See Memory

00:00:00 here with me today. Um, I'm going to keep it brief because they have very long biographies which you can read in the pamphlet and many books and incredible accomplishments, but I want to hear what they have to say. So, I thought we'd cut to the chase. Um, John Williams, who um is a professor of English, media, and film at Yale University. Um, John hosted a screening of part one of Sememory um at Yale. We had a great conversation with his students about it. Um more and he has a

00:00:32 a great a book of Buddha the Buddha and the machine and a new book coming out. Right, John? >> Right. >> Um when's that book coming out? What's it called? >> Uh fall 2026. It's called Out of Mind Media Meditation and the Problem of the Inner Self. >> There you go. Um Professor Morris Spiegel, who is co-founder and co-director of the narrative medicine program at Columbia University. Um she actually worked with Paul Brody who you saw in the film and I connected with Mora because um she used this film with

00:01:06 her students. Mora also has a couple of wonderful books out. One um is a biography of Sydney Lumette and another is about teaching um narrative medicine. So I'm think we'll get to hear a little bit about what that's like from you. Daniela Schiller, who you saw in the film. Um, you saw the New Yorker profile, you saw a lot. So, I feel like I don't need to say too much more. She leads the Schiller lab at Mount Si is a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry

00:01:37 and has been hugely influential in my work. Um, Cher Cheryl Dolinger Brown, um, wonderful psychotherapist. Cheryl was the first person I interviewed for this piece when it was just the tiniest little thought in my head and sort of has watched many iterations of it along the way and has also >> probably has also been very influential. So >> get going. Okay.

00:02:07 >> I can start just by saying I um I was happy to show this film the first part to my students again this week on Wednesday. And we had just been reading a book by a guy named Daniel Shakar called The Seven Sins of Memory. And it's a sort of popular historical account of seven different things that tend to afflict us with memory. Transience, suggestability, absent-mindedness, blockages, and things like that. >> And the book is framed very much in the

00:02:38 context of these sort of dilemmas that we all confront with memory. And when I showed the film to my class, it was interesting how positive the film felt in contrast to the notion of like the sins of memory because I was really struck by just how hopeful one feels by the end that there even in the case of extremely traumatic and difficult memories, there are ways to tap into them and to begin to process them in in new and exciting ways that

00:03:10 hadn't been, you know, sort of understood before. So, I thought that was really a nice uh testament to the film's ability to invoke hope and hopefully, you know, good experiences with memory. >> Oh, I love that. That's great. Yeah, I can't help but turning anything dark into something hopeful. It just seems to be what I'm Well, that's why I make art, to turn something difficult into something positive, I guess. So, that's inevitable, I feel like, in the art making process, for me at least. Yeah,

00:03:43 >> the film this week to my master students in narrative medicine and um at Columbia and I um taught it along with an essay by Don Stern, someone I'm sure people know here from his book on formulated experience um which is about dissociation and imagination and so there was really interesting interface but what I found is that you know most of the students in this particular cohort are science they come from science, not from the humanities.

00:04:13 And they're really challenged by these academic essays on hermeneutics and psychoanalysis. And but something happened when they watched this film and the combination of the aesthetic power of it and the sort of intellectual layer of it allowed them to synthesize the material that we've been talking about in such a it was wonderful. Um, and I um uh and I I felt that they began to really get why the

00:04:46 program has so much emphasis on aesthetic experience as being such a crucial tool um in toward improving clinical care toward improving doctors connection to themselves and so forth and so on. Um but I did bring along one of their I brought along a few few of them wrote about it. >> Oh wow. >> Is would you like to hear a little bit? >> Sure.

00:05:17 >> Um >> uh in C memory the artist's use of fluid mediums watercolor and acrylic creates a visual language that mirrors memory itself layered unstable emotional and and evolving. This choice isn't merely aesthetic, but deep deeply metaphorical. These media are known for their movement, dripping, spreading, and staining in ways that resist control, reflecting how memory, especially traumatic memory, behaves in our minds.

00:05:47 This is a science student. Um, I'm just going to read a little bit more. Um, the the dripping technique um evokes the imagery of tears. The downward flow of color suggests emotional release as tears fall and unspoken feelings emerge from the subconscious. These drips aren't mere decoration. They are emotional events charged with meaning. They become evidence of unresolved feelings of emotions that have finally surfaced after being suppressed. It can also

00:06:18 appear as burdens released or memories rising unbidden. In either case, the drips leave behind the visible traces of lived experience, raw, spontaneous, and deeply human. And that's only part of it. >> That's incredible. That is beautiful. >> That's incredible. Thank you, Mora. That that means so much to me. Thank you for sharing that. >> And to me, it gave me a tremendous pleasure to read it. Yeah.

00:06:50 One of the things as I watch it every single time, you know, I think about I've been in the field almost 50 years and so I've seen such dramatic change in the work that we know about trauma about memory. Um, when I first started, I I said in the film, I felt like I was retraumatizing people sometimes because we didn't know how to be there. uh as John uh uh Paul said, like to be

00:07:24 there to just be a witness and and listen and then help them realize that it happened then. That happened then. This is now, you know, that we can separate it, but that it feels like it's happening right now. It actually feels that way. And that there are many different things that we can do through imagination, through color, sound, smell

00:07:54 to actually change the story so that it's not you're not crazy. You still remember the same thing, but it doesn't have the same impact. And um I keep seeing that every time I watch the the film. I was curious about something that's in the new sort of making of part and not in the actual film, which is the mention of the MDMA assisted >> therapy. And I was wondering if

