What Are Involuntary Memories?

As a trauma therapist, I help clients to overcome unresolved trauma by using various trauma therapy modalities, so working with memories related to unresolved trauma is an essential part of my work. As a result, memories are very much on my mind most of the time.

What Are Involuntary Memories?

Whereas voluntary memories are deliberate efforts to recall the past, involuntary memories come unbidden.  

Involuntary Memories

Involuntary memories are often evoked by everyday occurrences and they're usually sudden and unexpected.

Involuntary memories are more intense than voluntary memories and they can have a major impact on you how you feel physically, emotionally and mentally.

These types of memories often have the following characteristics:

• They are related to cues in the environment. They can also involve a person's thoughts or emotions as well as their embodied sense of themselves from an earlier time.

• They come spontaneously and unbidden.

• They occur effortlessly at any time and any place.

• Some people experience involuntary memories while they're grieving such as when they're listening to music or smell a scent closely related to the deceased person, like a particular perfume.

• These type of memories can cause a chain reaction of thoughts, feelings and embodied sensations.

• They are more likely connected to specific events or people.

• They can provide a strong sense of yourself from a long time ago, including a sense of who you were when you were a child (or any other time) that you might have forgotten.

• They can transport you back to happy times in your life.

• They can transport you back to unhappy times in your life.

• Recurrent involuntary memories related to PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) where thoughts and emotions are intrusive and disturbing are a subcategory of involuntary memories (see my article: What Are Emotional Flashbacks Related to Trauma?).

Involuntary Memories in Proust's In Search of Lost Time

Involuntary memories are actually more common than most people think. 

I recently started rereading In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.

This novel offers one of the most famous examples of an involuntary memory.

Involuntary Memories in In Search of Lost Time

As an adult, the novel's narrator remembers long-forgotten childhood memories when he tastes a madeleine cookie dipped in tea. He wasn't trying to evoke any memories. He was just enjoying his cookie and lime-flower tea and when these memories came back to him spontaneously.

From there, he experienced a cascade of childhood memories he had not thought about in a long time.

Aside from the famous madeleine cookie, the narrator had several other experiences with involuntary memories through ordinary everyday experiences, including stumbling on an uneven paving stone which transports him back to memories of Venice.

Experiencing Yourself the Way You Were at an Earlier Time in Your Life

When people experience an involuntary memory, they're not just recalling the facts about the memory. They're usually experiencing themselves the way they were at that time.

I had an experience with an involuntary memory about 20 years ago. 

It was an ordinary day and I was walking down the street in my neighborhood. Suddenly I detected a strong pleasant sweet scent, which brought up wistful feelings in me. 

I had to stop walking in order to figure out what was happening. 

Even though, at first, I couldn't identify the smell, that sweet scent transported me back to a time when I was five or six years old and I was sitting on the living room couch with my father in our old apartment.

It wasn't just that I was remembering sitting in the living room with my father--I was feeling how I felt back then when I was a child.

Involuntary Memories

Within seconds I realized that the sweet scent was the same as my father's cherry blend pipe tobacco and this scent was transporting me back to an early memory.

All of this happened within a matter of seconds and the experience was so fleeting that it was gone just as quickly as it came.

The narrator in In Search of Lost Time was also transported back to his childhood experiences of family visits to his Aunt Leonie's home in Combray, a small town just outside of Paris. 

He had an embodied experience of that time, including how he felt when, as a child, he was waiting for his mother's good night kiss.

Conclusion

Involuntary memories allow you to experience yourself as you were in the memory that is being evoked.

These memories can be evoked spontaneously by what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel (tactile sensations) and they can be transformational experiences.

Although you can attempt to bring back voluntary memories based on sensory experiences or through auto-suggestion, due to their involuntary nature, involuntary memories come unbidden.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adult and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

 

Nostalgia: A Portal to the Past

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing involving memories from the past, as in "the good old days."  Nostalgia is often bittersweet because, even though there might be an immersion into happy memories, there is also a sadness that the people, places or things related to the past are no longer in the present.

Nostalgia: A Portal to the Past

Nostalgia As a Portal to the Past
Nostalgia is a portal to the past--an actual past or, at times, an imaginary past.  Since memory can be inaccurate, nostalgia is often an idealized representation of the past, and it tends to be colored by what's happening in the present.

For instance, if someone is currently single, lonely and longing to be in a relationship, she might look back with fond memories to a time when she was in a romantic relationship.  She might idealize this past relationship and look back on it wistfully as being a completely happy time when, in fact, there might have been serious problems in that relationship.  In order to preserve this ideal, she might forget, without even realizing it, that there were times when she was very unhappy in that relationship.

