Erasing Details Of Bad Memories

An anonymous reader writes "People can be trained to forget specific details associated with bad memories, according to breakthrough findings that may lead the way for the development of new depression and post-traumatic stress disorder therapies. New study (abstract), published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, reveals that individuals can be taught to forget personal feelings associated with an emotional memory without erasing the memory of the actual event."

Comments

A little worried about this

[BluPhenix316]

Ok I originally was just going to say something goofy about this but this does have my concerned a little bit. I am a soldier in the US Army and PTSD is a really bad thing. It affects a lot more people than even the media is portraying. The thing is though, most people who get it easily "cope" with it by just talking about the event with people they feel understand it. From that point they use those hard emotions to do positive things. Atleast in the military, they usually become trainers for other people, or even invest that time in artistic ways. This all depends though on the severity of the event. The trend i'm beginning to notice though is that most of the more severe cases of PTSD i've ran across in the military are usually attached to something else though. I'm sure something like this could really benefit the more serious cases of PTSD. On the other hand, for the less serious cases people have acutally used those emotional memories to fuel positive change.

Both good for the individual & bad for society

[bill_mcgonigle]

PTSD is reassuring for me in a way - if humans were truly naturally murderous beasts, as some would like to insist, PTSD would be very rare or non-existant. But it isn't, and we're not built for heinous acts - more bonobo than chimp, as it were.

The trick is, if PTSD is 'curable' then there are even fewer consequences for sending in men to do terrible things to other people. We're already learning that the lower the domestic cost of war is, the more politicians engage in it. I don't want veterans to suffer, but this is all headed in the wrong direction.