User talk:Karen Wager-Smith

Memory reconsolidation and psychotherapy
Welcome to Wikipedia, and thanks for your recent additions to the articles on memory consolidation, integrative psychotherapy, common factors theory, and psychotherapy. Please note that the articles on integrative psychotherapy and common factors theory use citation styles that are different from each other and from the other articles you edited. Therefore, when inserting references in these articles it is necessary to change the formatting of the references to match the citation style of the article (per WP:CITEVAR). I edited the citations to fit the citation style of each article; this is something to keep in mind in the future.

It should also be noted that the conclusions of some of the researchers that you mentioned are not entirely without controversy; in keeping with the Wikipedia policy of neutral point of view, I added a reference to an article by Cristina M. Alberini that indicates a different conclusion from the conclusion that Ecker et al. have reached. Here is a relevant quotation from that article (p. 323):

I must disagree, then, with the idea that reconsolidation fully explains the process of change in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy (Lane et al. 2014; Ecker, Ticic, and Hulley 2012). I see reconsolidation as a selective component that, together with the formation of new memories (which includes the extinction and reprocessing of emotional representations), leads to changes in the processing of implicit and explicit mental responses (Alberini, Johnson, and Ye 2013; Alberini, Ansermet, and Magistretti 2013). This expands our understanding of, without being in conflict with, the classical view of how the transferential process of working through is therapeutic. Based on the currently available data, I generally agree with Tuch's conclusion that experiences cannot be entirely erased and that the core of "emotional memories are durable and continue to exert influence over an individual's emotional life even after the transference has been 'worked through'" (p. 311). I also agree that given the important contributions of repeated and/or old experiences a successful therapy may be the result of "the modification of unconscious associational networks brought about by 'weakening links between mental processes that have become associatively linked.... [This involves] the creation of new associative linkages, or the strengthening of links that were previously weak'" (p. 311). It should be recognized, however, that the studies on memory consolidation and reconsolidation provide us scientific knowledge for use in designing more precise and effective therapeutic interventions targeting these long-lasting emotional memories.

Based on the data available thus far, I propose that in a psychoanalytic setting both reconsolidation and new memory formation occur upon recall. Recalling complex declarative or episodic memories, as in psychotherapy, entails the recall of components and memories from different ages, as well as their continual updating. Thus, recall likely reactivates, simultaneously, both recent and older memory traces with implicit and explicit components. Further, memory retrieval is always unique and complex; thus, its modalities will dictate whether or not reconsolidation and/or another retrieval-mediated process (e.g., extinction or consolidation) will take place. For example, retrieval without the conditioning contingency (the trauma), when repeatedly experienced, is known to induce extinction, a new learning that informs the subject that the trauma itself does not always happen, thus leading to a decrease in the conditioned response to the trauma. This new memory coexists with the old memory of the experienced trauma, but changes the behavioral response to it.

I hope that you will continue to contribute your knowledge to Wikipedia. Biogeographist (talk) 04:39, 5 September 2015 (UTC)