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To cite this article: Howard Shevrin Ph.D. (2002) A Psychoanalytic View of Memory in the Light of Recent Cognitive and
Neuroscience Research, Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 4:2,
133-140, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2002.10773390
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2002.10773390
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character, and the symptom was more complex
insofar as it reected a punishment and an
inhibition. Otherwise the two questions are
answered in much the same way. A memory of
a real event, once repressed gave rise to symptoms
that were alleviated once the memory became
conscious and its relationship to the symptom
appreciated. In this instance, the symptom
contained no clear implicit derivatives of the
memory; rather the symptom was a conversion
based on an implicit knowledge of the forbidden
wish that had to be inhibited and the person
possessing the wish punished.
A thought expressing a forbidden wish that
must be disavowed takes us one step closer to the
next fateful step Freud took when he theorized
that a fantasy alone no matter its setting could
cause a neurosis once repressed. The fantasy had
that power because it embodied a powerful desire,
as in the case of Elizabeth von R., a desire that as
long as it persisted was a continuing threat to her
view of herself as someone who loved her sister
and would be true to her memory. In later theory
it would be surmised that the incestuous desire
toward her sister's widower borrowed its strength
from the more deeply repressed desire for her
father.
The two questions would now be answered
somewhat dierently: the memory need not be of
a trauma, nor need it be a memory in the usual
sense, but a fantasy formed out of reactions to
real events that drew upon already existing
unacceptable wishes which had to remain ungratied and thus unconscious. Indeed it is
possible within this account for the entire process
to occur unconsciously. Elizabeth von R. need
not have had a conscious thought or fantasy at
her sister's deathbed; it all could have been
experienced unconsciously and the neurotic eects
might have been the same. The unconscious
fantasy would need to have been re-constructed
in the course of treatment inferentially from a
number of dierent avenues of evidence, generally
derived from transference enactments, and if
common analytic experience is any guide, would
likely have led back to conscious childhood
experiences with her father, not necessarily
traumatic. Seldom, I might add, is there the
opportunity for independent corroboration of
these constructions. Analyst and patient must rest
content with probabilities that make sense.
For these and other reasons, a number of
analysts like Gill, Homan, and others have
opted for a position in which it does not matter
whether what the patient recalls is veridical or
not. What matters is the coherent account
creating by the collaboration of patient and
Howard Shevrin
analyst that results in a meaningful narrative
making sense of the patient's life. From this point
of view, the question of what is veridical and what
is constructed is answered simply: it is all
constructed. Moreover, it does not matter to the
success of the treatment whether the veridical and
constructed elements are disambiguated.
From a cognitive science and neuroscience
perspective this is all terribly complicated and
more than a little bewildering. How to make sense
of this in simpler, more operational terms, based
less on complex inferences and capable of being
independently corroborated?
Let us turn to the rst question:
1.
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memories activated both sides of the brain
equally. The authors concluded that true memories leave a ``sensory signature,'' while false
memories do not. This makes evident good sense.
The true memories were actually experienced as
perceptions; sensory activation was present at the
time. This was not the case for the false memories.
In the case of true memories, activation of the
memory trace included a memory of a perception.
To return to the McCloskey and Zaragoza
experiment, when hammer and wrench were
presented in the fourth step, only hammer
activated a ``sensory signature'' thus favoring its
choice and indicating that the misinformation,
screwdriver, had never been experienced perceptually and had not changed that aspect of the
memory trace. The Fabiani et al., research
demonstrates that it is possible to go beyond the
limits of report and to ``get into subjects'' heads.''
The intriguing question raised by the Fabiani
research, and one that analysts would have a
particular interest in answering, is why the
information distinguishing the true from false
memory is not used.
There is also convergent evidence in the
cognitive literature supporting the Fabiani nding. Mather, Henkel, and Johnson (1997), using
the same Roediger paradigm for creating false
memories, found that accounts of false memories
had less auditory detail and less remembered
feelings and reactions than accounts of true
memories. Similarly, in an earlier study, Schooler,
Gerhard, and Loftus (1986) reported that descriptions of false memories were longer and more
qualied, with more reference to cognitive operations, and contained fewer sensory details. They
also reported that judges could be trained to
dierentiate between true and false memories by
instructing them to use these criteria. This nding
should be of special interest to clinicians. The
``sensory signature'' identied by Fabiani accords
well with the emphasis in these two studies on
auditory and sensory detail.
