Wednesday, June 1, 2022
6:05 a.m. A long, long involved dream last night that went on forever, and was shaped. That is, the dream-weaver added things at the end that it had thrown in at the beginning, surprising me. Can’t remember anything about it but the psychiatrist escorting me first in through concealed doors, then, eventually, out again through the same concealed doors that I had forgotten. What sticks is the artisanry behind the dream; it had every sign of being fabricated, and none of being improvised.
All right, setting switches, waiting for today’s topic to emerge. FRCP.
Let’s continue with memory.
Yes, that’s agreeable to me. I had an example yesterday I thought we might use. I can’t remember it at the moment, but I imagine you can.
Instances can be found anywhere, any time you use a spare moment. If they emerge on their own, so much the better. But if they do not, you can always start anywhere, however unpromising it may seem.
Yes, it was a memory from when I was six or seven years old, I remember that, and it didn’t seem all that likely to connect with others. What was it? Let’s sit for a moment and bid it return. I remember, the memory itself was clear, but the chronology was vague, as so often.
Oh, of course, the concussion.
And, you see, waiting in confidence allowed it to return.
Yes, I have learned that much, at least. I can’t quite assure that a memory will return, but I can assure that it won’t, merely by pressing, particularly with urgency. Calm faith in its return works pretty well.
And, after all, why shouldn’t it? To feel that a memory is “lost” is to assume a separation that is not real, and a process that has gaps in it. A much better metaphor is a conveyor belt that has slippage, or – for the electronic age – a search engine that merely requires a bit of time to sift through all the possibilities. Whether or not that is what’s really going on doesn’t matter. A helpful analogy is – one that helps! That’s all you care about. So, to proceed –
When I was seven I was riding my bicycle and fell. A fall from a bicycle, no big deal usually – only, I hit my head on the swing set dad had made using three-inch diameter iron pipe. (I imagine he made the set out of whatever had had around the farm.) God, did it hurt! It was blinding pain. I remember walking around in circles, moaning. But there wasn’t anybody around, and it didn’t occur to me to go inside and tell anybody.
The next day at school, our teacher (whoever she was; one of the sisters) ended one lesson and was ready to begin the next, so she told us to get our textbooks for the next subject. This would mean taking the books out of the box-like container that was built into the desk below the seat. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. Apparently I froze up, and after who know what occurrences, I was transported to Philly in an ambulance. I learned later that they had performed a spinal tap – to take x-rays, I suppose – and the spinal tap itself blew away the obstruction. This probably isn’t correct, but that’s the sense of it I got then. All I really know is that one moment I was starting to get a book out of my desk, and the next minute I was lying in a hospital bed with a splitting headache. I don’t remember if I thought to connect the fall and the hospital stay. Probably I did, or I wouldn’t have associated the two, as I later did.
I was reminded of this initially when I re-read my journal entry from October 1990, when you explained my fall in the Norfolk street as a reactivation of something that had been deactivated at age seven. You never explained the “something.” Care to do so now?
We could. You wouldn’t like it much, maybe.
I got it between the lines even as you said that. You sort of disconnected my access to certainty, in a way. I was sort of set adrift in the 3D world without a sure sense of connection.
That’s a little over-dramatic, but only a little. It was better that you have a full sense of how people live, and the way to get that is to experience it, to live it.
You made me a Mustang. I’ve had the sense before, come to think of it. (A Mustang, in some branch of the armed services – can’t remember which one – is someone of officer potential who is deliberately kept back in the ranks for many years, so as to assure that the service would have at least some officers who knew first-hand what enlisted life was like.) I think the analogy may have come to me in one of our sessions, though God knows where it is buried among so many journal books.
Now, having started with that one memory, there are many ways you could proceed, you see. More accidents, would be one thread to follow. More about school, or about bicycles, or about swings – remember how much time you used to spend on the swings? – or about playing outdoors, or about your natural unthinking reticence about dealing with pain or accidents, or about many things. Any starting-point will do, unless you go to forcing things. Let the machine function.
I hear, too, that the things we can’t remember, maybe we can’t remember for good reason.
Yes but only partly yes. By now your time is well familiar with the psychological causes of repression of memories. What it is not so well aware of is that sometimes you can’t retrieve memories because you have more important things to do with that mechanism.
Nice leading statement. Meaning?
Suppose a person’s psychological makeup would lead them to over-value memories. Suppose, alternatively, that memories would interfere with the story they are telling themselves about what and who they are. You are in 3D to choose what you want to be. It isn’t always desirable that you remember too vividly how you came to be who you are as an interim statement.
You mean, I think, too much memory could serve as strait-jacket for some people.
For some people, at some times, in certain areas of being, yes. In general it is better to know than not, but not always.
The hour has flown by, and only seven pages, but I’m not aware of having had long pauses or slow thought. In any case, our theme? “Memory”?
“Memory” or “Memories” would serve. Or you might think about “The process of memory.”
Well, we’ll see. Our thanks as always.