A new film suggests we should be free to wipe out our memories. But reminiscing contributes to our identity, writes Berna Cox
How would you like to forget bits of your life? Erase from your memory that which causes you hurt? The pain of loss, the torture of a past trauma or simply the embarrassment of having attempted to lap-dance your boss at the Christmas party? When you're hurting deeply the quick fix is appealing. Get rid of the memory. Permanently.
That's the premise of a film that opens next week. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, suggests memory erasure is the way to go. Lacuna Inc will target your unpleasant memory, start with the most recent episode of recall and burrow back through your brain to the source, zapping as it goes.
Winslet undergoes the procedure to erase Carrey from her memory after a tumultuous relationship. Unable to cope with being expunged from her brain, he has procedure also, to erase his memories of her. Midway through he realises he actually wants to remember. Painful though it might have been, the relationship is still part of who he is. They're his memories. Without them he is incomplete.
Hollywood and sci-fi though it is, the film raises the value of our reminiscences, which are valuable not only to us but also to a wider community. Such is the notion behind a project just launched in Co Laois. Jointly conceived by Laois heritage office, the county community forum and the county archivist, it aims to gather, via "reminiscence groups", memories of life in the community, puncturing the history-is-bunk theory.
One group will focus on local schools, to include children and young adults and develop an intergenerational component. Another group will look at the role and contribution of women in agriculture.
Women generally, it seems, traditionally undervalue their contributions and consider themselves ordinary. Ciara Farrell of the community forum and a prime mover in the project, says there is great value in recording their memories and experiences. "We make enormous assumptions about how people live their lives." Instead, she says, we should find out. Catherine Casey, the county's heritage officer, agrees. "Traditionally, history records men and events. Occasionally, extraordinary women are documented but not the 'ordinary'." She would like to see the projects' results presented in lively ways, such as through plays and exhibitions. They are not shunning printed records, she says, but want to be open to less common methods.
Helping the groups to hone their memory-gathering skills is Bernie Arigho, director of reminiscence development with Age Exchange, a UK organisation. With a background in psychiatric nursing, history and drama, Arigho says interest in reminiscence as a practice began as a way of helping to treat conditions such as dementia. "Now," he says, "it's much more about older people helping to treat society's problems." The arts too, he says, benefit enormously from remembering. "Memory plays a huge role in our emotional lives, and very often first novels, plays and so on are autobiographical. We practise on ourselves."
He sees no value in selective forgetting, in the style of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. "There's hope in every painful experience," he says. "The possibility is there to learn, develop, become resourceful, become more caring." We're sometimes too concerned about trying to forget unpleasant memories, he suggests - so much so that we can forget to remember the good ones.
Arigho is keen to include young people. In the UK he works with Cubs, Brownies and other youth groups, including some made up of refugees. Reminiscing helps them develop a social identity and self-esteem, he says, together with a respect for other cultures and generations.
Arigho uses "memory triggers" - an old-fashioned brand of shoe polish, for example, or evening gloves - in his workshops, asking participants to choose one that evokes a particular memory. The result is usually valuable: educational, poignant or humorous. Long-forgotten memories might be suddenly recalled by the mere sight, sound or scent of the trigger.
"People get a kick out of it but should never be forced to participate in reminiscence against their will," he says. The safety of a reminiscence group often makes participants feel in control, however, so increasing the therapeutic value of the exercise.
Although Lacuna Inc and its memory-erasure service are fictional, scientists who work with patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are developing a drug-assisted practice that can be called therapeutic forgetting. If they can help you to forget a painful memory, why not? Bioethicists argue that surviving the experience and retaining the memory make up part of who we are. Without the memory we are diminished and the learning mechanism has been removed.
It seems the day is dawning when we might be able to choose to forget. Perhaps the likes of the reminiscence project starting in Co Laois will be our only way of remembering who we are and where we came from. Can we appreciate eternal sunshine without having rain to compare it with?