This idealization often serves the purpose of having the internal experience of a happier time, a time when that can be relived in memory as a person now perceives the past.  So, there can be a psychological compensatory effect to nostalgia.

Book: In Search of Lost Time - By Marcel Proust
There are many ways in which people are transported back into the past, and literature offers many examples of this.

One of the most famous examples in literature is in In Search of Lost Time by the French novelist, Marcel Proust.

In Volume One, Swanns Way, the narrator, Marcel, has a memory of going to bed early as a boy and waiting for his mother's good night kiss.

Later on in the novel, Marcel's early memories are suddenly prompted when he tastes a madeleine cookie that he dips in tea.  Memories of his childhood experiences at his Aunt Leonie's home in Combray (now known as Illier-Combray, France) and other memories of earlier times come back to him in a nostalgic experience of involuntary memory.

During a trip to Paris a couple of years ago, I went to visit the Proust Museum, which is Proust's aunt's home in Illier-Combray as he described it in Swanns Way.  Having read his novel, I was quite moved to see the house preserved as the narrator described it in Swanns Way.  Just being able to walk through the rooms and remember various scenes from the book made the story come alive.

Film: Time Regained by Raul Ruiz: Nostalgia as a Psychologically Integrative Experience
Nostalgia can also be evoked by looking at old pictures.

In the beautiful movie, Time Regained, the Chilean filmmaker, Raul Ruiz, adapts the last book of Proust's seven-volume novel starting with a scene of Marcel Proust on his sick bed close to death.

Early on in the film, Marcel asks his housekeeper, Celeste, to bring him pictures that are in a drawer.  As he looks at these old pictures of his friends, family members and romantic partners, he is transported back in his memory to earlier times from childhood to adulthood.  He becomes immersed in these memories as he is slipping away into death.

As Marcel relives these times of joy and sadness, he is having a psychologically integrative experience of his past and present, which is beautifully rendered in the film.

Similar to the process of Life Review for older adults, the experience of nostalgia, especially as it is rendered in the film, Time Regained, highlights another positive aspect of nostalgia, which is a psychologically integrative experience where the past and present come together to add depth and meaning to a life lived.

I recently began rereading In Search of Lost Time and, in rereading it, I'm reminded that when we return to a masterpiece like this, our own life experience affects how we experience a novel when we revisit it more than 20 years later.

I also saw the film, Time Regained, again recently--the first time that I've seen it in almost 20 years.  This was another reminder of how time and memory can affect an experience.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

The Psychological Benefits of Reading Literature

In a prior article, I began a discussion about how reading literature with complex characters is beneficial to the brain.  In this article, I'll expand on this topic and discuss the potential emotional and psychological benefits of reading literature.

The Psychological Benefits of Reading Literature

Aside from the enjoyment and emotional comfort of reading literature, there can be considerable psychological benefits of reading well-written literature with complex characters.

Developing Psychological Insight
As I mentioned in my prior article, when we read about a character, especially a character that we identify with, who overcomes psychological issues, we can gain insight into our own personal struggles and, possibly, see aspects of our problems in new ways.

We can also gain psychological insight from the characters' missteps and identify with their emotional vulnerabilities.

Developing Empathy
In addition, when we're immersed in well written literature, we often feel empathetic towards the characters and this could help in developing empathy for ourselves and others.

Learning About Other Cultures and Historical Times
By reading about other cultures and historical times, it opens us up beyond our own circumscribed lives.

As they open up a new world for us, literature offers us the possibility of new ways of thinking and feeling.  Literature can also give us a perspective about how history affects us now.

Developing a Sense of Curiosity
Being exposed to new ways of thinking and feeling can help to develop a greater sense of curiosity and psychological-mindedness.

Seeing conflicts and emotional dilemmas in a new light can shed light on our own problems and challenge habitual ways of thinking.

There are many examples in literature that provide the psychological benefits that I've discussed above.

Let's take a look at two authors, who are famous for providing stories with psychological depth, Jane Austen and Marcel Proust.

Jane Austen's Books
From Jane Austen's books, including  Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park, we can learn about what it means to get to know yourself as you mature, and to realize that you might not be the person who you thought you were, and the people that you thought you knew can be quite different from who you thought they were.

Jane Austen's Historical Home

We learn how to take the perspective of seeing ourselves through someone else's eyes.

In Sense and Sensibility, two sisters, who have different ways of relating and responding to their worlds, learn from each other, over time, which helps each of them to gain self understanding as well as a new perspective about others.

There are many lessons to be learned from her books about family relationships and romantic relationships.