The answer to rst question can now be
given: it is possible to distinguish between true
and false memories objectively on the basis of
brain and cognitive studies. Misinformation
causing misreporting does not necessarily change
the memory trace itself. Moreover, the memory
trace of a real event is marked by sensory and
perceptual features missing in the false memory
report. It is also possible to train people so that
they can distinguish true from false memories.
There is one last consequential inference we can
draw from these results: if others can detect true
from false memories on the basis of a ``sensory
signature,'' or the presence of sensory experience,
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Howard Shevrin
2.
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pus'' (p. 7). Thus it can be concluded that episodic
as well as procedural memories can form unconsciously and that some additional process
must account for consciousness in the case of
episodic memories. Consequently, consciousness
is no longer tenable as a criterion distinguishing
declarative autobiographical or episodic memory
from non-declarative procedural memory.
Can unconscious episodic memories prime
implicitly, that is, have unconscious eects on
subsequent stimuli similar to the eects of
procedural memories? There is some evidence
for this in another conditioning study conducted
by Wong, Shevrin, and Williams (1997) in which
this time trace conditioning was established
consciously but its eects were studied unconsciously. The memory of the previously consciously conditioned relationship between the
conditioned and unconditioned stimulus was
now activated unconsciously by presenting the
conditioned stimulus subliminally. At this point
in the experiment one could say that an episodic
memory was activated unconsciously. Once activated there was brain evidence that an expectation had been aroused in anticipation of the
unconditioned stimulus (a mild shock) that would
ordinarily soon follow as in the previous conditioning series, but in fact did not. It is well
established than an expectation of a stimulus will
facilitate the response to that stimulus and is thus
a forerunner of a priming eect.
There is one other strand of evidence
supporting the view that consciousness is not
necessary for episodic memory to form. We have
recently completed an anesthesia experiment in
which patients undergoing thyroidectomies were
put under general anesthesia (Bunce, Kleinsorge,
Villa, Kushwaha, Szocik, Hendriks, WimerBrakel and Shevrin, in preparation) while unconscious pairs of words were played into their ears.
The following day the experimental words and
controls were replayed and subjects were asked to
guess whether they had heard the words or not. It
had been established previously that they had no
conscious recall of anything occurring during the
actual surgery. They also failed the recognition
test. As they were listening to the word pairs brain
responses were obtained in the form of eventrelated potentials. An analysis of these ERPs
revealed that theta synchronization (slow 35
cycles per second waves) was signicantly greater
for the word pairs they had heard during
anesthesia than for the controls they did not
hear. Other research has shown that theta
synchronization is associated with the formation
of episodic memories (Klimesh, 1999). There is
also some reason to believe that this theta
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synchronization may be related to hippocampal
theta involved in episodic memory formation.
The evidence from our study suggests that
episodic memories can form unconsciously while
the person is under general anesthesia. There is
also evidence that some individuals show inhibition eects revealed by below chance recognition
of the experimental word pairs. These individuals
also score high on a test for repressiveness. These
results support the view that not only can
unconscious episodic memories be formed, but
that they can elicit defensive behavior, the rst
hint in all the research thus far cited of a dynamic
unconscious.
It is nevertheless the case that in the
cognitive and neuroscience research thus far cited
a dynamic unconscious involving conict over
sexual and aggressive impulses was not under
study. In psychoanalytic terms we are mainly
dealing with preconscious processes, unconscious
to be sure but not for dynamic reasons. Kandel's
challenge was addressed to the absence of
neurophysiological evidence for a dynamic unconscious. Some years prior to Kandel's challenge
we had published a study in which we had
attempted to nd just that (Shevrin, Williams,
Marshall, Hertel, Bond, and Brakel, 1992; Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, and Williams, 1996):
Neurophysiological evidence for a dynamic unconscious. In this study, reported in preliminary
form in 1992 and subsequently reported in greater
detail and with additional ndings in 1996, we
demonstrated that brain responses in the form of
event-related potentials could provide neurophysiological markers for unconscious conict
in a group of patients suering from social
phobias. Specically, we found that words,
judged by a team of psychoanalysts to be related
to that individual's unconscious conict, when
presented subliminally elicited similar brain responses on the basis of which words could be
successfully categorized as going together. When
these same words were presented supraliminally
they elicited widely dierent brain responses so
that the words could no longer be classied as
going together. Two other convergent ndings
further claried what accounted for this discrepancy between subliminal and supraliminal brain
response. An independent measure of repressiveness correlated signicantly with the dierence
between subliminal and supraliminal brain-based
classication. The greater the repressiveness the
greater the disparity between subliminal and
supraliminal classication in favor of correct
subliminal classication. Also, when asked to
categorize the stimuli, subjects placed the unconscious conict words in signicantly more
Howard Shevrin
categories than words related to the conscious
experience of their symptom. Taken together
these ndings support the inference that some
inhibitory or repressive process was at work when
the words related to unconscious conict were
presented supraliminally.
