Memory, Narrative and the Search for Identity in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Second Chance (Kestenbaum, 2003)

The significance of “Memory, Narrative and the Search for Identity in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Second Chance” is its attempt to answer the age-old questions: Why is it important to examine the past and how does collective memory of a people or personal memory of an individual help establish an identity? The article provided examples by renowned authors and philosophers, past and present, and although the paper was published in 2003, it opened the door to future neuroscience researchers who today are using innovative techniques in exploring the mind/brain synthesis. Researchers have hypothesized that early mother-child interaction is crucial for the normal development of the orbitofrontal cortex and postulated that early stressful experiences may permanently damage this part of the brain, causing subsequent psychiatric disorders.

I began the article by noting that one aspect of the human condition is the need to create order out of chaos. For Virginia Woolf, writing put a frame around life events and created stories, but are the stories true? Narrative, whether describing true or imagined events, defines life events that place us in a particular time and space and provides us with answers to the questions: Who are we, where did we come from, and where are we going? Human beings need to record the history they believe is true and want to teach the generations that follow them in their perceived reflections.

The second section of the article concerns the attachment system promulgated by John Bowlby who stressed the importance of early memory, even before coherent language develops. He believed that early mother-child interaction (mother implies the nurturing figure) is

crucial for normal development to proceed, as exemplified by Piaget, Freud, and E