Trauma

Trauma

I remember an episode when I was about ten. I was telling my friend, Ben Shelley, about watching the building of the big house out in the country where my maternal grandparents lived. The image of my grandfather using a disk drawn by mules to dig out what would become a basement so big that it was more like a third story buried underground below the two stories visible above ground; this was burned into my memory as something unforgettable. I was as sure that I had witnessed that important moment as I was of anything.

This is why I was crying hysterically ten minutes later after my mom, having overheard our conversation, spent those intervening minutes insisting that I could not possibly remember seeing my grandfather dig that basement out in 1935. The math of my claim just did not work out given that I was born 19 years later in 1954. Specifically, I was born to a mom who had been a cute little red-headed girl back in 1935. This little girl actually had stood enraptured on more than one occasion in the summer of that year watching her father dig out a basement that looked to her at the time to be as vast and miraculous as the Grand Canyon.

This was one of the cherished memories of my mom’s childhood and she told the story often. There was a framed picture of the event hanging on the wall of the parlor of the house that my grandfather built as a spacious and comfy nest for his growing brood. I had seen it often and my mom showed it to me once again when next we made our usual Sunday visit to the home-place. The picture agreed perfectly with my own vivid memory of the occurrence down to last detail. I even remembered correctly that my bald-on-top grandfather had a full head of impressive steel gray hair back then. My eyewitness account and my mom’s agreed perfectly except for one detail; I remembered being there but my mom was certain that I was not present.

False memories are not rare and mysterious. They are so common that it would be fair to say that any person selected at random from the general population and told to write a memoir of his or her life so far would put down a great deal in perfect good faith as gospel truth that a detailed and extensive investigation would reveal as demonstrably not possible based on documents and other forms of hard evidence generated during the periods of time being recalled. Elizabeth Loftus, among others, has established that the profound faith juries put in eyewitness testimony is not even remotely justified by what research has now established about the accuracy of eyewitness accounts (Loftus, 1996). It has been a joke among lawyers for many years that four eyewitnesses to the same event will give five different versions of the event. Loftus and others have now been able to generate solid research findings verifying the suspicions experienced trial attorneys have always, but only in private or when taking an eyewitness account at face value would convict their client, felt about the truth value of eyewitness testimony. One thing that almost all of the persons exonerated by DNA evidence have in common is the strong role played by eyewitness testimony in their original convictions (The Innocence Project).

“We are memories which act” as Henri Laborit says playing himself as a kind of Greek chorus in Alan Resnais’ Mon Oncle D'amérique (1980), a film whose characters’ lives provide three interwoven plots which, all together, illustrate Laborit’s conception of the self as a memory that acts. Laborit and the late Australian narrative therapist, Michael White, have provided me with the materials out of which I have built my own conception of the self as a memory which acts (White, 1990). Findings from neuroscience about the mechanism of storage and retrieval of memories also provided not so much inspiration as cross-validation from another very different disciplinary perspective of what I thought I already knew. This conception is the frame within which I interpret any question concerning the truth or falsity of memories or the authenticity of the self which acts the remembrance of things past.

Henri Laborit was a behaviorist with a difference. He felt that what we each carry into the next present moment from the past was a trace left by the schedules of reinforcement that we had experienced in the past. This trace was memory and a memory is true if it is part of what is being performed as self in the present. Laborit is claiming that what is remembered is true whether the memory is factual or not; a memory contrary to fact will still be the past that is carried forward into the present by that memory when it acts (Laborit, 1977). The level of neurosis suffered by any given performative self can, however, be measured as the distance between what is factual and what is remembered. When that gap becomes so wide that memory performed in the present is not coupled to the present facts at all, the result is a full psychotic break. However, Laborit always emphasized that what is factual and what is true does not agree perfectly for any of us. The past that is remembered and performed in the present is always a revisionist history that leaves out the facts that will not fit into the story of how the memory-self performing in the present came to be.

Michael White’s approach to therapy was based on editing and re-visioning (seeing again) the revisionist past that created a performative self which was problematic or painful to live out in the present (White, 1990). This was done by searching for episodes from the past that had been edited out of the revisionist history of this problematic self to re-vision back in as a way to undermine the problematic aspects of that memory which acts in the present. To the extent that this re-visioning is both possible and therapeutically useful, the past can be changed to make the memory that performs in the present less dysfunctional.

