Memory Core Resource for The Science of Psychotherapy Standard Members

Recall of memory is a creative process. What the brain stores is thought to be only a core memory. Upon recall, this core memory is then elaborated upon and reconstructed, with subtractions, additions, elaborations, and distortions.

– Eric Kandel

All through our lives we are on an insatiable learning quest that we call memory. We continually store information, either consciously or unconsciously, and draw on that learning to be animated and have a sense of who we are and what the world is. It is a never-ending cycle of encoding, storage, and retrieval.

When you think about it, this process of encoding and storing experience as memory is everything to us. We are born into the world ready to learn, ready to memorize, and in fact have already started the learning quest in the womb.

Without memory you cannot talk, walk, or move in any meaningful way; you would know no past; you would have no concept of self or place—no concept of who you are, where you are, or what surrounds you.

In this module we survey types of memory, the role of the hippocampus, recall, trauma and memory and the reliability of memory. Essential understandings for the practicing therapist, and part of our growing library of content for Standard Members.