Insofar as we are concerned with memory, it
would be useful to relate these ndings on
unconscious conict to what we have thus far
discussed about memory. First, it needs to be
noted that the stimuli selected were dierent for
each subject and were drawn from interviews in
which a full history was obtained. These words
were meaningful only to the particular subject.
For example, in one subject the clinicians decided
that the subject's relationship to a close friend,
John, gured prominently in his unconscious
conict so that John was selected as one of the
unconscious conict words. Only to this subject
would the name John have particular relevant
signicance. In this instance the clinicians selected
John on the basis of reported dreams and a
repeated pattern of interaction with John having
clear oedipal implications of which the patient
was unaware. Consciously, for him John was
simply a close friend and buddy. Was the
unconscious conictual nature of his relationship
to John formed as a procedural memory or did it
retain its episodic character? This issue is of some
importance because the thesis has been advanced
by Clyman, Fonagy and others that object
relations patterns form procedural memories
and are unconscious because they are procedural
and not because they are repressed. Through
repeated interactions with signicant others that
follow a certain regular pattern a procedural
memory is formed very much along the lines of
what happens when we learn to drive a car or
learn to type. These procedural memories are then
re-enacted in the transference, following essentially a priming model in which the current
relationship to the analyst is inuenced by these
unconscious procedural memories. Related episodic memories may emerge at the same time but
these cannot have been what was unconscious
because, according to this typology, episodic
memories form consciously and remain latent
until consciously retrieved at some later time.
From this point of view, repression of episodic
memories is unnecessary to account for transference enactments. Procedural memory can more
parsimoniously account for transference and has
the further advantage of relating to a substantial
body of supporting research.
Can our results be fully accounted for on the
basis of a cognitive procedural rather than a
conictual dynamic unconscious? There are two
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more consistent with psychoanalytic theory and
practice.
Let me start by quoting from Whittlesea
(1987):
Instead of distinguishing between information
stores that may have dierential impact on
performance, this approach emphasizes dierences in encoding and retrieval depending on
interactions of the learner's intentions and
expectations, the demand of current tasks, the
similarity of the current situation to past situations, and the nature of the materials. This
approach promises to provide an integrated
framework for understanding remembering,
attention, perception, and concept learning and
application through the common basis of the use
of memory for particular processing episodes
(italics mine) [p. 16].
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the real world. These latter considerations as yet
play no role in cognitive or neuroscience research.
Our eort at investigating unconscious conict
from psychodynamic, cognitive and neurophysiological perspectives remains to the best of our
knowledge an interesting but isolated instance.
We need a theory of memory in which motivational and cognitive factors can be independently
assessed and their interactions investigated. In
what way do real perceptions of signicant others
become distorted under the inuence of desires
and wishes that cannot be given expression. It is
from this point of view heartening that there is
evidence that despite suggestion and misinformation the original perceptions need not be erased;
they are retrievable once the misinformation, the
distortions, have been identied, for example, in
the transference.
In counterdistinction to the constructivist
position maintained by some psychoanalysts,
Freud (1911) conceived of neurosis as alienating
the individual from reality. He stated, ``. . . every
neurosis has as its result, and therefor probably
its purpose, a forcing of the patient out of
reality . . .'' (p. 218). We see this operative in
defenses. Repression surrenders knowledge in the
face of conict and anxiety; isolation surrenders
the natural connections between aect and
thought; projection imposes the individual's own
disavowed thought, motivation or feeling upon
another. A symptom results in an avoidance of
some piece of reality as in a phobia. The social
phobic patients in our study of unconscious
processes avoided parties, gatherings, opportunities to speak or perform, which adversely
aected their careers and futures. Neurosis
alienates the neurotic from reality not simply
from his or her version of reality. We cannot
know a projection unless we distinguish between