I was fascinated to discover that the current view of the molecular mechanisms of memory acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval is compatible with the vision of how memory works that I had formed, taking ideas mostly from Laborit and White (Abel & Lattal, 2001). My knowledge of neuroscience is sketchy and superficial, but to the extent that I understand what is currently believed to be the case by psychologists who specialize in this area, their micro-level description of the processes of memory dovetails with the macro-level account I offered above. At the most crudely simplistic level, what is stored when an episode is stored in long-term memory is a protein. When the episode is recalled, the protein is broken down by an enzyme. The result of this is a firing of neurons in a pattern that creates the conscious recall of the episode as a subjective experience. My understanding is that the protein that stores the memory is destroyed at each moment of recall and then re-synthesized immediately after recall for storage in long-term memory. This would make each instance of recall a re-visioning (seeing again) of the episode different from the original subjective experience of the episode in ways determined by changes in attitude since that time or the acquisition of new information that might change the way the episode was interpreted.

Each re-synthesis of the protein stored for later recall would then also be a re-vision that changed aspects of the original subjective experience. The first time a wife meets her future husband will be re-visioned differently one year later if the marriage is happy than it was one day, one week or one month after that initial encounter and will be re-visioned again five years later in the midst of an ugly divorce. All of these variations are visions of the past that were true memories of that initial encounter at one moment of recall. The past changes each time our revisionist history of who we are and how we got that way is re-visioned yet again.

The McNally article took an approach to looking at a controversial topic, recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, which appealed to me. If P then Q,: ~Q then ~P has been the standard logic of scientific discovery since Popper (2002). In this case, if a sample of people are repressing memories of childhood sexual abuse (P) then this repression should make them take longer to notice the color of ink a word such as incest or abuse is printed in than it normally would to perform this cognitive task if the word involved were emotionally neutral (Q). Trying to falsify/fail to falsify a controversial P by testing to see if a trivial Q that would follow if P were true is a good way to examine that controversial P without entering into the main controversy over P in any direct way.

As Richard McNally states, “Although cognitive psychology methods cannot distinguish true memories from false ones, these methods can illuminate mechanisms for remembering and forgetting among people reporting histories of trauma” (McNally, 2003, p. 32). It can then be asked if the pattern found in the mechanism for remembering and forgetting observed in this sample matches what one would expect if the memories were true or more the pattern one would expect if the memories where false and perhaps constructed with the inadvertent assistance of a well-meaning mental health professional.

McNally looked at the differences among a control sample who reported no childhood sexual abuse (CSA), a sample who reported continuous memories of CSA, a sample who reported recovered memories of CSA, and a sample who believed on the basis of various forms of current psychological distress that they had repressed memories of CSA. The control groups and the continuous memory sample did not differ on measures of negative affect. The repressed memory sample scored highest on negative affect with the recovered memory sample scoring between the repressed memory sample and the control and continuous memory groups.

McNally also looked at the tendency to forget trauma-related material using a directed forgetting methodology to test the hypothesis that CSA survivors who are most severely distressed are much better able to disengage attention from trauma-related material. McNally used three samples: CSA survivors with PTSD, psychiatrically healthy CSA survivors, and non-abused control subjects to test this hypothesis. The results showed the exact opposite pattern from what one would expect if the hypothesis were true; the most distressed CSA survivors had much greater trouble forgetting trauma-related material even when instructed to do so than either of the other two groups. Taken at face value, these results would seem to indicate that the more traumatic a memory, the less likely that memory is to be repressed. This makes a great deal of sense If PTSD is defined as the emotional state of being highly prone to slip back into the state of mind experienced in response to an overwhelming trauma. PTSD is normally described in this way, not as a forgetting of traumatic memories but as an inability to forget so profound that it amounts to an endless cycle of iterations of the original trauma in flashbacks which carry the full negative affect of the original trauma.

If, as I argued above, false memories are a common and routine part of just about everyone’s subjective experience, then there is no reason to believe that all memories of abuse, even those that carry a charge of negative affect powerful enough to generate symptoms sufficient to satisfy all four DSM criteria for mental illness, are factual. Taking seriously Laborit’s insistence that memories can be true which are not factual is necessary to making sense of this situation. The memory which performs the self in the present moment is acting out of childhood sexual abuse all the same whether this abuse was factual or not. The question of whether recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse which are true therapeutically were factual was present at the creation of the talking cure as a major problem not just theoretical but political faced by Freud; the problem was political because Freud was intensely aware that coming forward with the claim that a clear majority of his patients, a group made up mostly of women drawn from the upper crust of Viennese society, factually had been incested before puberty, mostly by their fathers, would cause a backlash of scandal that would kill psychoanalysis in its cradle. Freud was pragmatic enough to know that, even if this were true, the result of saying so would bring shame and disrepute upon the outsider, the Jewish doctor, who dared to make the accusation and not upon the pillars of society being accused.

