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

[RE]

I agree that it's very important to be careful not to overlook physiological
problems.  At the same time, for example, one fairly common misdiagnosis is
to assume that an elderly patient suffering from memory loss may be sliding
into Alzheimer's, when they may be suffering from depression.  So instead of
getting treatment for depression, the retirement center evaluation machinery
starts cranking up.  One shouldn't assume memory loss is repression-related,
but you can't methodologically rule out repression, because it does occur.

In that vein, and to muddy things further, there are psychological
conditions that can be at least partially accounted for  psychodynamically
that produce memory failure in a way that I wouldn't consider repression.
For example, at least sometimes depression can result from someone being so
inhibited by their conscience -- this still really happens -- that they deny
themselves essential forms of satisfaction and relatedness, i.e. sex.  "Life
isn't worth living," they get depressed, and often suffer local or global
impairment in memory functioning.  Repression is probably a feature of the
core problem -- the patient is struggling with needs, and representations of
needs, that they are trying to banish -- but there's often a dulling of
memory concerning things that are irrelevant to the problem; in one respect
it's as though the person is terribly preoccupied.
Randy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marta Russell" <ap888 at lafn.org>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: "Bad" Mothers: The Politics of Blame Re: Radio Doug


: 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
:
: