Memory and Forgetting Lab
A MEMORY AND FORGETTING RESEARCH GROUP BASED ON THE PRINCIPLES OF EXPERIENTIAL RATHER THAN FACTUAL LEARNING
For people diagnosed with memory difficulties—and for those simply learning to relax into the natural forgetfulness that can accompany aging.
Rather than beginning with the question, "How impaired is this person's memory?", we begin somewhere else:
Can we map the unique configuration of memory capacities that remain available to a particular person, connect those capacities with meaningful motivational pathways, and deliberately build psychological and occupational interventions around the adventure of new cognitive and emotional learning?
Many dementia programs use neuropsychological assessment and brain imaging primarily for diagnostic purposes. Cognitive-neuroscience laboratories, meanwhile, study the architecture of memory in extraordinary depth, but generally do not translate an individual memory profile into personalized psychotherapy, occupational practice, and everyday learning.
We are here to explore a different approach.
Through our collaboration, we develop a set of learning goals and introduce structure and specific learning practices into your life. But the direction of this learning is not determined simply by what you are supposed to become better at. Your personality, interests, particular ways of learning, and sources of motivation become part of the process itself.
Cognitive learning does not have to be disconnected from our deepest aspirations and emotional longings.
In this work, we therefore take on a dual role: psychotherapist and learning coach. Together, we approach learning not merely as skill-building, but as a form of meditation—one that takes your particular mind, including its strengths, limitations, habits, curiosities, and learning quirks, as its starting point.
The aim is not simply to recover what has been lost. It is also to discover what can still be learned, imagined, reorganized, and created.
OUR VISION
Your encounter with your ego is where the observable meets the personal.
This is a place for people interested in the workings of their memories, with the goal of becoming free of the old habits of memory browsing.
Spiritual traditions speak of a place of forgetfulness where self-conscious awareness falls away. We are a self-organized group of psychotherapists and scientists interested in how this forgetfulness is different from our ordinary remembering.
We help each other untie a knot of holding on to our memories without losing the preciousness of our connections to the past as we move along in time—or rather, the way we imagine it, as we stay in place while time moves past us.
Saying it simply, we are a community of psychotherapists and scientists concerned with the bigger problem of forgetfulness and remembrance.
We explore how we might loosen our attachment to familiar ways of remembering while maintaining meaningful connections to our experiences, relationships, and personal histories.
OUR VALUES
The principles that guide our exploration. Language is a collective method of memory integration.
Language games allow for the collective and the individual to coexist.
Creativity begins where connection precedes judgment.
Indispensable expertise comes from all walks of life.
Self-expression is indispensable for memory integration.
Openness nourishes self-expression.
Self-expression is like a flower; it needs causes and conditions to bloom.
Communities work best when people's goals align.
One doesn't need to become a scientist to be a scientist.
Following our own interests is vital.
Like in music learning, your working memory system is awaiting to be put into action.
PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH (PAR)
From being the object of cognitive assessment to becoming a participant in discovery.