Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Answer is in the Small Details

By Kevin Murphy, M.Sc.,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist,
Dublin, Ireland.

People will often tell you that they have a poor memory. They can’t remember details of their life, particularly the further back they go. They assume it is a natural thing, or perhaps, a hormonal imbalance. In some cases people will tell you that, actually, there are things they don’t want to remember. Think of the number of people who believe the past, their past, should be left alone, that it is best not to ‘go there’. This attitude stems from a very distinct attitude to memory. That, like the sleeping giant of children’s stories, it must be allowed to slumber on undisturbed.
Equally, it’s surprising how many people don’t want to remember and aren’t aware of it. That’s because the poor memory that so many proclaim to have is, in reality, a desire not to know. This is probably what differentiates psychoanalytic psychotherapy from so many other therapies being offered today. One of its central beliefs is that memory is an essential element in recovery. That's not to say that we are on the hunt for trauma that never happened or to concoct false memories. No, the issue is ordinary memories, small things, little details of one's life that actually happened. There is a wealth of knowledge about ourselves tied up in those small details.
Yet consider for a moment how many therapies have been devised since psychoanalysis first opened up the field in the late 1800s that allow people avoid the challenge of remembering. Cures, if that is not too strong a word for it, are being offered all the time that convince people there is no need to ‘go there’. I have a difficulty with relationships in my life, so let’s fix relationships. I have a fear of intimacy, so let’s focus on intimacy. I am sad all the time, so let’s work on being happy. If we cut the heads off all the dandelions we certainly will have what looks like a perfect lawn. But the dandelions are still there under the surface, ready to emerge again.
There is another group of people, very common in therapy rooms, who will tell you that there is nothing to remember. They can see it all clearly and they believe that honestly there is nothing much to talk about. This group of people are labouring under a very similar misconception as those who tell you have they have a poor memory and can’t recall much. This latter group achieve exactly the same result as the first group – they stay away from the detail of their past life - but with a uniquely different avoidance tactic. They refuse to consider detailed memories from their lives because they have already decided there is nothing of value to speak about. What they never allow themselves realise is that once they talk about a particular memory, the very act of speaking transforms it in such a way that new aspects of it emerge, aspects that were, yes, forgotten. Buried behind the seemingly obvious pictures of their past life are hidden details that only emerge when attention is focussed on recounting them.
As such, psychoanalytic psychotherapy is the opposite of those therapies that say if you can get rid of the symptom you are cured. Naturally, it is an attractive proposition. A person who goes to pieces in the company of strangers is looking for a handy tip to help them cope. A person suffering from depression is looking for the secret to happy thoughts. A person who is afraid all the time is looking for a quick way to be confident. A person who can not engage sexually with another human being is looking for the ‘right way’ of doing it. This approach suggests that the complaint or symptom is ‘outside’ of me, not really part of me, and it can be fixed with a bit of tinkering that won’t really necessitate me getting involved much at all, other than following a few simple instructions.
The psychoanalytic approach, the first and original form of psychotherapy, sees all the psychical symptoms of the modern age as the result of faulty ideas that operate unseen in the background of our minds. They are active at the unconscious level and wield enormous influence over our choices, decisions and interpretations of who we are and how our lives operate. These ‘ideas’ are formed by the often unnoticed experiences, the trivial happenings, the off-hand comments, the insignificant hurts that are part and parcel of everyday life. It doesn’t always have to be traumas. We don’t notice them because we bury them as soon as they happen, we repress them automatically in some cases. And often the ideas that result from these experiences cause the problems. We might have been too young or too afraid or too distracted to process the experiences fully. We usually repressed the experiences so quickly and so effectively that we were not even conscious of doing it. But those experiences were stored away.
French psychoanalyst and lecturer the late Dr Jacques Lacan said many insightful things but two are of relevance here. The first was his description of the unconscious mind as the ‘memory of everything we have forgotten’.
We file things away, store them, and sometimes actively wish to forget them. But in our unconscious mind they remain part of us, part of our experience and part of our ideas that inform the way we live our lives. Whenever we make a life choice and can’t figure out why, it is the effect of buried memories at work. Whenever we do something that goes against our better nature or against what we know to be the right way of doing things, it is the effect of buried memories at work. And whenever we find ourselves repeating the same negative patterns over and over again, it is the effect of buried memories at work.
And it is not the memories themselves. Rather it is the imaginary ideas that we have attached to these memories – ideas about who we are, where we deserve to be in life, how it is that we are seen by others, whether or not we deserve success or failure, whether we will ever find love or whether we even deserve to find love and so on and on. These exert powerful and unseen influences on our ability to be happy with who it is we are, and on the choices we make that ultimately guide the direction of our lives.
We de-fuse the effect of these memories and these imaginary ideas in psychoanalytic psychotherapy by giving them articulation in speech. And the more we speak about the life we have had, and the one we want to have, and about the imaginary ideas that surround us in our daily lives and in our dreams, about the insignificant and often trivial details of experiences we have had, the more we loosen the grip that misconceived ideas have on us. Think for a moment about a real person that you know, someone you believe is perfectly happy and fulfilled and has achieved what they want in life. Is that person, in your view, trapped by ideas that are dragging them down? Is that person expending vast amounts of energy holding back knowledge of themselves by suppressing memories or believing the memory of their past is just a hazy blur? The answer is probably not. In rock and roll terms, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. In psychoanalytic terms, it is the word for re-finding what was lost. To quote Jacques Lacan again, we do not remember because we are cured. We are cured because we remember.