00:08:25 Daniellea, maybe you know more a little bit about the research in that. I find that a really interesting um new development because as he's describing it, it sounds like the kind of thing that would allow you to not just be in the present moment, but have a little bit of um insulated time travel where you're able to go back into the past in a way that in a reactive mode to that experience. >> Um I find that extremely interesting. I'm wondering if you know if you could tell us a little bit more on the latest

00:08:56 developments there. Yeah, there have been um quite interesting developments there. There's been a lot of clinical research in the last few years >> um using all sorts of um psychedelics and um it seems to have a quite a profound effect. So therapists that I talked to are kind of excited about the effects that people have and um the problem is that they don't really know how it works. They just know it has a really profound experience, right? But the way it works um is not that you

00:09:26 would go you know into a party or take it on your own. There's a a very it's very structured. So you would have you would meet a clinician. You will talk about it kind of prepare but um you don't really touch the memory. You sort of prefer to leave it like untouched such that it will be raw during the experience but there's a lot of preparation. Then uh during the session you would take MDMA or psilocybin but uh you will sit with two therapists that are really well trained and go through and um it's not a regular therapy in a

00:09:58 sense that uh they should it's a very fine balance between um protecting you kind of guarding you maybe um kind of nodding you kind of in a in a right direction but not intervening not kind of leading just let things happen. Uh and after that uh you have another session. So it's it's kind of a whole week experience and what um people describe is profound change. For example, uh fear of death can be completely eliminated. Uh they talk a

00:10:30 lot about finally being able to be present with the memory which is what Cher >> talked a lot about. Uh it's about kind of really the safety of the experience. Another thing that they talk about is uh that different memories that they weren't completely weren't entirely aware of that they were even linked to the event suddenly popped up but they gave the the situation a whole different meaning. And that talks about this uh renewed rejuvenated kind of plasticity that maybe the drug is doing such that

00:11:01 you're able to um restructure kind of make new links essentially create a revise kind of create a new narrative that will give it a whole new meaning >> and then it stays with them. Um so it does seem very promising. it doesn't work on everyone and it's it's currently in the process of you know FDA approvals, clinical trials but um yeah it seems very exciting and I I'm personally really looking forward to delve into understanding the mechanism better of how it works what exactly is

00:11:33 going on there. I think one of the the most unexpected things happened when I I had actually finished the first part of this in 2016 and then when I submitted it to PBS they suggested I lengthen it to a 30-minute piece. So I said what if I interview bring in the people and they said great. So I brought I brought them into my studio and I just happened to ask Daniela what is one of the most exciting

00:12:05 what what is really exciting that you're working on now having no idea that she had done that whole study I believe in collaboration with Yale right actually and um >> I think that one of the most profound things that Daniela said in that interview that that I really took away with me was we call it a memory. We call them memories, but they're actually not even memories yet. That is the task to

00:12:36 turn these traumatic experiences into memories. And I do think that that that's really profound. And and I don't I think when people talk about, oh, someone has PTSD, um, uh, traumatic memories, I think it's really important. I think there's a big gap between the person experiencing it and then the other the general public understanding what it is. And I think that that is so important to highlight to people that

00:13:06 the reason why >> these thoughts are or or someone can get triggered and it's so intrusive and it feels like it's happening right now um is is because in the brain that's what it looks like. And I remember when we were talking about it, you had said what we showed was something that you feel like therapists have long known and sort of used in therapy. Sort of like what Cheryl was saying. We can we can take um

00:13:36 let's say a negative trigger and pair a more positive association with it, which is something you've also been working with in your work. But I think having the science behind it is so powerful. So that you know a lot of people think well why are they doing this and therapists have intuited I think >> a lot of what you just do you want to talk a little bit about how you came up with that study um and your your intuition that this was something that

00:14:07 had already been put into practice but you know you were sort of I guess the relationship between your work as a neuroscientist and then clinical application and just do Do you get ideas from therapists? You know, what is the cross-pollination of your work? >> Yeah. Um, so I I really come from a very hardcore dry analytical scientific uh tradition, which is to do what we call fear conditioning or we know as Pavlovian conditioning. You know, you

00:14:38 have a stimulus and outcome like Pavlov's dog. Um, and that's what you do to rats or to people that come to the lab and you show them a stimulus, pair them with like a mild electric shock and it's it's really effective actually. You can learn a lot and we have learned a lot about how the brain is processing basic uh learning and memory processes. So this is what I call like a regular memory. But we were under the assumption that uh this can give us the understanding of what is the mechanism of trauma. Um, but it always bothered

00:15:11 me. I'm not a clinician, but just speaking to clinicians with these opportunities and with patients, you know that the experience is just different. It's it's complex. It's uh these are old I don't know where it's coming from. These are old memories usually. Um and um and very personal and also very unique to people. Um so and you couldn't bring into the lab because in the lab you need something very that you repeats many times that you can show statistical significance. Uh so then um

00:15:41 now with um machine learning and AI and CHP all that stuff that we know it actually brought new tools to science and now you can analyze pretty complex stimuli that are very specific. Um and we said okay maybe we can finally ask if peer conditioning or what we know on the regular neural systems are similar to the personal trauma. Uh that's how we came up uh with that and um yeah it did um I had kind of surprising um understandings from it because we always

00:16:12 talk about memory is like it's the enemy you know especially a traumatic memory it's like the enemy and we want to escape a memory or we're stuck with a memory and then um with that study I realized that no it's like memory is safe memory is what gives you safety and and then sort of it led to the idea that maybe trauma is just not the memory yet. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think that's so powerful. And even the idea that, you know, for people who want some kind of scientific proof,

