Solving Clinical Puzzles: Memory as Relational Process

Abstract

This paper offers our view of memory as relational process, a view derived both from Emmanuel Ghent's systems understanding of relational and from Gerald Edelman's biological understanding of process. Memory in our view is understood as relational rather than self-referenced and self-bound; as ongoing process rather than as static representation; as creation rather than as replication; as idiosyncratic in the moment rather than as faithful to the past; and as fluid rather than as fixed, although, as we stress, at times it in fact may feel so different, so fixed, and so faithful to the past. The defining attributes that we conceptualize offer a biological understanding of memory as it actually forms in the brain, emerging from dynamic neuronal patterns and the protein codes by which these variable patterns are set into motion. Generalizations derived from Edelman's global brain theory provide the clinician with both nomothetic and idiographic understanding of memory and its emergence in human experience. Specifically, three such nomothetic generalizations are described and then applied to case material, illustrating the importance of this biological brain-based conceptualization of memory to a more complex understanding of our patients.

¹Edelman's (1990, 1992, 2004, 2006) theory of global brain function may be contrasted with the prevailing theory of brain postulated as specialized, segregated modules. This is the theory favored by the field of Neuro-Psychoanalysis, as represented in the mission statement of the inaugural issue of the Neuro-Psychoanalysis Journal (Vol. 1, 1999, pp. 3–4). Edelman's theory is an intricately developed conceptualization that in the form we present here is deceptively simple. It is important not to lose sight of the scientific grounding on which Edelman's global brain theory is premised. The theory requires for full understanding mastery of several foundational scientific premises, each of which must be articulated before his theory of consciousness as a property of brain function can be understood. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a full explication of these premises, but nevertheless it seems important to note them, as follows: (a) The properties of Consciousness; (b) The relevant Neuroanatomy of the brain; (c) The Darwinian principles of Evolution and Selectionism: Population Thinking; and (d) Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, including the mechanisms of selection particular to neural networks (Edelman, 2004).

Notes

¹Edelman's (1990, 1992, 2004, 2006) theory of global brain function may be contrasted with the prevailing theory of brain postulated as specialized, segregated modules. This is the theory favored by the field of Neuro-Psychoanalysis, as represented in the mission statement of the inaugural issue of the Neuro-Psychoanalysis Journal (Vol. 1, 1999, pp. 3–4). Edelman's theory is an intricately developed conceptualization that in the form we present here is deceptively simple. It is important not to lose sight of the scientific grounding on which Edelman's global brain theory is premised. The theory requires for full understanding mastery of several foundational scientific premises, each of which must be articulated before his theory of consciousness as a property of brain function can be understood. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a full explication of these premises, but nevertheless it seems important to note them, as follows: (a) The properties of Consciousness; (b) The relevant Neuroanatomy of the brain; (c) The Darwinian principles of Evolution and Selectionism: Population Thinking; and (d) Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, including the mechanisms of selection particular to neural networks (Edelman, 2004).

²For Edelman, memory is one of two forces inherent in all biological life, including human life, or, as he says, in brains, snails, and grass alike. The other force is potential. He proposes that all life is created through an evolutionary process consisting of potential, constraint; and the interactions between potential and constraint. Memory operates in this system as constraint, the past, then, tethering and organizing the forms that present and future life may assume. Potential, the other force, incorporates the enormity of genetic possibilities that exist as an inevitable part of the evolutionary selectional system.

³While generally we speak of the system mindbrainbody in this article, here we are framing for heuristic purposes one element in that system, brain, to emphasize the contribution of brain to the emergent larger system, mindbrainbodyembedded. Historically, brain has been consciously set aside as irrelevant in psychoanalytical psychology. We focus on brain now in order to emphasize its hierarchical importance in the larger system to which it belongs. Mind emerges from brain, or, as Edelman says, mind/consciousness is entailed by the operations of brain. While most often mindbrainbodyembedded is most useful to our conceptualization, in this instance, we deliberately isolate brain to make a separate point that there are instances in which operations of brain are primordial.

⁴We refer you to footnote 1, page 1, and note in particular the four foundational principles listed there. These principles undergird these two levels of consciousness.

⁵We again are using brain as a primordial constituent of the mindbrainbodyembedded. See cf. footnote 2.