components of each of, say, four separate memories act as partial pointers to a fifth. It accounts for that peculiar phenomenon that Freud wrote about - when searching for a particular recall, someone's name, say, we will come up with a variety of answers, each containing elements of the one we are looking for.

Search finds: ANTHRAX
THESIS
PRACTICE
PARALLAX

SOUGHT WORD: PARAPRAXIS.


SAME FAMILY MEMBERS
You'll sometimes find yourself dealing with several members of the same family. If that hasn't happened to you yet, then rest assured that it will! It's not the best of circumstances, because of the extra possibility of resistance, but if you make sure you finish completely with one before you start on another, you can get round that.

DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF SAME STORIES.
You're in for some confusing sessions then, especially if your clients are from different generations, because they're going to give you completely different versions of the same event.

You can find yourself dealing with both apparent abuser and apparently abused, and because the buggers don't always tell you that their daughter/son/niece whatever had been to see you, the first you know of it is when some recall or another brings YOU to a realisation.

THE GOOD THERAPIST
If you're a half-good therapist, with a decent training analysis under your belt, none of this should give you any trouble.

All you have to do is remember that it's the client's truth, the client in the chair's truth that's important.


MORE ABOUT COMPOSITE MEMORY.
It's not uncommon for a memory to be denounced as inaccurate by the client himself. He might be recalling watching the kids in the playing fields while he was in his sick bed, then suddenly announce that the house he he was thinking of was nowhere near any fields at all.
Not only that but he was never actually ill in this house as far as he can remember, and anyway, it's not actually a house at all - it's a bungalow backing on to an industrial estate.

Or he or she might see a hallway with two entirely different staircases, one on either side of it, then realise that he's actually remembering two different houses in two different towns.

Like a poor pianist, the client is hitting all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order! Everything is true - possibly even fact - but has been scrambled in some way so that the time-event data has become confused.

But what is absolutely certain is that this is not 'just one of those things'. There is some sort of link between the recalls, something of importance. So these composite images should not be dismissed, because they have a definite purpose.

LOGICAL FLAWS
One of the ways you can spot a composite memory is by obvious flaws in logic; a house would be unlikely to have two staircases in it, especially of different designs.

Sometimes it'll be slightly more subtle, like going upstairs to bed in a bungalow, or not being certain whether Uncle Charlie was short or tall - that'll often be followed by something like: 'Uncle Bob was definitely tall, I remember that.'

UNDEFINEABLE ODDNESS
Sometimes you might become aware that there's a not quite defineable oddness about a memory, in which case your subconscious has detected the error.

You need to keep your client's attention on these memories so that things eventually fall into place, because, as I've already said, it's more than possible that the actual purpose of a composite memory is that of a type of screen memory. In short, composite memories are almost certainly one of the mechanisms of repression.


THE OBSESSIVE MEMORY. Sometimes, an adult, instead of developing amnesia, gets stuck with an obsessive memory - replaying the scene of a trauma over and again in his or her mind until they think they're going quite mad. Why are they doing this? It makes no sense at all, and the obvious answer is guilt, self-punishment, even if the trauma was not their fault.

But, you see, part of the mind has a great deal of difficulty in distinguishing thought from reality, and we know this is so, don't we, because with visualisation techniques, we can convince the subconscious of just about any positive thing we wish.

So what's happening with this obsessive memory, this constant replaying of the same film over and again?

LOOKING FOR A BETTER ENDING
I believe the answer is simple. I believe that the part of the mind that doesn't distinguish too well between thought and reality is hoping that there'll be a more acceptable ending to the play this time. Or next time. Or the time after.

And it's just going to keep on looking until it finds one. So what do we do? We give the sufferer a more acceptable ending. There are limits, of course, but if we can get them to visualise a better ending during hypnosis, we stand a good chance of setting them free from what amounts to a prison.

I must admit that I've only dealt with one - a lady who'd been caught in a fire and whose friend had died in it. She'd had all sorts of therapy and treatment for getting on for seven years and only came to me in desperation.

It took six sessions, during which we managed to persuade her subconscious that because she didn't actually see her friend die, she could not be absolutely certain that she had done so. She visualised her friend running out to get the help that had actually rescued her. After the sixth session she told me that she had thrown her sleeping pills away and was feeling much better, thank you very much.

A purist could possibly object to this treatment, I suppose. But I personally don't mind creating a harmless artificial belief or truth if it's going to produce peace of mind. I didn't follow the case up and I didn't hear from the lady again, so I assume she remained well.

        
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT - differing views of normality.
DIVERSION - How 'faction' seeks to divert attention from what really happened!
THE BLANK - How to deal with the 'I can't remember anything' response.
SELECTIVE RECALL - Seeking to please/impress/elicit sympathy from the therapist.

There simply was not time to conclude my talk because I ran out of time at THE SUBCONSCIOUS SEARCH PROCESS. This and the subjects that followed were left out - perhaps I'll be able to include them in a future talk, when I might also expand on the 'memory string' theory. I'm still working on that, how we might lucidly explain the difference between imagination and reality, and how we can learn how to detect that difference in our clients' recalls.




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© Copyright Terence Watts - 1995.