THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEARTThe heart has its reasons, which are quite unknown to the head. - Blaise Pascal
There have been recorded incidents in which individuals have claimed to have had artificially induced, false memories implanted either under hypnosis or whilst under the influence of drugs. I once saw a simple demonstration of the process on television, in which a person was asked before hypnosis, what she had eaten for breakfast. The same question was posed after a hypnotist had suggested, and thereby implanted a false memory, that the person had eaten a completely different meal. The result was intriguing: it was the false memory which was consistently recalled after the session. In fact, the recognition that ‘a falsely implanted memory might create a larger emotional discharge than the real92 [memory]’ has led to the use of such techniques in the treatment of warfare-induced neurosis; thereby producing ‘the physiological effects needed for psychological relief’.
The human mind and the workings of memory is a complex subject, and indeed one which is scientifically in its infancy. If we are to consider what hypnosis had effected, we must take some sort of model to use for our purposes. Edward De Bono93 once proposed that the neural mechanism could be thought of as being somewhat like a beach full of stranded octopuses; each with tentacles outstretched and touching all adjacent octopuses forming a sort of network. An octopus could pass a signal to any adjacent octopus by tapping one of its tentacles; that octopus could then respond by contacting another octopus, and so the signal could be passed on through the network.
Now, of course, we don’t have heads full of cephalopods, but this picture gives us a good, working model of the chemical interaction which takes place, in the synapses, between the brain cells. The octopuses represent the brain cells and the signal path represents an individual thought. A particular memory within this network would be represented as a particular series of octopuses being stimulated; tapping in a prearranged pattern. To implant a false memory, all that is required is to divert the signal; sending it around the network by some other route. It is a sobering thought that our most inspired thoughts and our most cherished memories may simply amount to familiar chemical paths across the neural network of the brain.
In 1900, Sigmund Freud94 suggested that dreams provided evidence for the existence of the unconscious mind: today psychologists call it the subconscious. It has been suggested that we don’t actually forget anything; however, memories are stored in the subconscious and are sometimes repressed. By this means, we protect ourselves from thoughts which are too painful or unpleasant to hold consciously. Some interaction between the conscious and unconscious, Freud proposed, takes place in dreams and slips of speech (Freudian slips). But the subconscious is at work constantly providing inspiration and performing problem solving tasks on our behalf.
For example, when we hear a recording of a piece of music and we know the singer or the composer but cannot recall the information, no matter how hard we try, we demonstrate the conscious mind’s poor ability to retrieve information from long-term memory. The subconscious however becomes programmed with the task and, once we give up the process of trying to consciously recall the information, it can get on with the business of solving the problem. Very often the answer just pops into the conscious mind at the least expected moment: the subconscious has solved the problem and delivered the solution.
