Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-01-11
YOUR FORGETFULNESS
BY H. Addington Bruce

| ~ ONE time ago you bought course OF
lessons on memory improvement.
~ You felt you needed such course be-
cause of troublesome forgetfulness about
important as well as little matters in every
day life ..
| So you started at the lessons enthusiastic
cally. You studied them assiduously. To
your disgust you are as forgetful as ever. Yet
others testify glowingly to the benefit they
have derived from the very same lessons.
Hence you are beginning to fear that there
must be something radically wrong with your
apparatus for remembering. The suspicion
is growing in your mind that you suffer from
constitutional and incurab1e inability to
store away things seen or heard.
Cheer up. The situation Is probably moth
ing like as bad as that. In fact, the chances
are that you have as much storage power in
your memory as anybody else, and that it is
not power Of conservation but power of re-
call in which you are deficient
More than that, it is altogether likely that
you are deficient in power of recall, not
because of any inherent weakness so far as
your memory itself is concerned, but because
without knowing it, you have allowed your
self to become unduly sensitive to whatever
is unpleasant to you. Your forgetfulness,
that is to say, may be due to nothing more
than an emotional blocking.
Memory recall, as you probably are aware,
depends at bottom on association of ideas.
One idea gives rise to another, that to a
third, bringing up finally the idea to be re-
called Psychologists have found that if
some highly unpleasant idea has a place in
the chain of connection, the latter is apt to
be broken in order to keep the unpleasant
idea from coming up in the mind. At once
there results weakness in memory recall.
Take, to make the situation clearer, an eG-
ample from real life-the case of certain
forgetful young woman described in DIR. I.
Fl. Coriat's recently published "Repressed
Emotions" This young woman showed a
singular inability to remember even words
and phrases in common usage.
For one thing, she could not remember
the phrase latent powers" Tunnelling into
her mind by modern psychological devices, it
was discovered that this phrase was associat-
ed with the memory-image of her brother
who had destroyed his own Understanding
latent powers through addiction to alcohol,
TO think Of her brother was therefore most
distressing to her. The phrase Latent pow
ers would make her think of his sad fate.
So she forgot it.
Similarly with other things she persistent
~ forgot. One and all they were found link
ed with painful ideas. Consequently it be-
came apparent that what this extremely for
getIul young woman most needed was not
memory training, but training in emotional
control Given such training, her memory
soon became far less slippery
mat IS what you, too, may most need
You may need to school yourself to react
less violently to the unpleasant, to learn to
lace painful realities calmly, to cultivate a
serene optimism In your attitude to life gen
orally With increasing control over your
emotions you may then find no further need
Whatever for any course in systematic mem
DRY training 0--1
Inc less one has reason, conscious or i'm
conscious to forget things, the less will one
forget. VIII o1o
copyright, 1921, by the Associated News
papers)