Bad Memories

Here is a comment thread that I thought might be of interest.

Jim Gatos said...
Grahame, would you please look at this link? I saw this at the BBC RSS feeds.

Is this supposed to be "auditing by prescription"?

Heart pill to banish bad memories

I think it's bad news...

Grahame said...
Hey Jim,

I agree - very bad news.

It looks to me, from what the article says, that the conclusions the researchers have come to are erroneous.

Surely a more logical conclusion is that the drugs merely made the subjects less aware of their environment. The fact that they reacted less to present-time "startling" stimuli shows this. It proves nothing about their memories.

The experiments with animals also show this. As the article says, "Experiments on animals has shown beta blockers can interfere with how the brain makes sense of frightening events." The creatures were confused. The drugs disoriented them. It had nothing to do with erasing memories.

Seems to me that someone is trying to get a nice big grant from a drug company.

Grahame said...
Hey Jim,

One other thing.

Scientology Auditing does not erase memories as the article implies that the drugs do.

Auditing erases the trauma associated with the memories. The memories themselves are still there, it's the pain and suffering associated with them that is gone.

If you had an accident and the memory was completely removed then you could easily make the same mistakes again and repeat the accident. If you have the trauma removed then you can remember exactly what happened and thereby learn from your mistakes.

I think that's a much better solution.