Show Me How to Say No to This
In the 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a heartbroken man played by Jim Carrey undergoes an experimental treatment to erase memories of his ex-girlfriend, played by Kate Winslet, following their painful breakup. When the film came out, using drugs or other technologies to meddle with memory, especially as a way of healing from a traumatic relationship, was not exactly feasible in the real world.
Early this year, though, a real-life technique for memory modification in response to heartbreak hit the newsstands. The coverage centered on Alain Brunet, a psychiatrist and expert in post-traumatic stress disorder at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In his lab, Brunet works with victims of what he calls “romantic betrayals.” These can range from harassment by a former lover to sudden abandonment by a long-term partner. He uses a technique known as reconsolidation therapy, which combines a drug-based treatment with practical exercises to change the emotional content of disturbing recollections. “We don’t treat the symptoms,” Brunet says of his method, “we treat the memory.”
Unlike the fictional staff of Lacuna, Inc., the memory-erasure firm in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Brunet and his collaborators stop short of trying to “delete” traumatic memories altogether. “You don’t forget your memory,” Brunet stresses, asking, “Who would want to forget their love story?” Rather, the goal of the therapy is to keep the memory intact while removing its traumatic aspects. Here is how this works:
An hour before a therapy session, the patient is given a dose—between 50 mg and 80 mg—of a beta-blocker called propranolol, and is asked to write a summary of the traumatic experience, following a strict format: a first-person text in the present tense that describes at least five physical sensations felt at the time of the event. By reading the summary out loud, the patient “reactivates” the memory, and does so over four to six weekly sessions, under the influence of propranolol. At every reading, the memory is “recorded again” while the drug suppresses the pain it contains.
The therapy has
