Psychodynamic Forgetting (was: Re: "Bad" Mothers: The Politics of Blame Re: Radio Doug

loupaulsen at attbi.com loupaulsen at attbi.com
Tue Apr 1 09:17:02 PST 2003


The other side of this: even if such 'forgetting' is due to software rather than hardware (to the extent that this distinction makes sense), it seems to me there are a lot of ways to explain it other than the 'psychodynamic' ways. Just operant conditioning would do it, wouldn't it? - thinking about X causes distress, you avoid doing things that cause you distress, so you think about X less. This accounts for a hell of a lot of my own procrastination and avoidance behavior, I can tell you. You can call that "crude protection of the individual", but so is not touching hot stoves.

lp
> 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



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