6 comments:

Pat said...

Hi Kevin,
I have read the above blog entry and you talk about memory of childhood as if it were something that was completely under a person's control in the present moment and seem to place an emphasis on finding lost or repressed memories, and figuring out problematic ideas about oneself that surround these memories as the road to loosening the grip of psychological problems on our ability to function healthily.I wonder about whether, for everyone, key memories can actually be consciously remembered and about the potential room for error that can be created in attempts to piece memories together by an individual in a poor mental state in the first place who's aim in attending therapy is likely to find a solution/explanation/understanding that will 'free' them from the grip of their perceived/real problem/s,which is presumably why they are seeking help through therapy (for example I'm thinking of inaccurate remembering (at it's negative extreme, false memories of abuse for example). And what do we know about this process - and the costs aswell as benefits of remembering, under different circumstances, and at different points in a person's life/personal story? Are there circumstances/times where remembering fogotton unconscious material is not therapeutically indicated? Does psycholanalysis undertake to really know the client, their circumstances and the uniqueness of their past/ and current situations, beyond an assessment of their defenses and intra-psychic conflict etc. I accept that this type of assessment may produce valuable information for the therapist to work with the client. While as a general outline, the blog makes some sense to me, surely this process of remembering could be detrimental in specific circumstances/to specific clients? How does psychoanalysis manage this/does it consider this question or question at all whether a person may become even more 'stuck' in the mud by engaging in this process. As therapy can be a very risky business from the client's perspective, particularly a client who is truely engaged in work on themselves which is painful for them, I think these questions are worthy of consideration. Many of these ideas seem watertight in theory and when put articulately appear to make a strong argument, but there is an unusual gap between the theory and real lives, personalities, and experience that inevitably has implications for the effectiveness for any one client of the particular treatment derived from a certain a science of these. I am curious about this approach and what it may have to offer a client with different 'problems' which is why I'm commenting. I'd appreciate any discussion about these specific issues. Thank you.

Kevin Murphy said...

