"Bad" Mothers: The Politics of Blame Re: Radio Doug

[Marta Russell]

There is a thing called short term memory loss.  People who have 
brain damage often have it. So do people with fibromyalgia and other 
conditions. Lots of times people are not diagnosed with these 
conditions and they are sent to the shrink by their incompetent 
physicians who do not give a proper diagnosis. Short term memory loss 
is physiological in origin so I think you have to be careful here.

Marta

>On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, RE wrote:
>
>>  In sessions
>>  I've had patients broach a difficult, important subject and then forget
>>  about what they had been talking about ten minutes later, or else forget
>>  about it by a session the next day, at the same time complaining of feeling
>>  "foggy-headed" and the like.  To try to talk about this in any way other
>>  than repression -- out of control, motivated forgetting that crudely
>>  protects the individual -- is absurd.  If it's hard to study, that doesn't
>>  mean it doesn't happen.
>>  Randy
>>
>
>I agree.  There is some pretty convincing research that supports your
>observation that motivated forgetting is a common defense mechanism.
>But this example is more the exception than the rule when it comes
>to scientific tests of psychodynamic ideas.
>
>Miles


-- 
Marta Russell
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.disweb.org