or drug effects. All of this takes place in the Active Experience.
Before I describe the Active Experience, let me review several features of your memory. Memories are either active or dormant. The active memories are “awake” and available in the Active Experience for creating our behavior. Dormant memories are inactive, as though “asleep,” but nevertheless ready to be triggered into the Active Experience. Even when a memory is dormant, it is potentially active because it can be elicited or called into the Active Experience. Here is an example. I am going to ask you a question, but you don’t know the answer to the question. Pause here and think about the answer. If I ask when you last rode a bicycle, your response or memory of riding a bicycle becomes active in response to my question. You consciously experienced the memory of riding a bicycle. If you had pain and a fast heart rate associated with that memory, you might experience pain and a fast heart rate after hearing the question.
The Active Experience is a construct to give you a way to think about all active memories and emotions that are available for creating our internal and external behavior. The Active Experience construct helps distinguish between dormant and active responses.
The Active Experience
The Active Experience (see Figure 3-4, next page) is a construct used to represent all neural activity that is available to create events in our conscious and unconscious experience. The neural activity includes active ongoing behavior, Content and Emotion Memories, internal and external stimulation, background processes, and organ and brain functions. Everything else is dormant — namely, not active in the Active Experience. Suppose you learned as a child to slap a fly on your cheek. That memory is dormant until a fly lands on your cheek. Then it wakes up and becomes active — you slap your cheek.
The Basic Neurostructure shown in Figure 3-4 (next page) works on the neural activity in the Active Experience to create collages that cause our internal and external behavior. All active Content and Emotion Memories and other neural activity in the Active Experience are related in some way. The Basic Neurostructure uses some of these active memories to create collages.
Collages of memories run our behavior in the same way that computer programs run computers. The neural activity triggered by the collage of memories that creates activity in our body to make a response is similar to a computer program. The Basic Neurostructure takes the most appropriate Content Memories in the Active Experience in the current emotional context to create a collage. The Content Memories and emotions in the collage create a response. In other words, any response and its memory are a collage of the most appropriate memories assembled from all of this information in the Active Experience. The most appropriate memories in an emotional situation are selected from the active memories in the Active Experience to get more satisfaction and less pain.
The association process
The association process serves an important function. Active memories activate other memories that are similar in content or emotion. The association process prevents dormant memories that are similar, but remotely related, from being activated. It effectively screens out similar memories that are unlikely to be used in a collage. The association process is represented by the “dark line” surrounding the Active Experience (see Figure 3-5). This process is gradually learned after birth and will only allow relevant information into the Active Experience that is related in some way to the stimulation and active memories. If it is too liberal and allows even slightly related memories into the Active Experience, we have “loose associations.” Loose association is a condition that allows content related in someway to be easily triggered into the Active Experience. Here is an example: The sight of a pencil could elicit the thought of a hotdog. On the other hand, “concrete thinking” is a problem where the association process is too restrictive and words are taken literally. For example, suppose someone says, “I’m going to fly down to the store.” A person with concrete thinking or tight associations might ask, “Do you need a ride to the airport?” Besides the association process, we have the dissociation process.
The dissociation process
The dissociation process (see Figure 3-6) helps us in an important way. With the development of volitional behavior, the dissociation process developed naturally to remove active memories and emotions that were unnecessary in our conscious awareness to simplify conscious activity. T he dissociation process, for instance, is at work when you take a walk. It has separated, into the unconscious, all of the sensations that are present in your body when you walk. There is no need for them to be conscious for you to walk. If they were conscious, all of the information would be overwhelming. The dissociation process also helps you read by dissociating traffic noises. It is involved with adapting to our circumstances by dissociating visual or auditory information or any other sensory experience or memory that is unnecessary in our conscious experience. This process helps a person to get more satisfaction and to avoid pain by keeping painful memories or emotions in the unconscious.
The Main Personality is usually who we are, in the simplest sense, from before birth to the present. The Main Personality uses the dissociation process so there is an unconscious and conscious experience (see Figure 3-7). I always draw the Subconscious in the space below the Active Experience, because it appears that the subconscious only accesses memories and emotions active in the Active Experience.
Here is the way the association and dissociation process can affect the Main Personality. We can learn to consciously control both the dissociation and association processes. When someone has a terrible experience that is painful to remember, he or she can consciously use the dissociation and association process to hide the memory and not easily remember it. We know people who can consciously “stuff emotions down” so they don’t have to feel them. They are using the dissociation and association processes. In addition, a person with a trauma history can learn to automatically hide or dissociate painful memories so, when they become active, they do not become conscious. When painful experiences are dissociated, either as a learned process or deliberately, we call the unconscious memories repressed memories.
Dissociated painful memories can return spontaneously with or without further experience and intrude into our thoughts and emotions. Sometimes, treatment techniques or the experiencing of a similar trauma can result in the return of conscious experience of previously dissociated memories. When one removes the dissociative process, the Main Personality can again experience the dissociated or repressed content and emotions. Remember that the parts or aspects caused by the dissociative process are different from amnesic parts. Severe trauma and an absence of previous experience cause amnesic parts. The association and dissociation processes are also active in denial.
Amnesic parts and memories
Now, let us look at how amnesic memories or parts are formed. When we look at the time duration of trauma (see Figure 3-8), we know that trauma with moderate pain can start and then continue for some duration until it ends. We can remember moderate trauma easily and can tell somebody about the traumatic experience. But when the trauma is new and has never been experienced before —namely, when there is no memory to manage the situation, and the trauma either evokes extreme emotions or is experienced as life-threaten-ing (for example, a near-drowning experience) — the brain mobilizes. This means that the intense emotions mobilize memories that operate independently of the Main Personality to create responses to survive. Because the Main Personality is not generating behavior, it is rapidly “pushed out” of the Active Experience to become inactive or dormant. At this point, a trauma part forms. The executive function associates with the new trauma structure and participates in organizing the memories