01/05/2023
What seems like a reaction to some present circumstance is, in fact, a reliving of past emotional experience. This subtle but pervasive process in the body, brain, and nervous system has been called implicit memory, as compared to the explicit memory apparatus that recalls events, facts, and circumstances. According to the psychologist and memory researcher Daniel Schacter, implicit memory is active โwhen people are influenced by past experience without any awareness that they are remembering.โฆ If we are unaware that something is influencing our behavior, there is little we can do to understand or counteract it. The subtle, virtually undetectable nature of implicit memory is one reason it can have powerful effects on our mental lives.โ12 Whenever a person โoverreactsโโthat is, reacts in a way that seems inappropriately exaggerated to the situation at handโwe can be sure that implicit memory is at work. The reaction is not to the irritant in the present but to some buried hurt in the past. Many of us look back puzzled on some emotional explosion and ask ourselves, โWhat the heck was that about?โ It was about implicit memory; we just didnโt realize it at the time.
~Gabor Matรฉ, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addictionยฐ
