The Interpersonal construction of Memory: clinical implications

Margaret Zellner, PhD, LP

Starts Friday Jan 15, 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM Pacific time, 6 sessions until Jun 4

Course dates: 1/15, 2/5, 3/5, 4/2, 5/7, 6/4

This course will explore how memories are made, maintained, and changed in the presence of others. Memory plays a crucial role in our lives and in the formation of identity. As such, it is essential to both theory and the practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. All memory begins in the infant as interpersonal experience, and gradually becomes more differentiated over time. But memory never loses its interpersonal foundation. After reviewing the basics of memory formation, recall, and reconsolidation, we will study infantile amnesia and the paradox of the influence of unremembered early traumatic experience. Christina Alberini’s research will help us understand how what we can’t remember becomes so powerful in our lives. Since memory, in concert with emotion, establishes patterns of behavior, we will learn how, as Mark Solms describes it, early unconscious memory is “seen” in the transference. We will also study the role of emotion in establishing the salience of a memory and why some memories are so hard to modify. We will read Richard Lane’s work on the neuroscience of memory, including an examination of how memories are updated, the malleability of memory, and the role of emotional arousal and memory reconsolidation in therapeutic change. Class members will also contribute topics for reading and discussion.

Early registration discount until January 8.