00:16:43 the idea that you could do an MRI before treatment and see if it's in the singular cortex and then do maybe 6 months later, year later, do an MRI after and see if it lights up in the hippo campus. I think can really benefit the the work of therapists. What do you think? >> Oh, for sure. You know, we do it and we're never exactly sure what's going to happen and how long it's going to last if the change happens over time. We can

00:17:15 see definitely see changes, but to be able to clarify what really works would be tremendously helpful. So, for example, I know that pairing things like I worked with someone in a very bad car accident and she was in the supermarket and her her cart hit another cart and it was the same sound and she had that reaction. So then in the session we um you know she was remembering it so she

00:17:47 was still quite activated and we really put another sound over it and we kept going over. You can see this crash but you hear this sound. Let's turn up the sound. And to me it's it's like magic. How does it work? I don't know how it works but it works. And you know, you can have, say you have similar traumas, like you've been assaulted and then you get assaulted, not a physical assault,

00:18:17 but another thing that feels like an assault. If you work on either one or another one, it helps all of them. It somehow, you know, um is is able to go into all these different places that there's some kind of memory. So, it would be fascinating to understand how that really works. >> I'm really >> Yeah, um Yeah, sorry. >> Oh, I was just going to ask about another word that crept in a couple

00:18:47 times during the film and that I think is part of the conversation and that is the storytelling, the narrative quality of thinking about memory. Um I I was thinking recently about how I don't often remember my dreams uh when I wake up in the morning, but sometimes I will. And if they're particularly vivid, I might start to tell someone nearby, you know, what I dreamed. But what I noticed in the process is that I tend to bring a certain narrative structure to the story I'm telling about the dream that betrays

00:19:20 some of the weirdness of the dream. The dream is this kind of nebulous thing. And in creating a narrative in order to tell it to someone, I've really streamlined and given it a certain structure. even if it's a weird dream that I'm telling. >> But what I noticed is that that kind of becomes the dream afterward. Like I can't quite remember the weirder other thing that happened in the narrativizing of the dream. And I wonder to what extent do when you talk about you know

00:19:50 revisiting these traumatic memories does the structure that narrative brings to just the language we use to talk about it as if it were in the past as a narrative like what does that do actually is as that part of the technology or what's happening >> more I feel like you probably have worked in that area. Yeah, I mean I you know that sort of narrative is a good word and a bad word. You know, we live with some very bad narratives right now

00:20:21 in our in our society and some good narratives. And I I feel like the what you're describing is in a way a shrinkage of the experience through narrative as opposed to the capacity of some narrative to actually if not capture at least you know move in that direction you know and so I think you know just in terms of the work that that I'm that I'm doing it sort of connects

00:20:52 in a way to um rather than having speaking about trauma. You know, drawing again on maybe on Donald Stern a little, but the idea of dissociation is a big part of I think medical practice that people function in medicine in a quasi dissociated fashion. They don't have the time or the capacity to explore or connect with their experiences. And so part of the work

00:21:22 that we do and it isn't like you're given, you know, we give them um art or poetry or a story to look at together and close read it, which is what you were hearing in that in that piece. Real close reading of >> and in in trying to put language to the experience. Um something happens. um in trying to articulate what you felt. That's a step toward, I think, breaking open this

00:21:55 dissociation that we're, you know, that's one of the aspirations of the program. And this film really, really encourages that because you're moved by it and there's mood and there's feelings of loneliness and feelings of comfort and and and to to get the students to say what they're experiencing is, you know, it In a in a way it's like better affect labeling has impact in the

00:22:27 clinic in terms of caregiving um and um it it improves raore you know um being more aware of what's happening inside you developing that muscle or that habit and so this is the kind of work that you know I I want to see more of you know um uh cuz it it it it touches them but they have to make connections in a way to to what what

00:22:57 they've seen. So anyway that yeah >> that's fascinating. Yeah >> I can add to to the narrative uh discussion is that uh narrative is like um a packaging tool. Uh it packages experience and it gives it structure and meaning and um and then you remember it better. You can make predictions of it. That's it's really like a unit of experience and that's the role of the hippocmpus. That's what you need in the brain. You need the hippocmpus. It's like a sequencing machine. This is where

00:23:28 sequences are learned and remembered. Um I think in many cases with traumatic memories they are fragmented >> and uh in therapy probably Sher can attest to that uh you work on making it coherent. Um, I've heard of a a case where someone was undergoing uh an attack and she was narrating it to herself like speaking it to herself at that time. It's like it's just like something like pretty rare I heard once and uh and it was it felt like protective

00:23:59 >> for her. >> Um and in a way narration is what we do to our regular experiences not just me not just dreams right and it will change the memories themselves when you talk about them tell a story again and again. Right. >> Yeah. I'm just add one more thing. You know, thinking about the pros and cons of narrative, right? I mean, that's so interesting about being a protective, you know, the the idea of um sort of um noticing your own schemas

00:24:30 >> and what what are the schemas that you sort of lean into as you turn experience into narrative can really be useful because sometimes they contain things you want to get rid of, you know. So, um, that's a piece of another way that that I think about narrative. We think about narrative in this work. Yeah. >> I think one of the important things about creating a narrative, which is what we do in therapy, is that we as

00:25:00 human beings want to find meaning in our lives and find meaning in things that have happened to us. And so um you know creating that is actually a big part of therapy. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happens in the sort of quick prompted writing that we do with clinicians. They write for five minutes and they've just written about a case they haven't thought about for 20 years and suddenly it has a

00:25:31 meaning for them. It's memorializing. It's >> it's it's connecting and and um uh >> and that it's not the ultimate story. It's not the only story, but it's one that came to them that day for reasons, you know. Yeah. >> Yeah. I think it's also beneficial then to have to be open to multiple memories or like you say, it's it's the current narrative. Um but but you're not uh getting too attached to it, right?

