REMEMBERING TECHNIQUES
1. Remembering Pleasant Things
Remembering is the lightest use of free attention to the past. It should begin with light, easy memories.
For a client to remember a fact about the past (just any un-tense fact) is an achievement, however small, and will have some good effect. To remember successful or pleasant things will have more effect in pulling attention away from the tension patterns.
2. Moving Quickly to Different Kinds of Memories
When working on a remembering level, each question should be directed to a different kind of memory. The questions can be phrased in groups to ask for ordinary memories, memories of rational activity, memories of successes, or pleasant memories, roughly in that order as the client's ability to remember improves.
Unless the change of topic is followed, incidents remembered may turn out to be (or lead into) incidents of severe tension which are more than the client is able to evaluate at the time. In that case, the free attention will become bogged, requiring beginning over with the lighter techniques.
3. Remembering Little Upsets
This procedure of quick, random remembering will also work on small incidents of upset, i.e., little experiences which are upsetting primarily because they restimulate earlier tensions. If the client is asked questions about little upsets, moving from one type to another quickly and not dwelling long on each, considerable evaluation will take place. Short bursts of laughter will often occur and the release of tension and the re-evaluation of experiences will proceed in small increments.
You are now beginning to tackle the stored up tensions of the client but still on a light level, still moving swiftly from incident to incident lest any one of them be so heavy as to engulf and bog all the free attention of the client. Even with a client who is able to handle heavier techniques, you will usually start a session by asking, "What good happened to you last week?" and after he has narrated that, then, "Any upsets last week?" He will run over on memory level the little restimulations of the week and so clear his attention for working at the heavier techniques for which he is then prepared.
4. From Random to Similar
Remembering by the client does not demand a very large amount of free attention to be successful but in its lightest form will require a random kind of shift from one kind of memory to another, not allowing the client's attention to stay in one kind of incident or in one area very much. This will keep the attention from being over-engaged in too heavy material onto which you happen accidentally or which becomes restimulated.
It is possible to apply remembering to similar incidents. When this is done to a series of incidents, more attention is required on the part of the client for it to be successful.
5. Rapid Review or Scanning
With enough free attention available, it becomes possible to have the client do a kind of a rapid review through a series of similar experiences (what is often called "scanning"). Here the client is asked for the earliest available memory of a certain kind and then reviews later similar experiences in roughly chronological order all the way up to the present. Repeating, he begins once more at the earliest experience of this kind that is remembered and reviews the list again to the present. This will be done over many times.
The client can review such a chain of experiences mentally without talking about them, but the ability of the counselor to be aware enough of what is going on so as to be able to help and steer is limited by such a silent review. A combination of talking and silently reviewing material seems to work well and rapidly.
In this, the client recounts verbally all the experiences as he/she first remembers them, but on repetition of the series, reviews the ones that have already been mentioned silently and verbalizes only on the new incidents as they show up. In this way, a very large number of experiences of a certain type, most of which are restimulations of the same patterns, can be reviewed in a short period of time. Discharge may occur with the verbalization or even with the silent reviews, and the short bursts of laughter or angry exclamations will not interfere or slow down the reviewing process.
Also, the experiences which were first remembered will drop off the list on repeated reviewings, i.e., they will seem to become forgotten or mislaid. The actual process apparently is that they become enough evaluated that the identification with that particular pattern is broken.
Finally the series of experiences will seem to have been reviewed to the point where it is difficult to remember them any more. Sometimes clients will say, "They have all faded." They will begin to talk about new experiences which are the reverse of the original category; i.e., someone who has been reviewing the times when "father was mean" will begin to talk about the times when "father was kind." Sometimes the client will persistently go to a new topic and begin reviewing experiences on that topic instead of being able to stay with the one you have been going over any longer. All these are indications that the series chain has been reviewed as far as it can be at this time, that you are through with this technique.
Some Will Not Fade
Some of the experiences in the series which you are reviewing are likely to be so full, of tension that they will begin to loom larger and larger to the client as they are reviewed. Sometimes the client will say he is unable to think of anything else except this one experience. Sometimes she or he will be able at the counselor's request to "go around" that one and leave it off the list.
If the client is able to discharge emotion well and begins to discharge on one of these large experiences, then you may proceed in that direction, but you should realize that you are moving to a heavier technique away from the comparatively light reviewing.
Special Advantages
There are many special advantages to this technique because it allows the client's attention to travel without additional direction all the way from the earliest experience on the chain to present time. It permits certain of the client's mental abilities to operate freely and to sort out the list of significant experiences with great accuracy and precision. Thorough scanning out of a chain attached to the particular symptom or difficulty of a client will present the material that needs to be evaluated in order to relieve that symptom very, very accurately. Sometimes the difficulty can be keyed out in a most dramatic fashion simply by the scanning process itself. Where this is not sufficient, however, the remaining incidents are dug out and presented to view for evaluation with heavier techniques.
Regaining of Knowledge
Another unusual advantage of this is in the recovery of occluded or lost information. Educational courses, skills, languages, which were once useable by the client or which he/she studied can be brought to light and made once again useable by this repetitive review. Much of the information in school courses is often taken in by a student at the level of boredom and can be dusted off and actually come to be understood for the first time by this process.
To do this, simply begin at the beginning of the course; have the client relate every single thing he remembers, every detail, every scrap of information, every experience, every upset, that occurred in connection with this course from the beginning right up to present time and then on repetition have him review the things he's already mentioned silently, speaking only on the new material that comes to mind. Continue repetitively until the entire series is vague or until heavier techniques are indicated for the experiences which are left.