REMEMBER THAT? NO YOU DON’T.
Study Shows False Memories Afflict Us All. Even people with extraordinary memories sometimes make things up without realising it… 2
What if the energy of who I am releases into the atmosphere? Already knowing, that frequency waves of different lengths allow us to change channels of radio’s and television, what if then from each living person, many years later when it is my turn to be here, I am the perfect antenna that zaps up that previous energy complete with all of that previous life’s knowledge, memories and feelings. If that were so, I might as well have lived that life. I now have all the positives and negative memories that came with it.
Or could it that each cell, our dna holds the whole and lies dormant until it wakes up and becomes a part of us once more. Interesting thoughts, perhaps one day to be validated as to who and what we really are.
I was standing in my front yard looking at my magnolia tree. This was my second season in this house and I reflected fondly on how beautiful the large flowers had been last year. Watching the power of creation as it unfolds and the perfect timing and sequence of events that tree went through year after year. A thought occurred to me; I wonder if the new flowers about to bloom will have a memory of the flowers that were there last year? Will they know that they are part of the whole tree, or will they see themselves as separate and unconnected? One year, when there is a drought, the tree and flowers struggle to survive, yet another year when the circumstance is just right, the tree and flowers have a bountiful life.
Of course, I have my own thoughts, but I caution everyone with the saying attributed to Buddha; “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reasoning and your own common sense.” My own thoughts are we will find out when the time is right.
There is no doubt that some clients in hypnosis have regressed back to earlier life times, real or imaginary, and to tell the truth, in therapy we can only ever deal with things in the ‘Now’ whether it is from the past, imaginary or present life. If it is real for the client and causes negative influences and conflicts in the client’s life, then deal with it in the now is what we need to do if they are to unburden their fears and phobias and regain a happy healthy life. However, there is a difference with the client coming across information in their mind to the information a therapist causes through their malpractice of implanting suggestions of things that have happened to them that didn’t.
The Human Brain has more switches than all computers on Earth. A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses.
Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology said that they had found that the brain’s complexity is beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief,
Smith said that one synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor–with both memory-storage and information-processing elements–than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth.1
One begins to comprehend the complexity of the process and outcomes that forms our brain, and our bodies. Our beliefs, feelings and subsequent repetitive decision making is caused by the brain, (even when that decision gives us unwanted outcomes). The outcome of our decisions formed by belief can be both constructive and destructive. Some of the destructive habits that we have formed from childhood can set us up for misery and ill health in our lifetime.
Multiple regions of the brain, particularly the hippocampus are devoted to the job of remembering. The phenomenon of false memories is common to everybody.
Although infants use their memories to learn new information, Psychologists at Emory University documented that age seven is when these earliest memories tend to fade into oblivion, a phenomenon known as ‘childhood amnesia’. Interviews on the events of children about past events of their lives, starting at age three. After recording these base memories, researchers followed up these children years later from ages five to nine. While children from ages of five and seven could recall 63 to 72 percent of the events, the children who were eight and nine years old remembered only 35 percent of the events, they remembered the events in more detail.2
Another study, a team led by psychologist Lawrence Patihis of the University of California, Irvine, recruited a sample group of people all of approximately the same age and divided them into two subgroups: those with ordinary memory and those with what is known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM).
Ultimately, 20 subjects qualified for the HSAM group and another 38 went into the ordinary-memory category. Both groups were then tested for their ability to resist developing false memories during a series of exercises designed to implant them. And all participants in both groups fell for the lures. They all failed by including so-called lures that might lead to a false memory. With at least eight such errors per person—though some tallied as many as 20. Both groups also performed unreliably when shown photographs and fed lures intended to make them think they’d seen details in the pictures they hadn’t. Here too, the HSAM subjects cooked up as many fake images as the ordinary folks.3
Eyewitnesses are crucial to a trial, experts say, and their mistakes, whether intentional or not, can have a huge impact.
“The bulk of the evidence that is presented in trials is human testimony. Almost all of the time, energy, and effort is spent hearing people’s statement in what occurred at a different place and a different time,” Dan Simon, a professor of law and psychology at USC, said. “The bottom line is, people are often inaccurate.”
Asking an eyewitness to identify a suspect from a lineup demonstrates this.
“There’s a nice study that shows slight variations in the way the lineup is conducted can result in swings of accuracy from as low as 14 percent to as high as 86 percent,” Simon said.4
So where does that leave us in accuracy of human history? That can refer to anything from the past that we have taken verbatim, calling into question the truth about events, history, religious texts etc. despite our sense of confidence of these happenings, how much of this involves false memory as we are being shown in today’s research occurs?
Is our memory more accurate in hypnosis?
What of the person that comes to me with agoraphobia and when I say; “I want you to go to the very first time that you experienced that feeling.” The client says; “I can’t get out… I can’t get out…” I respond with; “Tell me what is happening?” to which the client responds; “I am stuck in the birth canal and I can’t get out.”??? And I could keep going with stories like these, where I have released anxiety and panic from the past.
1 http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody;1n
2 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140124135705.htm
Further reading –
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/important-new-theory-explains-where-old-memories-go/
Important New Theory Explains Where Old Memories Go
Why some memories disappear, some remain, and others blend with fiction