00:26:02 you're always in a moment that you can consider other narratives or related narratives. And it's not about being uh completely detached from reality. I mean, they're all related and and grounded. It's just the meaning uh you're open to having flexibility in the meaning, >> which I think are a pretty high level, right? That if you're able to reach there. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had um a couple of questions that students asked that were curious about.

00:26:32 Um um one was about the horse. >> Um and um so we had a pretty a little back and forth, you know, different theories about >> theories >> and then I'll share with you. >> Um somebody brought up there's a check off story. I'm trying to remember what it's called. Does anybody know? um about a a carriage driver who's just lost a child and he keeps trying to tell

00:27:03 his different PE, you know, riders about the story and they don't let him get a word out and at the end of the story he just tells it to his horse. >> Oh wow. um came to mind. But um uh that some thought was there a a happy relationship to a horse from childhood and the horse kind of you know seems to you know at the end when the window becomes a painting the horse appears and

00:27:35 um uh so that was one one theory that was floated. >> I love that Czechov story. I I wish I could claim it. Um, well, while I was making this, I was interviewing people while I was making the paintings. And Robert Elv, who's the Colombia doctor that you saw in the piece, I showed him a very early stage of the stopotion animation. I was just figuring it out out how to do it. So, it was very rough. There was no music or anything. But

00:28:07 before our interview, because you know, he said, "What is this? What are you doing?" So, I showed him something on my iPad and then he said um you know that that in a dream he really he saw sort of this um relationship between painting and dreaming. And he said in a dream sort of like what you were saying John um we add the narrative to the dream afterwards. Like we add the drama, we add the structure to the dream. And he's like, it's very similar when you look at

00:28:38 a painting. You look at the painting and then you decide what it's about in a similar way. And so I thought, you know, I'm really missing an opportunity here to tap into my subconscious while I'm making this. So when I went back to my studio after that interview, I decided to try and let things arise. um I don't know what the clinical term would be but you know obviously being awake but trying to be in a sort of dream state um

00:29:09 while I was painting and so what I would do is I would start the scene you know a scene sort of grounded in reality like the young woman is going to the therapist office or something like that but um then I would say okay I'm not going to decide what I'm going to paint so every stroke I make I have to walk about 5 to 7 ft back to my camera and take a picture. And then on the walk there, I'm going to have no premeditated

00:29:40 ideas. I'm just going to make another line and then I'm going to walk back and let me just see what it turns into. And the horse kept appearing when I worked in that way. I will say I do love horses and um if you know if I were to try and make it conscious and less interesting because I do think the unconscious is so much richer and more interesting and I feel like um the people that people

00:30:12 relate to or are more excited about the parts of the film. It's interesting where I was painting in that state of mind because I think it opens up I my subconscious is so much more more intelligent than my conscious mind or it's makes more connections that I could possibly do consciously. So when I was able to do that, things like the balloons would appear or the horses would appear and I found them repeating themselves and you know I'm I'm working

00:30:43 on several films doing the animation and there's balloons in all of them because I can't help it to me you know in in a very simplistic way you could say a balloon is hope but it just starts to come up or like the ladders kind of like shoots and ladders I didn't know that was actually a painting thing that started as synapses. >> Um, and it just started as synapses firing because I was like, "Okay, I I need a visual to explain to the viewer what a formation of a memory is on a

00:31:14 biological level." And this is synapses firing and then connecting and and forming a memory. And then once I said, "Okay, I've done that part. I don't need to think about that. That part's taken care of. Now see what happens." it turned into that little girl floating in space and the balloons and the shoots and ladders. So, all of those images are are truly a surprise to me as is the horse. But I think that your student wasn't wrong. I've always felt this bond

00:31:46 with horses and used to ride a lot. Was on the equestrian team in college and just grew up riding in Brazil and I would feel very, you know, if I was out riding alone with my horse, I would feel like completely content and that I I would talk to my horse. I'd sing to my horse. I would So I think that what they deciphered is actually accurate. >> That's great. Yeah, >> that's great. >> Wow. >> Balloons are an interesting metaphor for

00:32:17 memory because they have a shape, but they're sort of ethereal and you're tethered to them if you're holding on. And they only occupy the most, you know, um, physiologically convenient space for air to have. I feel like it's an interesting metaphor for the ways that memories attach themselves to us and can fly away maybe if you let go. >> That's true. I mean, I have to say that, you know, the movie The Red Balloon, which was made in the early 60s, or late

00:32:50 50s, is imprinted >> in my brain. So, it's probably become part of my subconscious at this point, >> and I'm not even aware of it. But the whole idea that this sort of little boy is having a really bad day, right, in that film and then these balloons just lift him out of it, you know, and then when someone stomps on the balloon, >> right, like do you remember that, you know, and and then it's like it's crushing, >> right? So I would I think that it's sort

00:33:22 of one of those images like the Mona Lisa or something. I think the movie The Red Balloon is just, you know, it's sort of just become like a language of its own, like a symbolic language. I don't know as a film, as film people, have you taught the film? >> Have you? >> I have not, but I've seen it a number of times. It's interesting. >> Yeah. >> Harold has a balloon, doesn't he? >> Harold probably has a balloon. I mean, Harold Harold and the purple crayon.