Freud also knew that his patients made their best progress if he conducted therapy as if it were true that they had been incested by their fathers. Freud’s solution was the creation of the Electra complex, a way of defining memories of CSA as true for proposes of therapy but not factual. The debate has gone on ever since and still continues today about whether Freud really believed in his own theory of the Electra complex or merely used it as a way to continue doing the most successful kind of therapy he knew how to do with women who had suffered CSA without being obliged to destroy himself and his new science in a head-on confrontation with the ruling patriarchs of Viennese society in the Victoria Era.

Some critics think Freud actually believed in the Electra complex but was wrong to do so and right before, at first when he believed the stories of CSA he was hearing so often and thought of them as being simply factual. Others accuse Freud of outright complicity after the fact with the abusers, seeing the Electra complex as a cover-up that Freud consciously fabricated to be just that and nothing more (Masson, 1984; Masson, 2003). If Judith Herman’s (2000) rough estimate that one in three women in the general population is a victim of CSA is accurate, CSA is not the rare grizzly horror we have conspired since at least the time of Freud to pretend it to be but a common event in the life of many young girls. This debate is intensely political on both sides and is being carried out between one side that sees a centuries-long conspiracy to deny what so often happens to young girls and another side that refuses to believe that the grizzly horror is so terribly common-place.

My habitual way of looking at the self which performs in each consecutive present moment as a memory which acts also informs my response to the issues raised in the Bonanno article on resiliency. At each such moment, we respond not out of what factually happened but out of what is true for the acting memory in that present moment. Resiliency in face of a truly awful loss has a very obvious explanation when considered in light of this point of view. Resiliency will prove possible if the factual loss is being performed as a true memory that is close enough to the factual to maintain the structural coupling of the memory which acts to the actual while, at the same time, being a true memory which can perform as a going on into each consecutive present moment as a continuation of what one has been and done before continued in light of and in spite of the loss as remembered and acted out as a going on from that continues performing the same self and living the same life as before.

Resiliency is not possible if the memory which acts feels stuck or cannot perform the present moment as a going on from the loss as the same person living the same life as before. Resiliency acts the memory of a loss as something that one goes on after. Lack of resiliency acts the memory of loss as a break, a being stuck, a not being able to go on as the same person living the same life as before. Interventions with people who are going on from the loss as memories which act the loss but can still go on can only do more harm than good. Such interventions are worse than examples of intervening to fix something that is not broken. They are examples of interventions which can only serve to undermine and bring into question the coping strategies whereby the brokenness of a major loss has been fixed so that going on in light of and in spite of is possible. Intervention is needed when the memory of loss which is acting in the present moment is stuck and cannot perform as a going on from as the same person living the same life. This break in the continuity of the self one has been and the life one has lived is the thing broken that needs fixing. The brokenness of this self and the stuckness of this life will be fixed when a way is found to remember the loss in a way that can be performed as a going on in light of and in spite of.

References:

Abel, T., & Lattal, M. (2001). Molecular mechanisms of memory acquisition, consolidation and retrieval. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11,180–187.

Bonanno, G. (2008). Resilience in the face of potential trauma. Bonanno, George A. Lilienfeld, Scott O. (Ed.); Ruscio, John (Ed.); Lynn, Steven Jay (Ed.); Amherst, NY, US: Prometheus Books, 2008. pp. 239–248.

Dussart, P. (Producer), & Resnais, A. (Director). (1980). My American uncle. [Motion Picture]. France: Andrea Decoding the Human Message Films.

Herman, J. L. (2000). Father-daughter incest. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Laborit, H. (1977). Decoding the human message. London: Allison & Busby.

Loftus, E. The formation of false memories. Retrieved June 10, 2013, from http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/loftus.mem.html

Loftus, E. (1996). Eyewitness testimony. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Masson, J. M. (1984). Freud and the seduction theory: A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis. The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.

Masson, J. M. (2003). Assault on truth: Freud’s suppression of the seduction theory. New York: Ballantine Books.

McNally, R. (2003). Recovering memories of trauma: A view from the laboratory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(1), 32–35.

Popper, K. (2002). The logic of scientific discovery. New York: Routledge.

The Innocence Project. Eyewitness misidentification. Retrieved from http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php

White, M. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.