Remembering What’s Good for You

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Denise Beike

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — In the wake of Sept. 11, media contacted University of Arkansas psychologist Denise Beike to ask how mourning relatives and friends might eventually find “closure” for their grief. She told them closure is a property of memory, and ultimately what counts is how we remember our experiences, both painful and pleasurable.

For 15 years, Beike has been studying that mysterious process called memory. She defines two types, open and closed. Open memories are those that still haunt us, that perhaps we dwell on, while closed memories are marked by an absence of emotion and an objectivity that Beike believes is psychologically healthy for people.

“Why shouldn’t people want to remember the strong feelings associated with past memories, good and bad?” Beike asks. “Because we need to live in the present and base our decisions on what is happening now.”

Beike and other researchers have found a good deal of evidence suggesting that in adjusting to traumatic events, “working through” grief is not necessary. Plowing through those feelings may not ultimately prove helpful in reducing the emotional content of painful memories.

Dwelling on open memories decreases a person’s self-esteem and often leads to unhappiness and depression. Closure, on the other hand, seems to be an adaptive state of memory that not only increases self-esteem, but also has health benefits as well.

Beike addresses another important aspect of memory she researches in “Adieu to All That,” an article that appeared in the November/December issue of Psychology Today. Autobiographical memory, or how we remember and reconstruct our lives, became a major focus of researchers in the 1980s. Up to that time, memory was studied primarily as the recollection of lists and facts.

In the article, which is focused on the emotional impact of beginnings and endings, such as quitting a job, leaving a long-time relationship or launching a new career, Beike points out that it’s not how you end things that finally matters, but how you later remember the event.

Memories of such events remain open when people struggle to understand their meaning. While the struggle may motivate some to act and make important decisions, more often people become unhealthy and even depressed if they continue to experience intense feelings when they remember important events in their lives.

“I’m most intrigued by why it is so important for people to remember their feelings and re-experience them,” said Beike, an associate professor in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. “While 85 percent of people we’ve studied believe they can relive the original emotions from previous experiences, the fact is, they don’t.”

Perhaps that need springs from the emotional culture of today, one of talk shows and a general belief that sharing every emotion is good.

Beike and others have also demonstrated the fading affect of memory: the longer the time that has passed from an experience, the less a person feels about it, good or bad. Older people, in particular, are generally better able to focus on positive memories and are less upset when faced with unpleasant occurrences.

In her future research, Beike plans to study the autobiographical memory of people older than 60, whose memory she thinks improves in some ways as they age, such as an increased ability to master and transform memories into wisdom.