Doctors Try New Therapy for Phobias

Yes, they can. It's been done before. If a person hangs onto a bad memory, often that is the only one they are able to remember. In the case of combat veterans, they remember, see the outcome of something horrific, but forget what happened before that. They don't remember less strong events and they end up telling themselves there weren't any to remember. They need help re-remembering what they have forgotten and take power back from the bad memory trapping them.

A while ago, I had a veteran of Iraq not being able to let go of something because he felt guilty over it. He ended up telling himself that he was evil because he did it but what he could not remember was all he tried to do to prevent it from happening. He just needed some help to see the "whole movie" instead of just the ending that haunted him. Then he knew what he had to do was not what he wanted to do, but what had to be done. He finally found peace with it.

LAB JOURNAL MARCH 15, 2010 Can You Alter Your Memory? Doctors Try New Therapy for Phobias; Taking the Sting Out Of Childhood Upsets

By SHIRLEY S. WANG
Is it possible to permanently change your memories? A group of scientists thinks so. And their new techniques for altering memories are raising possibilities of one day treating people who suffer from phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety-related conditions.


Some researchers are working with combat veterans, car-accident survivors and rape victims to replace their memories with less fear-filled ones using a familiar hypertension drug. Other scientists are studying whether behavioral therapy can one day be used to modify memories of people who react with fear to common anxiety-producing events. A person bitten by a dog as a child, for instance, might be able to overcome a canine phobia if the old memory can be replaced with a less scary one.

The goal of the research isn't to erase memory outright, as depicted in popular movies over the years. That would raise ethical issues and questions of what would happen to associated memories, scientists say. Instead, "reducing or eliminating the fear accompanying the memory...that would be the ideal scenario," says Roger Pitman, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School who has done extensive work in this area.
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Can You Alter Your Memory