00:34:00 Um, Harold. I mean, I think that that I there were times when I was painting for the film that I thought, why am I even painting? That book does it all. Like, the books, you know, the Harold and the Purple Crame book, he he literally just draws his way out of difficult situations. I think the book it does say says everything you know just what his mind can conjure and if you believe it even if you you're not crazy you you know

00:34:32 what's reality but if you create sort of a illusionary world through painting or drawing you truly can enter that world at least psychologically and I know for me more and more I've become fascinated by power of the mind. It seems endlessly powerful and I was very interested in work that you know uses this idea to conjure maybe maybe you're in a traumatic situation but you can use your

00:35:03 imagination to change the outcome of that situation. Um but just the the power the idea that we have everything we need within our minds and bodies already. you just haven't tapped into its full potential is just so exciting to me. >> Wonderful. >> That's interesting the idea that there's even a fictionalization of your own memory that might be therapeutically helpful like that the narration or the narrative you're creating

00:35:35 about that trauma or about the memory doesn't have to be true in order for it. In fact, it may be better for you if you can go back and I don't know is is there research and this is actually an interesting question on the use of fictionalizing one's own experience as a way of dealing with trauma. Yeah, I'm I'm aware of um it's kind of anecdotal and sort of in development, but uh there is the idea that well I can

00:36:05 tell some I met someone who who underwent a really traumatic uh memory and um he said that what was missing when it happened was um just like the horizon just like even picturing the future. Um and um so he was just like stuck with a very very narrow reality. >> Um and he as time went by it helped him to kind of uh reinvision his life because he wanted

00:36:35 to be a musician and that uh attack was kind of preventing him from everything he knew before and he couldn't imagine the future. Um so he now kind of goes on an initiative to to provide that to people that to allow them to um ask like a what if question as if what would happen if >> um and uh >> in a counterfactual way you mean like that what would have happened if >> Yes. Yes. Can you envision your life differently like this? Like what if?

00:37:06 >> So either the future or the past. And um it took me kind of a while to kind of get what what what what's the point of that >> but when I tried the exercise myself uh I realized that it's the um detailed and visualization and how the concretiz you know making it concrete >> that actually suddenly gives you hope. It's like, oh, just the fact that you can imagine your life differently and it's so concrete, it it gives you just like new path to work on, new ideas, it

00:37:38 just kind of revives. >> I actually had that experience with Gerald Epstein who I interviewed for the film. He he's passed away, but he was a psychiatrist at Mount Si and he also had started something called the American Imaging Institute. So, um, his daughter was a a a summer intern of mine when she was at Oberlin, and I said, "Oh, let's let's go interview your dad." And I knew he had worked with a lot of Holocaust survivors. And um, I had said to him,

00:38:09 "Okay, can you and I knew he did this sort of um, like what exactly what you said, very detailed reimaginings." So I said, "Can you can we sort of have a enactment, an improvisational session where I'm um let's say in the Holocaust? I'm on my way to one of the camps." And he said, "Okay, so now you have to imagine how you get off the train." And I said, "Okay, I get off." He's like, "No, no, no. How do you get off? Where do you get off? What's the time of day?"

00:38:39 And then and and so he said if I was working with someone I would do with the counterfactual like you said but in minute detail >> and he said you know by the end of 3 weeks if we do this every day something will have shifted and not that you don't know what actually happened to you but sort of like what Daniela was saying I spoke with many neuroscientists and you know they all said if memory is not an accurate recording of the past

00:39:10 and if it if we needed it to be it would be right so why isn't it you know and because memor is really about navigating the present and being able to envision your future and I think like what Daniela was saying the more people I talk to experiences is it traps you from being able to envision a hopeful future so engaging in these kind of imaginative processes opens up what you can

00:39:42 envision. I think the possibilities that you can envision for yourself. >> Yeah. What I wonder is if it's something like the the use of the the perpendicular mirror to treat phantom limb syndrome. You know, people who have lost a limb and have this pain and they've discovered that if you place a mirror here so they can see themselves as if this other limb still exists or exists again, then it helps with the pain somehow. There's some kind of I don't know how it works, but >> that would seem to be a very sort of sort of visually um similar thing. Just

00:40:14 on a very simple level, can you tell the same? So, you tell a story where you're the victim of an experience. >> And now, can you retell that as the hero of that experience? So, it's the same experience, but you're no longer the victim of it. And maybe it's because what you've done since then, you you know, how you've you know, whatever it is. I I think in the in you find that the the people that I just again anecdotally I'm not a scientist that I've spoken to who've

00:40:45 made meaning from a traumatic experience and managed to >> either use it in their in their work or helping other people or contributing and they now are now the hero of that experience. They're not a victim of it are are tend to be the ones that are able to best cope. I don't know what what do you think, Cheryl? >> I you know I'm not I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

00:41:15 I was just thinking right now that we're assuming all of us are talking as if we know that memory is not real like it didn't necessarily happen just that way. Where my mind was going is I work with couples. You know couples come in and they fight. That's what happened. No, it didn't happen. That happened. And each person thinks they have the true memory, you know, and what I used to think when I first started working with couples, wish I had a videotape so I could see

00:41:46 it, but that wouldn't that wouldn't actually help because it's also the interpretation. So, you know, the whole time we've been talking, I'm thinking it's really hard for most of us to accept that that memory is not a real thing captured on a, you know, on a recording. >> Yeah. I I think the the way out of this conundrum because it really bothered me you know ever since studying this idea

00:42:17 of changing memories and reconsolidation. Um is that uh there is some truth but the question is where you look for it. Um so if you kind of observe yourself in the moment like like Vivian mentioned in the movie uh it does reflect your memories. It reflects what you experienced. Um if you for example uh if you retrieve something very negative uh what it it tells you is that at the moment there's something bad going on

