Forum / O malleable memory!
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Carol ReidMar 17, 04:13pm"I want to persuade you that when you have a memory, you don't retrieve something that already exists, fully formed — you create something new."
Excerpt from a book called "Pieces of Light" an excerpt here-
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Sam RasnakeMar 17, 06:18pmHear, hear.
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James Lloyd DavisMar 17, 06:39pmHave to agree. All of my memories are fiction.
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Gloria GarfunkelMar 18, 01:15amHave to half-agree and half-disagree. Bystander testimony in court proves our memories are at least partly fabricated but traumatic flashback memory in PTSD is extremely accurate down to the tiniest detail and is stored in a different part of the brain. How much we create our memories is on a spectrum, from James' fictional memories to my parents' PTSD Holocaust memories that they tell each time like a recording in a trance.
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Carol ReidMar 18, 01:52am
Gloria, that is a fascinating distinction. I don't know whether PTSD memory is covered in this book, but now I will have to find out.
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Gloria GarfunkelMar 18, 03:15am
It's in a different part of the brain and the goal of treament is to move it to the regular memory part of the brain. I'm sorry I don't know the names. The PTSD part actually relives the trauma. Our other memory befuddles real and fantasy, like bystanders testimony in court.
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James Lloyd DavisMar 18, 12:10pm
There are some memories that are more powerful than what passes for PTSD, which did not exist for the longest time. Guys coming back from the war had different reactions to admittedly horrific events, and I've read that an individual's upbringing has a lot to do with how different people cope.
There is a state of mind where all the senses are at a peak... a condition that is not related to trauma, but to something else. I heard a Native American painter refer to it as "walking in beauty." Not drug induced, it's a state that's difficult to describe... maybe a quiet, word-free celebration of pure sensory input. To see, hear, smell, taste, feel without mind, without words. In the grip of this condition, memory forged by the stuff of life is the rockbed foundation of fiction, I think.
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James Lloyd DavisMar 18, 12:12pm
I say that PTSD did not exist, but meant that no one ever thought of it as a condition. Never heard of it until some time after the war in Nam.
I'm sure it always existed.
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Gloria GarfunkelMar 18, 02:23pm
War PTSD prior to Nam was called Shell-Shocked. It always existed but you are right: 2 people can have the same experience and only one get PTSD due to personality vulnerabilities and the other walks away fine with just an unpleasant memory. I think the state you are describing is simply a hypnotic trance which can heighten all the senses. Native Americans had all sorts of creative ways with rituals and herbs to induce these trances. The dances induced trances. PTSD does not have to be visual or verbal. It can be a re-experience in the body of the feelings of the event.
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Gloria GarfunkelMar 18, 02:57pm
Hypnotic trance sensations are extremely varied based on the mental focus and have also been referred to as "altered states."
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James Lloyd DavisMar 18, 04:53pm
I don't think of it as hypnotic and never experienced it with drugs, herbs, or ritual. It's more specifically a state in which words do not intrude. Temporary absence of language. Maybe you could call it walking meditation of a sensory nature. You can see something, hear it, taste it, feel its texture so much better when you're not tasked with naming it.
Dancing, trances, herbs heighten focus, but the state I'm trying to describe may be the lack of focus altogether. Its quite peaceful.
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Gloria GarfunkelMar 18, 07:20pm
It does sound more like an intense meditative state I have never experienced, though meditation and self-induced trances overlap, trance being a state of intense internal absorption. It sounds amazing.
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