Austen also gives us guidance in how to live ethically under unethical or corrupt circumstances.

Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time
Let's look at some examples from another book that is considered a classic, In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust:

As a young Frenchman, the protagonist falls in love with Albertine, whom he first sees at a beach resort called Balbec, which was modeled after the resort town of Cabourg in France.

In Search of Lost Time: Balbec (Cabourg, France)

Initially, he is obsessed with her and her friends and tries to find ways to meet them.

After he begins a relationship with Albertine and she moves in with him in Paris, he is torn with ambivalence as to whether he wants to remain in the relationship or he wants to end it.

While she is awake, he is tormented with jealousy and suspicion, and he wants to end it, but when she is asleep, all the love and tender feelings that he has for her arise in him again, and he wants to remain in the relationship.

As most people know from their own experiences, being in love often involves ambivalence as well as irrational behavior, including irrational jealousy where there is no objective reason to be jealous.

The protagonist wants Albertine to love him more, but how he goes about trying to increase her passion for him (by being dismissive and rejecting her) has the opposite effect.

Rather than serving to increase her passion, his emotional distance and rejecting nature serve only to alienate her and she eventually gets fed up and leaves him.

After she leaves, he realizes that he made a terrible mistake and, after a few false starts, he eventually writes to her offering to do anything to get her back.

The story goes on with many twists and turns.

Reading this part of the story, many people could identify with the protagonist's ambivalence and his irrational behavior, including believing that a "cold shoulder" towards a loved one would make the loved one even more passionate to pursue the relationship.

No doubt sometimes giving a lover a "cold shoulder" might work temporarily, but it often backfires in the end (if it works at all), as many people who do this realize when they're thinking more clearly.

In addition to the psychological insights about romantic relationships and friendships, Proust gives many other examples where people use psychological defense mechanisms, including denial, to cope with difficult situations.

As an example, Charles Swann, who is in love with Odette and wants to pursue a relationship with her, receives an anonymous warning letter about Odette's personal history of having many sexual affairs with rich. The letter also reveals that she worked as a sex worker.  At the time, during the Belle Epoque, this would have been scandalous and detrimental for Swann's reputation.

In Search of Lost Time: Swann In Love With Odette

Swann is intelligent and has a momentary insight that Odette is only interested in him for his money, but he is also somewhat naive.

With an unconscious gesture of wiping his glasses clean, which is a metaphor for his defense mechanism of not wanting to see, he ignores the warning signs. Instead, he pursues the relationship to his detriment.

Rather than giving a lengthy explanation about Swann's unconscious choice of ignoring his insights and the warning letter, Proust shows Swann making the a small unconscious gesture of wiping his glasses clean.  From this small unconscious gesture, the reader can see what Swann refuses to see the problems involved with this relationship.

Many people could identify with Charles Swann and remember times when they ignored internal and external warnings by pursuing a relationship fraught with problems because this is a common mistake that many people make when they fall in love.

As another example, many of the characters are either part of the aristocracy or part of the bourgeoisie in Paris.  Madame Verdurin, who is a bourgeois Bohemian hostess, has social gatherings with her "little clan" of acquaintances, including artists and musicians.

Proust, who is an astute observer of interpersonal relationships and who used composites of people that he knew in his book, provides us with a humorous description of Madame Verdurin, who outwardly professes a disdain for aristocrats by calling them "bores" and professing that she would never attend one of their social events.

Despite what she says, everything else about her, her gestures, her looks, her demeanor, says how much she really longs to be accepted by French aristocracy, who reject her early on in the story.

During that same time period, Sigmund Freud was writing about how unconscious thoughts manifest, despite what the conscious mind might believe.  Similarly, In Search of Lost Time, Proust gives us rich descriptions of the unconscious thoughts and motivations of his characters, including the narrator, Monsieur Swann and Madame Verdurin.

Sigmund Freud and the Unconscious Mind

Reading about the unconscious thoughts and motivations of the characters in the story, you can't help but recognize yourself and others, if not in exactly the same situation, then in other situations where denial was used as a psychological defense mechanism.

In Search of Lost Time is about many things, including an aspiring writer's struggle to develop confidence in himself and in his writing, how unconscious memories are aroused by certain sensory experiences, the passage of time, how people and places change over time, and how our perspective about life and relationships can also change over time.

While reading literature with complex characters, a reader can have psychological insights might come to the reader as epiphanies about him or herself.  

Other times, it will come as a recognition that the reader is similar to a character in the book. 

It might also come as a relief that these psychological phenomena are common to other people and not just to the reader.

About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.