00:42:50 and this is why the brain is retrieving that. So it's not about the past it's really about uh the moment. Um and I think what we see from neuroscience is that the brain is what what it mostly wants dedicated to is prediction. It's really about understanding uh in order to predict the future uh or to understand the environment and to predict what would happen if you take an action all for adaptive for for survival and I think that can explain uh all that stuff. So in a way um just like artists

00:43:23 and scientists like Paul Broad said in the movie are kind of doing the same. We're really looking to understand reality and to capture the reality. uh we all are really it's like we at every given moment we we predict the past as well as we predict the future. We understand the past as well as we predict the future but it's really about uh getting all that information uh about understanding the moment like who you are now and if you're a person that reacts in a certain way that behaves in a certain way that's the memory that's

00:43:55 what you remember. >> So interesting. Yeah, I remember you saying that to me in our first conversation that memory isn't necessarily a story. It's not necessarily a visual image. It's your it's your behavior. That your behavior itself is the memory of everything that you've experienced, >> right? Yeah. I'll just mention a book that might be relevant to this discussion about fictionalizing and it's um IM Kaya the

00:44:26 South African writer um is in a dialogue with a psychoanalyst Arabella Curts and it's called the good story and he's um somewhat faciciously saying well why don't you just have your patients make up a better story about themselves why don't you just help them come to a better story and she's explaining that that doesn't necessarily do the trick. So anyway, it's an interesting it's a it's a quite interesting book. >> It's called the good story.

00:44:57 >> The good story. >> Want to take questions? >> Should we Should we take questions? >> Yeah, it's about time to switch over to questions. So, um for those of you that would like to I've been deputized to sort of help run this. Um, if you'd like to come to the microphone or kind of maybe form a line for those that would like to ask questions, we'll we'll do our best. What I would like to know is what was it that brought you to want to carry

00:45:31 through and to and to look at this question and to, you know, look at all the different pieces that begin to ask that question for you. Well, I I talk a little bit about it in the film, you know, that that I had born and raised in Hong Kong and I sort of was out of touch with those memories. But what really spurred me into action was an interaction with my three my daughter who was three years old at the time and I have a bump on my collar bone

00:46:04 and she said, "Mom, what's why do you have a bump?" And I I don't know why I went into such detail, but I explained to her that when I was this thing came off. >> It's okay. >> It's fine. um when I was 19 years old um and I was on a trip in one of the Greek islands that I had, you know, rented a moped, fallen off the moped, broke my collar bone and I went into such detail with her where I said and then I fell down and the bone was sticking out and

00:46:36 it was on a dirt road and this truck came by and I got on the truck but it was a bumpy road and I could feel the bone moving. Anyway, so I thought I, you know, I thought I had just told her this fascinating story and she burst into tears and was furious with me and she said, "I wish you hadn't told me that story. Now I feel like I broke my collar bone." And I was just dumbruck because I am the kind of person like if I go

00:47:06 watch a movie and I get very absorbed in it, let's say the movie's Rocky, I'll walk out thinking I was just like in a ring and just got like was just sort of boxing. Like like I tend to absorb these experiences as if I've just had them. And I assume that was because of my strange childhood and memories and this strange relationship to them. And then here my daughter was having a completely different childhood and she did exactly the same thing with my story and she articulated it and I just was like yeah

00:47:40 that's I I just became sort of obsessed with that idea. A lot of it for me had to do with being a parent and wanting to pass share stories. You know my kids were always asking about my childhood. They would ask about my husband's childhood and he grew up in America and they can see the house where he was born, the house where he grew I mean they can revisit in detail the school he went to and I didn't have that kind of thing to share with them. So I sort of

00:48:10 went on this project of trying to you know I had read in one of these parenting books that children are more secure if they know where they came from. So sharing stories is really good for kids. And I was like, "Oh my god, I need to, you know, I need to share stories." So like so many things in my life, my children were my sort of incentive for this. But and I just sort of became obsessed with the whole idea of memory. What does it mean if you absorb someone else's memory as your own

00:48:41 memory? Where's the boundary? If memory is the story we tell of how we became who we are, but you may have by osmosis absorbed someone else's story as your own, what does that mean? And there's a really interesting article by Oliver Saxs called Speak Memory. And that's exa actually why I called the film Sea Memory, which of course he named after Nabokov's book Speak Memory. But he wrote this article. You can look it up. It's in the New York Times book review.

00:49:13 And he is reflecting on the fact that in his first biography, he had written about being in the in London in the city during the Blitz in the Second World War. And then his older brother read the book after it was published and wrote to him and said, "You were sent to the countryside. You were not there. I was in the city." and I wrote you a letter about it and you pretty much wrote about you wrote my letter in your book. Anyway, Oliver Saxs had was struck dumb,

00:49:46 you know, and just was was was fascinated by this. And you know, I think what what neuroscience has shown is that emotion is the greatest encoder of memory. Am I right? And so he speculated, you know, this me this letter like my my story that I told my daughter must have been very viv vivid. It must have conjured up a lot of emotion in me and I remembered it as if it had been my own experience. And then

00:50:18 he went on to talk about Helen Keller being accused of plagiarism um with some I think story children's book she had written later in life. And then he began to sort of speculate, you know, the way Helen Keller learned how to read was literally by feeling. You know, it was tactile because she's reading in Braille. And he said, you know, she probably absorbed those stories and had no idea that they weren't her own stories. And so, you

00:50:50 know, he also said, and I don't know if this is true, Daniela, but he said neurologically there's no way to decipher between a remembered an experience and an imagined experience that it looks the same in the brain. And that's when I said, okay, I'm going to talk to neuros, you know, I I need to find out I need to find out more. So that's a very long answer because it wasn't just one thing. It was sort of my daughter, the Oliver Sags article, you know, it