Pat, your question offers some interesting points which deserve attention. However, can I say from the outset that you interpret the blog as referring to forgotten traumatic memories. The blog is not intended to apply to trauma memories. Rather its overall message is to remind people that ordinary memories contain details that offer enormous therapeutic potential. And to further remind readers that we have poor memories because we choose to forget rather than have difficulty remembering. We repress, unconsciously, anything with a hint of un-pleasure attached to it and we do it throughout our lives.
However, to focus on your question in more detail:
‘you talk about memory of childhood as if it were something that was completely under a person's control in the present moment,’
I hope I didn’t give the impression that memories were completely under a person’s control. I was referring to people’s attitude to not being able to remember – as if it was a natural state of things. Not being able to remember is usually a result of having unconsciously repressed a great deal of our experiences. This repression is most certainly not under our control. The point I was trying to make was that people assume they have forgotten things because they were unimportant and so there is no need to remember. Psychoanalysis believes they were forgotten because they were important and so remembering, while not easy, is essentially a sign of returning good health.
‘and seem to place an emphasis on finding lost or repressed memories,’
There is no emphasis in practice or in theory on setting out to find lost or repressed memories. These aspects of a person’s inner life are well buried and more often than not they resist any attempt to be directly recovered and so cannot be approached bluntly. Psychoanalytic practice instead works gently around the edges, slowly and patiently, often not even mentioning anything about memories or remembering until the person themselves begins remembering of their own accord. The emphasis on remembering has to come freely from the client, the curiousity to refind and re-examine real experiences from their lives must be their desire, not the analyst’s, otherwise this therapy does not work. Most people’s issues are not due to obvious trauma, so we are not ‘hunting’ for the forgotten trauma – I’ll come back to this.

Kevin Murphy said...

Continued:-
'And figuring out problematic ideas about oneself that surround these memories as the road to loosening the grip of psychological problems on our ability to function healthily.’
Memories, and sometimes even ones that were not forgotten, do contain valuable ideas about how a person has come to see him or herself. Putting words on them, often for the first time, does have a transforming effect that can free people from the tyranny of faulty notions about themselves.
‘I wonder about whether, for everyone, key memories can actually be consciously remembered ‘
Not everyone can remember because not everyone wants to remember. Psychoanalysis proceeds on the basis that no one is ever directed to or forced into remembering. It is a free choice and it is done as I said gently and slowly. Trauma clients for example are never put in a position of having to speak out their memories of the trauma unless it is something that they choose to do. And not all do. But anyone who wants to remember will do so. And just a point on your phrase ‘key memories’: this again suggests that somehow key memories will be self-evident, that they will be big and obvious. This is not always the case. For those who suffered trauma, there are definite key memories that might have been buried. But not everyone who suffers in adult life has suffered trauma in their early lives and the blog was aimed at them. For most people it is often trivial memories that reveal a wealth of ideas about the kind of person they have become. And even in some trauma memories, it is often a trivial detail – what an attacker said as an aside, the look on their face – that has had the biggest effect.
‘and about the potential room for error that can be created in attempts to piece memories together by an individual in a poor mental state in the first place’
Yes, I agree and this is to be avoided at all costs. Any psychoanalytically trained therapist would agree with this. I hope the blog did not give the impression that the analyst’s job is to help ‘piece memories together’ because it is not. Unlike so many other forms of therapy, the psychoanalytic approach does not direct a person in any particular direction. It is a free association experience, through talking, that allows a person almost without knowing it to arrive at issues that mean something to them. In doing so it listens to what the person is saying and tries to hear in what is being said any true desires at work, the unspoken meanings or attempts at meaning, that have been prevented from finding expression. In short, the goal is to teach the person to fish, not to hand them a fish the analyst caught earlier.
See next comment for more.

Kevin Murphy said...

