Implicit Memory

By: Dr. Suzanne LaCombe & Terry McGraw, June, 2006.

You could say much of our work in counseling is in making the implicit explicit. In other words, counseling brings consciousness to those aspects of our character and/or our behaviour we have little awareness of.

Implicit memory is comprised of unconscious emotional patterns of relating to ourselves and others. It's the kind of memory you access without thinking. It's what makes you feel characteristically you.

These are the types of behavioural patterns laid down implicitly in the brain:

How do you feel about yourself?

Are you good at self-care? Do you accept all aspects of your personality? Or do you tend to deny yourself, or verbally beat yourself up?

How are you with others?

Do you naturally gravitate towards others and enjoy their company? Or do you prefer being on your own?

Implicit memory guides our behavior automatically, without thought or effort. You can think of implicit memory as a set of instructions or procedures encoded in the brain. However, a procedure can't easily be described in words or contained in images. These procedures are nonconscious and nonverbal.

Implicit memory starts early

For the first 18 months of our lives the implicit memory system is online establishing the basis of our character. Explicit memory, the kind of memory we can consciously recall ("I remember the time when I...."), doesn't come fully online until much later.

After an infant learns to identify her mother's face, voice, touch and smell, she learns how to communicate her needs to this "person", all based on trial and error. Successes and failures are recorded, with particular attention given to memories of interactions with caregivers, and gradually a patterned and predictable way of responding to the world evolves.

This kind of memory is necessarily implicit because the newborn has no conceptual or verbal ability and must depend on its inborn capacity to learn what it needs quickly and nonconsciously, in an environment where survival itself depends on emotional connection.

What's important to understand for counseling.

Implicit memory is procedural. This means implicit memory is difficult to change. For instance, you just can't tell yourself, "Don't be stubborn" and hope this will change you permanently. This is like the left brain telling the right brain what to do. As my colleague Dr. Carole likes to say, "It ain't gonna happen."

Changes to the implicit memory system require a different kind of stimulus. Thankfully, due to the brain's capacity for plasticity these types of changes are possible.

In much the same way that the infant learns via her connection with her mother, we learn in our interactions with our therapist. It is in the safety of the relationship with our therapist that right brain, implicit memory is activated.

My Personal Musings

These ideas are so exciting they have literally inspired much of my writing on this site!

References

Grigsby, Jim & Stevens, David (2000). Neurodynamics of Personality. New York: Guilford Press.

Ledoux, Joseph (1996). The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Touchstone Books.

Schore, Allan (2003). Affect Regulation and Repair of the Self. "The Right Brain, the Right Mind, and Psychoanalysis." New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 205 - 249.

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Introduction
What's with the Reptile?
The Right Brain
Activation
Implicit Memory
Procedural Memory
Joy

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