A treasure box approach to memory-work: Does is work?

Since the beginning days of psychoanalysis, it has been theorized that getting to know our memories is the key that opens the door to change. For years, memories have been known to form the basis of psychotherapeutic work. Access to autobiographically loaded moments that conditioned us to restrict our emotional responses is considered the ultimate panacea for mental illnesses. Emotional memories of traumatic experiences remain the cherished target—the treasure to be unearthed—for any psychoanalyst. One of the problems with this treasure box approach to self-knowledge is its tremendously work intensive nature. Treasure boxes can be buried quite deep, covered by water or guarded by a dragon; and the path to their discovery can be treacherous and scary. Only the few lucky ones make it to the happy ending.

Since World War II, a whole gamut of new approaches to examining the psyche have been practiced and explored. These approaches offered new ways to work with conscious and unconscious material in people's memory. Recently, the physical body has been appreciated as the repository of unconscious material in the psyche. For some, learning to listen to one’s body can become the primary means to remember and heal. Quieting one’s mind is a preliminary condition upon which the ability to listen to the body is contingent. People use psychotherapy services to acquire a working model of listening that will help them tune in to their memories attentively and conscientiously, without letting the mind overrule the holistic knowledge of the body. Lately, the topic of the relationship between mind and body has become the subject of quantitative scientific research. Cognitive psychologists are postulating causal connections between a speculatory domain of thought and the even more elusive domain of feelings. Surprisingly, however, with metaphors for mind and body changing daily; metaphors for memories have remained largely unchanged since the 19th century. The treasure box approach to one’s past continues to prevail in the clinical discourse of psychoanalytic thinking. Everyday memories continue to remain the realm of artists, as far from analytical thought as always. Memories are categorized into artificial functional categories and their interconnection to both mind and body is overlooked and ignored. The more mundane and repetitive, the less dramatic and political the memories, the less significance is ascribed to them by our culture. We have forgotten what used to be known by the ancient Greeks and was reiterated so nicely by the author of Peter Pan: “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.” We use our memories indiscriminately, without knowing how we do it, without having a say in what we eventually remember. In fact, it is memories that run our lives, and not the other way around: we feel and think what our memories want us to feel and think. Clinicians continue to access memories by entering through the sacred door of the patients’ feeling selves and when the feelings turn out to be hard to access, memories continue to remain walled off in the secret garden.