Nautilus discusses some of the latest trends in “therapeutic” efforts to wipe out parts of memories or re-wire the networks in people’s brains.
How to Unlearn a Disease (Nautilus, May 14, 2015)
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The psychological approaches sound very positive. But I wouldn’t trust the brain interference approaches.
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“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
We are supposed to learn from our mistakes.
Without your memories, who are you?
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My family believed in the psychiatric diagnosis given to me, and my family makes the prophecy come true. No one can un-learn that disease.
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Losing one’s memories is one of the most traumatizing things one can experience. I can’t understand how some people think it may be therapeutic. “Oh, it’s OK, you don’t remember because we wiped out the memories of you being abused/raped/traumatized.” Yeah, that’s going to work…
The way to address such things is to grow from the pain. “What does not kill you makes you stronger”. Deleting a part of somebody’s life is not an answer is a mutilation.
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Am I the only one who finds that creepy and scary?
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No
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This is truly terrifying. And anybody who understands the mechanisms of trauma wouldn’t recommend getting rid of the memories. It is not the memory itself that causes such long-lasting effects; it is the worldview and other associations that create difficult behaviors. Without the memory, all that’s left is difficult behaviors that we don’t understand. I don’t trust any of this so-called science; I had a spinal cord stimulator implanted to relieve serious pain, but nobody told me there were other, less invasive alternatives. I eventually had the stimulator removed because it caused its own pain. I also have a dear friend whose DBS made Parkinson’s worse, not better. Very creepy and scary.
