At a recent meeting of master storytellers in LA, we got a chance to share where we thought the frontiers of our work were. As folks would note from previous posts, I think the recent studies on memory are a game changer. Let me give you some examples.
TRIAL TESTIMONY
Our fundamental assumptions about eye witness testimony in trials, for instance, have to be rethought. Memory does not work like a playback tape machine. Its reconstructive, which means its our internal storyteller. The more vivid our memories seem- to which we attach the stamp of reality- has little to do with how reliable they are. Memory is fallible and fragile and eminently corruptible. Legally, guilt is based on beyond reasonable doubt, but knowing what we know now about memory, reasonable doubt is the norm, its always reasonable to doubt. How then will we determine guilt? Should it be “beyond even unreasonable doubt?” Cases of eyewitnesses consistently identifying the wrong suspect speak to how their memory was created at the time of the incident, and recreated in testimony, plus the coaching and nudging, not to its accuracy.
TRAUMA COUNSELING
The ordinary wisdom around trauma and critical incident debriefing, the idea that sharing hard stories is inherently healing, what I call the TRC myth (Truth and Reconciliation) is unsubstantiated in most cases. Research from 9-11 suggests that those who allowed time for the trauma to settle into a larger pattern of meaning fared better than those who were invited to share their pain in the midst of their pain. That only locked the disruptive and raw emotions into the creating of the memory so that it made it more traumatic later, not less. Next time there is a school shooting, what are the bus load of grief counselors doing? Offering support of course. But to create a memory that will support resilience, it might be best NOT to talk about how you feel and what you saw. What do we therapists do if we can’t ask “How do you feel?”!!!!!!
INTER-GENERATIONAL MEMORY-LEST WE FORGET
Lastly, studies of inter-generational memory are astonishing. Kids who know the story of how Great GranMa Tess came from Ireland after the famine, or Uncle Sid did time for bribery and Great Aunty Eileen ran in the 1936 Olympics, all go to giving kids a larger sense of the fabric of life, one that gives them higher resiliency scores than their peers who know nothing about their family saga.
Does that mean Ancestry.com and the like are more than hobbies? That they provide an essential cultural therapy? Or imagine if every headline we read had below it what headline featured 25, 75, 50 and 100 years ago on the same day, would we be less anxious, less scare-able to know that in 1964, we were alarmed at Russia’s intentions too, or in 1932, veterans were not waiting for treatment but formed an army to march on Washington because they felt so aggrieved. That might take some of the Sound and Fury out of our modern day indignations that always feign the surprise of innocence, when we have to pretend it has never happened before. Russia threatening to invade, veterans getting a raw deal, USA turning isolationist after war defeats, what’s new???
Vanity of Vanities, they used to say. But news media depend very much on our forgetting and our culture of hype works against memory. but that is another essay for another day, if I remember it.