Two Memory System etc.

Two Memory System

There are two sites of neuronal gating in the brain's fornex-memory apparatus:

1. Amygdala - hippocampal gating. Controlling transfer of content from non-represented, primary-process memory to PrC (a form accessible to representation -- dream shapes). MEM 1

2. Hippocampal - neocortex gating. Controlling application of words (numbers; signs with textual reference) to PrC content, requiring secondary process memory. MEM 2 (conscious recall)

Discovery of discrete excitations in the neocortex and hippocampus provides a site for transferring fully texted material into consciousness. There it can be picked up and become future content ("Oh, I remember thinbking..." -- content wholly contained under sign-use, as opposed to extended). But THE TOKEN, we are saying, supplied by the hipocampus, need not agree with THE TEXT (which disguizes what it reveals; spins, etc.). This explains how how a person's talk can be at odds with their walk, and how their perception does not square with reality.


"SQUARING" of Sign-use

-The Agreement of Text and Token.
The two memory systems function together so that the situation prompting non-verbal (adaptive) reaction is taken up into conscious recall for elaboration by thought.

Note: "inner truth", "true to oneself", is being square, something it is possible to be aware of in communication. This possibility requires, as a component, the understanding of PrC content as part of "oneself". The tendency of the psyche functioning exclusively under the pleasure principle
is to split off --ignore, relabel, deny, repress, attack -- contents incompatible with the conscious standpoint (Jung). This can occur at either gap in the gating of memory impulses. Trauma would close the lower MEM 1 gate, and restrict content imprinted under it from any except allusive dream-representation, where Freud picked up on the process. Or, in those less physically traumatized, but for other reasons reality-conflicted, the undesirable content would be there (in the PrC), but MEM 2 would make sure it did not get expressed, to ward off being re-experienced AS expressed (therefore 'owned', and responsible for.)

It is to clear the functioning of these two memory systems of refusal to face judgmental content which a person has accrued in themselves, things they cannot be reminded of without wanting to punish, that Christianity as a system of sin-forgiveness functions. Bringing to consciousness all that one is under the sense of absolute judgment clears the slate, if temporarily (total cleansing would require total spiritual rebirth). Alternately, Freudian psychoanalytic 'confession' of dream-thoughts without the analyst's critical judgment also allows such clearing, just getting the patient to look at it, accepting it into consciousness, never mind regret, Christian soul mongering, etc.. Gurdjieff denounced 20th century "self-calming" exercizes as maleficence squared, including Freudian psychoanalysis, which he is reported to have particularly despised. However, his school's work methods are based on objective self-observation without judgment, akin to Freud's. But with a different metaphysic, substituting the emotional body for "the unconscious".