00:51:21 was accumulation of fragments really that kind of made me really want to investigate this Suffering has >> suffering has some benefit. >> Oh yeah. I mean >> yes. I mean I was very frustrated with

00:51:51 the gray matter of memory which is the way I saw it at the time. you know that it wasn't something you could easily say this is a memory you you couldn't go look back on your life there was no recording to say what you may have picked up from a story someone told you or a photograph you looked at and the process of and I was extremely frustrated by that think the first time I interviewed you I was in one of my more frustrated states and um Daniela

00:52:22 sort of told me what she's sort of telling all of us today which is relax. You know, it's okay. It's about who you are now. You know, you don't need to uncover everything and verify everything. It doesn't matter. You know, it's really about who you are now. It's, you know, and so that was very liberating. And so, investigating this was very liberating for me because I realized there's no way I could spend an entire life trying to understand what

00:52:53 memory is. I will never get to the bottom of it. But rather than being frustrated by it, I feel really excited about that because now I can just keep making films that explore this. And so I feel like, okay, now I have a plan, you know, for the rest of my life of of something to investigate. And so now I see it as really rich material that I get to explore as opposed to something frustrating that I don't understand. We have a couple. >> Okay, next question. Next question.

00:53:23 Um s since this uh really focused on the aspects of memory in terms of uh trauma and to a lesser degree depression um I'm wondering if I could get the get some feedback from the panel in terms of uh specifically with post-traumatic stress disorder uh the the role of guilt and uh and even uh rumination of that guilt in in terms of um in terms terms of how to deal with that. Now, some of you you you guys said that

00:53:56 reframing and fictionalization uh do you think those um those are uh good ways of dealing with guilt and rumination of guilt and possibly some other things as well? >> I think that's a >> I think we leave this to the therapist. >> Yeah. Well, you can imagine guilt is a huge thing that uh really hurts people. I mean, I think there's reasonable guilt and you know, I always talk to people

00:54:27 about what's reasonable, but then also what's unreasonable guilt and really trying to understand what the person is taking responsibility for that's actually probably inappropriate. Um people don't want to give it up very easily because it makes them feel that they do have some control. If I did this bad thing, you know, uh then I I have some control and I will have some control. Um but I think it's it's really

00:54:58 looking at where it's uh inappropriate and trying to understand what other guilts are laid. Like a lot of times it's more than one thing you feel guilty about or you don't feel like you're a good enough person or something was pulled to you. There's there's it's very multi-dimensional, but you really have to go through all that as you look at what's what's inappropriate about what's hurting you. And even if you feel guilty

00:55:29 because you've done something wrong and you really did something wrong and you hurt somebody, then how do you have compassion for yourself? That's the next step. >> Thank you. Next question. >> I'm going to just talk about normal voice because I don't like the sound of those. >> Yeah. Um, so there were three themes across the discussion and the film that I picked out as someone who works with children. I reluctantly see clients of all ages, but 0 to six is really my

00:56:00 thing. And we haven't really talked about that besides the adult experience of remembering childhood. So I wanted to like point to those three things and then see what you all thought and maybe others with kids. Um the first is that I felt like the idea of play was like absent and maybe we hit it in different words but >> um what it it made me think of when you were talking about how painting gave you this spontaneity method >> and although I use some visual arts

00:56:30 methods with kids it's primarily performance-based and so there is a mutual aspect of it that I think is really necessary in the providing space for remembering. So like the the I'm thinking about work that I do with the child and their transitional object in the playroom who had prior trauma. >> Yeah. >> Intergenerational trauma and birth trauma primarily. And so for the children of those ages, it's not really helpful for them to generate a narrative in language because one, >> that wouldn't help. And two, we have to think about how much is lost with the

00:57:02 generation of language. So like I have a child who was born with herbs palsy. So her shoulder was frozen when she came out. her mom was a dramatic thing. >> Meanwhile, like grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, dad was a paratrooper in Israel. So, there's a lot of intergenerational stuff happening. And there was this idea in the film about like there being some comfort in someone remembering with you >> and I see that as like a very push and pull like I shared this with you, but

00:57:33 now that was totally not tolerable. And so, um, that together with like this switch into language, um, I think like I I was reminded of this idea, I'm really like coming from an object relations lens and, um, incorporating the school Judaism in that. And so this idea of like one must process things with a processor that's not working or like jumping into fix. We often think of jumping into fix as like

00:58:05 helping someone think of a new thing in a new narrative or helping them generate a new narrative. But for me, often that's like putting language in there at all. >> Um anyway, that's just like a little comment on like what I was thinking about and I wonder if any of those concepts or ideas resonate with any of you in thinking about if you were to be doing children. >> Great question. >> Yeah. >> Anyone wants to tackle it? >> Yeah. Um I can try. So I think it it actually came up when uh Mo and I were talking right before

00:58:37 um to draw our conversation. it it came up to me that uh I know it sounds it all sounds very analytical uh you know come up coming up with a narrative structuring restructuring language um but um especially for for kids I think what's what's underneath all of that is that uh the story the fact that it's a story and it's very detailed and vivid sharpens your sensory uh acuity. though you you suddenly you

00:59:09 notice other things you know just with the experience like you say through play or through the experience of of a narrative which is experiential it's like being in an episode suddenly you notice other things uh and I think children are very good at that right they they um constantly absorb just like absorb absorb and learn and they notice stuff and that's I think what we try to do as adults and that's why we're so fascinated with art and storytelling that's why maybe storytelling is so helpful because uh uh suddenly you you notice

00:59:39 things you didn't notice before. You look at reality differently. It's just like your interaction with the environment is different and I think that's the aspect that works with adults. So it's actually what kids do naturally and you try to and play is I think actually what we are trying to do essentially through art and stories. >> Next question. Please make it brief the questions. >> Sorry. I'm not sure. I also apologize my voice.

