Memories grow in clusters, each one
clinging to its like: physical traumas bond together; so do all the insults; I
have a bunch of humiliating memories; a bunch of betrayals; a collection of
lost loves. Similar experiences coalesce together and merge. Each single experience
in a cluster, then, feels like all of them. Stan Grof has a good term for this.
He calls them ‘condensed experiences’.
Similar memories can be bunched together
so tightly that it’s hard to distinguish one from another. This is particularly
true when the memories have been forgotten or suppressed. Often in therapy a
person cannot tell where they are on time track; like a woman re-experiencing
her own birth and also re-experiencing herself giving birth at the same time – with all the physical sensations of
both incidents – two incidents: one at the beginning of her life and the other
25 years later in the same cluster.
In everyday life a cluster of
memories works like a coalesced blob. It seems to search out incidents in
present time that are similar to itself. Each present time reminder gets added
to the cluster. Then, each time when someone leaves me or abandons me, all the
past times of loss and loneliness surface and are all felt at once. When I
sense someone is criticising me, the whole condensed experience of past
criticism surfaces. I don’t react only to the real present time happening, but
to the BIG EXPERIENCE, the whole cluster of my memories that are activated and
felt all at once. I know full well what being criticised is like. Don’t tell me I can’t recognise it when I am
being criticised !
So, of course, my reactions are
over-the-top – far more dramatic than is justified by the present. I take
things ‘the wrong way’. I am said to be ‘over-sensitive’, or ‘over-emotional’. And
in all this I don’t blame my cluster for the upset, I blame the person who
triggered it. Regardless of whether she was actually criticising me or not, I
don’t blame my cluster because I don’t see it. I project it on to the present
scene. My life-long cluster of
criticisms comes alive – happening right in front of me in the form of the present
experience.
The other person might then say: ‘Sorry,
I didn’t mean to criticise you – I was just telling you how I felt’. To no
avail. All I can see is that she was criticising me – it all feels the same as
it always does. And indeed, it is
always the same because all memories on this are condensed into a sameness; and
this last one gets added to the cluster. Even though, in fact, I wasn’t being
criticised, it feels like it; and it
feels like it so convincingly that you wouldn’t be able to talk me out of it.
You would probably get irritable with me for being so stubborn – which confirms
that you are being critical.
In working with dreams you find that
a dream image doesn’t just mean one thing, but myriad of associated memories, all
with a similar theme; often wildly diverse, but all in the pull of a specific ‘cluster’
or condensation of memories. Freud was certainly on to this with his idea that
the dream was ‘overdetermined’ which, he said, was the condensation of a number
of thoughts (‘a multiplicity of connection’) in a single dream image. Freud
neglected the seriousness of the body’s memory of pain and impact; these form
the core of the most severe clusters that affect me.
Freud confined dream exploration to
the patient’s verbal associations. Paying attention also to the physical
associations with the dream is doubly productive.
Working on a dream, with attention to
the body, a person can find themselves propelled into many diverse memories and
fantasies scattered throughout life, all with some strange but compelling
similarity, perhaps all with a similar body pain or discomfort – or maybe a childhood
dream, a visit to the doctor, a new birthday bicycle, a scene at the beach 50
years ago when this woman looked at me and smiled. Somehow, collectively they
all have the same strange association and meaning, the sensing of which deepens
the feeling of my life.
There is one aspect of memory clusters
I should mention. Each of these condensations of experience has a central core.
This is the earliest experience that starts the cluster going. As time passes it gathers mass, like a
snowball rolling downhill. In 1950 Dianetics there was a good model for this.
The core was the earliest experience and was called an ‘engram’. This might be
a physical trauma like the painful squeezing of the head during the birth
process. Later in life, perhaps in childhood, I receive a slap round the head
in an emotional family row where I am also very anxious. This second incident
‘keys-in’ the original engram. From then on, key-ins can occur more easily.
Every time there is emotional tension I feel overly anxious, headachy and
trapped. Each time this happens I feel the original core experience – plus all the times it has restimulated. I
can’t remember the contents of the cluster. This is impossible – but every time
there is another key-in I feel all the effects at once.
Not all clusters have their origin in
birth, but most begin fairly early on in life and set the stage for what is to
come. Let’s take the example of the ‘bad father’, not the father who abuses,
but the father who is a physical presence, but who is himself not there. The
core experience is that of an ‘absence’ – but it is so general and consistent
with every experience of him that it becomes normal. I learn to withhold in his
presence – in fact, to not be there myself as well. I build up a cluster of
experiences with men where there is a withholding.
This knowledge of the way clusters of
memory work is very useful even though in person-centred work very early
memories may not be addressed. With practically any negative experience one
knows that inevitably there are earlier incidents of the same kind – if not the
same, then with some element similar enough that their emotional energies are
the bonded. Then, without seeking out the core early memories, one leaves space
for them to appear – and they will when the time is ripe.
contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz
(03) 981 2264
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