Reviews for Supermemory, a quick-action program for memory improvement

The average rating for Supermemory, a quick-action program for memory improvement based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-16 00:00:00 Michael Carney She talks about a revolution in psychotherapy which is questioning the limitations of 'talk' therapies. This recognition has led to the development of body-centered therapies such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor (PBSP),more simply, psychomotor therapy. Traditional psychotherapy starts in the frontal lobe and is 'top down' in the sense that it relies upon language to effect change. However, when previous trauma (including small 't' traumas such as neglect, betrayals etc.) evokes physical responses, those biological events become lodged in the body even if we can arrive at a cognitive frame that resolves the issue. The body-centered therapies are more 'bottom up' and recognize the importance of the body in our emotions and, in turn, our emotions in our everyday experiences (See Damasio here). "The body keeps the score". (This ties in with the concept of allopathic load which has been associated with susceptibility to disease and illness). "..a newly evolving definition of what is meant by a 'self'-one that isn't solely psychological in nature but includes the deeper, wordless levels of the brain and body's nervous circuitry-s in the process of emerging." (This is not a new concept as others have written of the body as the repository of the unconscious. What is new is the way in which some of the new neurosciences are corroborating this). "..the body has a way of remembering those things we most wish to forget." This fits nicely with an observation of Alexander McLeod:"We are made most specifically by the things we cannot bear to do." Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involves staring death in the face such as combat situations or violent personal assault. "Moreover the diagnosis requires that the person experiencing the trauma must have responded with 'intense fear, helplessness or horror..'" The author refers to this as big T trauma and argues that there are many episodes of 'little t trauma' leading to what she calls post-traumatic stress, often carried as bodily symptoms. These are not rare with one study stating that 60% of adult men and 51% of adult women experienced events that qualified as traumas. "We now know that there are many situations in which we are having powerful somatic reactions to experiences that may have long since slipped beneath the surface of awareness." She uses the interesting term 'physioneurosis' for the results of such events. "Not only does the body remember, but the original story goes on being told and retold in disguised form-often as incomprehensibly powerful emotional and physical reactions or as inexplicable, self-damaging, repetitive patterns of behavior." "...the primary underlying motive for secret keeping has to do with shame. Secrets are founded upon the belief that if certain aspects of your life and history were to see daylight, you would not be regarded as an acceptable human being; you would be seen, and see yourself, as outside the pale of decency, the shameful violator of some kind of taboo. When it comes to holding back or opening up, fears of spoiling other people's images of you or of disrupting important relationships are always being weighed in the balance against the heavy psychological and interpersonal burdens of living alone with the information." "A number of research studies indicate that 'abused men and boys tend to identify with the aggressor and later victimize others whereas abused women are prone to become attached to abusive men and allow themselves and their offspring to be victimized further." The new body therapies or power therapies use the body's memory of past events to gain access to regions deep within the emotional brain...the limbic system, where oversensitive networks of reacting have been established. I found this book very useful as an update on thinking in these areas. I was a bit frustrated that in the rich clinical descriptions she uses all the individuals are women. Any men mentioned are simply abusive either emotionally or physically or unavailable emotionally (which she would define as emotional abuse). One of her cases involves a women who, in her eyes, had a very satisfactory marriage stating that she had a comfortable home, enjoyed her children etc. when her world came apart as her husband abruptly told her that she needed a lawyer as he wanted a divorce. She learned that he had extramarital affair. The book focuses on her response to this unexpected and devastating turn of events and we only learn later that her husband had been dealing with the death of his own father when this affair developed. This led me to wonder what role she saw for herself in helping her husband cope with an event that is well recognized as highly significant in any man's life...who was emotionally unavailable to whom? The book does not explore this at all. A smaller quibble, though she uses the term 'felt experience' in the book, she does not refer to Eugene Gendlin, who, I believe, first used the term. In any case his work fits in with the concepts in the book and it seems strange that it is nowhere referred to. Despite these issues, I think the book is worthwhile reading for anyone involved in counseling.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-27 00:00:00 Ulrich Horstmann First, let me say that I desperately hate the title of this book because it is so sensationalistic. However, this was my second time reading through the book and both times I found it extremely informative. It really helped me rewire the ways I thought about "little-t trauma" and helped me give myself permission to work on the fears and anxieties I have tied up in "things that were once experienced as overwhelming" without downplaying them.