01:00:11 So it's in long time ago in the when I was in in the Soviet Union I met a guy who travel to Siberia to learn experience of shamans who also try to deal with traumatic memory of different people through ritual. Okay, I could say much more about it. I personally also I'm an artist and I created some kind of ritual

01:00:41 also dealing with good and bad memories. But my question is did you go sometime to the traditional experience and could it work maybe I'm not sure also work for the this um work for people who have traumatic memories that's Did you try to learn from? >> Can I make a suggestion that maybe we have a couple of questions and we stack

01:01:13 them together and then >> answer try to answer them all together. Is that okay? Just because I know I see we have several people. >> Thank you all so much for your time today. I actually wanted to ask in regards to let's change the perspective of I was the victim in the story to >> um when you read she felt as though like she was the one that experienced it or like the example with watching too. I wanted to say that

01:01:47 I really do feel that actually it is because like the lack of stuff exists in a successful movie or in a successful art piece whatever that can mean that it is actually like the removal of hero or victim that allows like anybody to be put into the story as though like it really did happen to them. And that made me think of I think like a lot of especially like Abrahamic religions have kind of like the the hope of like let's say afterlife. Maybe that's hope. Maybe that's I mean I just think I view it as

01:02:17 like the the removal of like the self or like worth like this is worth something like this happened whether good or bad. So therefore like this is the only option. This is all that there is. Um, and I do think a lot of people can sometimes feel either fear or a lot of freedom when you take out the value of like right now. Uh, and so I wanted to ask when it came to like either any of your students, any of your patients, research in general, has there been anything with like either removal of

01:02:48 self or like religion in memory? >> Thank you. >> Very good question. Yeah. One more and then we'll we'll try to tackle all three. Yeah. Um, hi. So, I'm a sumatic coach and um I'm also a researcher on empathetic AI and so I was so fascinated by your movie like I heard about it months ago and I finally watched it today cuz if I had some time to come down and um super beautiful like the how it transports you into a dream world and um my question to

01:03:19 you all is where does you know empathy come into play in sharing all of these stories and also where does uh the connection between the mind and the body come in that journey towards healing from traumatic memory? And then the last question I have is where does truth actually come into play in reclaiming um our sovereignty you know as a trauma survivor like how does truth play a part

01:03:51 in that healing process? >> Great. >> Wow. >> These are huge questions. Okay. Um I can start from the last one because it's freshest and then will you reframe the first one? >> So empathy. Well I think who was it that said was it um Cisco and Eert who said movies are empathy making machines. That is truly yes. Um movies are empathy

01:04:22 making machines. Um, you know, I started out as a sculptor and as a painter and I found, um, it's so frustrating to have a barrier between me and like a viewer. There's a art dealer, there's a curator, there's pretention and intimidation. And um, you make a painting, you really rarely get to interact with the person who buys your painting cuz like the gallery is a buffer between you and and the person. heart-to-heart experience as

01:04:55 a filmmaker. So even though film making is really really hard um and it requires raising so much money and it requires years and years and years of work whereas a single painting does not the reason why I I feel like I found my thing is because it is an empathy making machine and you know now that I'm also making a couple of films about other people's experiences and I've interviewed them they've had experiences that I've never had like a World War II

01:05:26 vet, just completely different experiences. In the process of trying to create the moving paintings, I'm it's really an empathy making exercise because I have to say, well, what was in your mind? I have to sort of what what are the visuals? What are the stories? is I look at the words they tell me and the whole experience is almost trying to channel their experience so that that the paintings that come out are truthful >> you know to what they've shared with me

01:05:57 of course through my lens um so so I think movies themselves any movie pretty much you you go you sit in a in a theater and you get to feel the way the person you get you go it's not just a story you're being told you go The best movies ask you to join them on the quest of the protagonist, right? You join them. You're anxious. You're an, you know, you're with them the whole way. So, I would say the empathy, I think movies are the best tool for empathy.

01:06:29 >> It's it's a I have to confess though, it's a very commonly made assertion about novels as well. >> And I think with the rise of the novel, >> I just can't write down. >> No, no, I just I just mentioned it >> as a way of um >> also addressing the second question here. uh regarding the self because often the rise of the novel, the story that literary scholars tell is that was uh assisting much of the sort of individuation notion of the self that we have in the west. the rise of the novel was part of coming into the sense of uh

01:07:03 psychic individuation and that but there's also that aspect of it that when you are reading a novel or watching a film you're getting an intimate look into the experience of the other the other person's mind even if it's not a real person >> there is this sense that you're with someone in their mind and this is why in literature we're fascinated by techniques like free and direct discourse where you can't quite tell if it's the narrator or the character thinking the thing and there's this sort

01:07:34 of limning that happens in those >> moment I give you novels are incredible with that and in a way even more magical because they only have language they don't have sound and m you know all of this stuff and and and I'm completely astounded by great novelists that take me into their world cuz I'm like they did that with one tool. Yeah, you know, just a single tool. It's it's it's miraculous. >> Well, I think uh with that in mind, maybe that's a good note to end on. And

01:08:05 I want to thank Vivian for sharing your work with us. I think we all benefited so much for you coming. >> And thank you to everyone else for coming along this afternoon. >> Thank you. [Applause]