Continued:-
‘who's aim in attending therapy is likely to find a solution/explanation/understanding that will 'free' them from the grip of their perceived/real problem/s,which is presumably why they are seeking help through therapy’
Yes I agree with this.
‘(for example I'm thinking of inaccurate remembering (at it's negative extreme, false memories of abuse for example).’
Yes I agree with this too. Even Freud went down the road of searching out the ‘trauma’ that his clients must have suffered to make them so unwell. He discovered eventually that ordinary life, depending on how it affects us, can be enough to make some of us unwell. This was the point I was trying to make. Trying to find a supposedly forgotten traumatic experience as the cause, where one does not exist, is a road to disaster.
‘And what do we know about this process - and the costs as well as benefits of remembering, under different circumstances, and at different points in a person's life/personal story?’
A person comes to therapy and gets most benefit from it when they are ready for it. Those who are not ready for it – and the self examination that it requires – usually quit before they have gained anything. In non-trauma situations, assuming a person has reached a point in their life where they are truly ready to undergo analytic therapy, the benefits of remembering outweigh the costs. And in terms of the costs, we are generally here talking about the narcissistic damage to one’s self image of remembering instances in which we did not cover ourselves in glory, so to speak. (Again, as distinct from reliving trauma memories.) Often the greatest damage is done by refusing to consider instances in the past that show us in a light that we do not like. We generally want to cling to an ideal image of ourselves. Yet the path to wholeness, well being, call it what you will, demands a truth from us; it demands that we accept ourselves as we really are. And sometimes that is odds with who we like to think ourselves to be.

See next comment for more.

Kevin Murphy said...

Continued:-
‘Are there circumstances/times where remembering forgotten unconscious material is not therapeutically indicated?’
Nobody is forced to remember anything in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. But people hopefully begin to see for themselves that - in non-trauma situations - there is a wealth of knowledge tied up in the small forgotten details of their lives. And that these details have been forgotten usually to allow us maintain an ideal image of who we are which is at times in contrast to the truth of who we are.
‘Does psychoanalysis undertake to really know the client, their circumstances and the uniqueness of their past/ and current situations, beyond an assessment of their defences and intra-psychic conflict etc.’
Yes, it does. Psychoanalysis has always highlighted the particularity of each person and believes that those therapies that systematise their treatments and generalise their understanding of human behaviour are doing a disservice to the unique individuality of the person.

‘I accept that this type of assessment may produce valuable information for the therapist to work with the client. While as a general outline, the blog makes some sense to me, surely this process of remembering could be detrimental in specific circumstances/to specific clients?’

Yes, if you interpret the blog as referring to trauma victims.

‘How does psychoanalysis manage this/does it consider this question or question at all whether a person may become even more 'stuck' in the mud by engaging in this process.’
Anyone with a real interest in how they came to be the person they are does not get stuck for long. Their desire to know drives them forward and allows them overcome moments when they are temporarily stuck.

As therapy can be a very risky business from the client's perspective, particularly a client who is truly engaged in work on themselves which is painful for them, I think these questions are worthy of consideration.

Yes they are. Therapy is a ‘very risky business’ but so too is a life of suffering. Therapy is certainly risky if the client is being pushed into things. Yet there are many respectable therapies available which make a virtue out of pushing clients into things. They force diagnoses on them, force treatment plans on them, force beliefs on them and force understandings on them which are not their own. So yes therapy is a ‘very risky business’. And as for being engaged in work that is painful for them, this is not always the case. What about times when it is liberating, filled with hope, sometimes with laughter breaking out, or when it brings a new enthusiasm, when it allows us re-engage in our work life and love life and appreciate once again the good and positive things we have in our lives? It is not all pain. Psychoanalysis does not push anyone into anything. It allows the person find their own words to say it, whatever ‘it’ may be. And it waits patiently, accompanying the person on that journey, no matter how much time it takes. None of us come to therapy with the ideas and the words ready to gush forth in perfect sentences. Instead we grapple with meaning, we grapple with words and ideas and feelings. It is a struggle and more often than not it is a struggle with ourselves to overcome the paradoxical forces within each and every one of us that want to be ‘cured’ and don’t want to be cured at the same time. That want to speak and don’t want to speak at the same time. That want to be free and are afraid of freedom at the same time.
I hope this answers some of your questions. - KM


End of Comments.

Pat said...

Thanks Kevin,

I appreciate your thorough reply, and it does answer my questions.

Pat