In obsessive disorder, part of the cases concern the so-called psychic hypochondria, or simply concern the control and concerned verification of some mental functions. One of the most popular is memory: people worry that they may have a disease that begins with memory loss, or they simply begin to control their ability to remember, but they do it in a forced and free way, that is not so much starting from some problem, but from a doubt of not having the usual memory anymore. In some cases it is not a worry of loss, but an attempt to understand how to make the most of memory, to make the brain perform at its maximum potential. The behavior is the same, i.e. continuous checks on the memory with a disappointing or uncertain outcome,
A film that brilliantly represents the absurdity of obsessive memory control and “Memento”, a film that starts from a scientific starting point, which then turns out to be in reality an alibi, a screen. The protagonist presents himself as someone who has lost the ability to fix new memories after a trauma. Until the moment of the trauma he remembers everything, after and total darkness. He no longer fixes new information, he remembers having had new information. If he knows someone, after a few hours he doesn’t recognize him anymore, if he writes a note after a few hours he won’t remember taking it. He remembers that he has to avenge his wife, raped and killed by a stranger, and then sets out in search of the killer. To avoid always starting over, at least he tattooes on himself the information he gradually obtains from his searches, so that he unwittingly sees them every day on his arm, leg etc. It also writes which are the points from which she must start, the basis of her history and her research. It writes about who can be trusted and who should be wary, who is sincere and who is trying to cheat him, and keeps photos of whatever happens, so that every day he can check what happened, where and about whom. On each photo he writes quick comments to avoid making mistakes already made. so that every day he can verify what happened, where and about whom. On each photo he writes quick comments to avoid making mistakes already made. so that every day he can verify what happened, where and about whom. On each photo he writes quick comments to avoid making mistakes already made.
In the end, a paradoxical fact will be discovered: the things that the protagonist writes to himself and himself to have them “manipulated” from the start, because he did not want to accept the truth. His wife had not died after the rape, but she had committed suicide because she could not bear that he was mentally no longer normal. He had rejected this version, for too much pain, and had canceled the evidence, writing false notes, because he knew that he would wake up the next day not remembering having known the truth, and would start again from his notes, false, that the they would have led in a completely different direction. What he insists is the basis of all research (facts, not words, not interpretations) are ultimately the most manipulable thing of all. Just as those who study history know that “documents” they are nothing more than hypotheses of reality, theoretically false or bogus, so even in memory the verifications are, paradoxically, even less true than the things that are known intuitively. Furthermore, the unwelcome truths are obscured, and the person continues looking for them again, because this avoids fixing an unwelcome thing as a definitive memory.
Those who are worried about their memory end up presenting themselves a bit like this protagonist, that is, one who “has no memory”, is generally afraid of being able to forget things, or having done them without remembering them anymore, or being able to do things systematically without staring at them and take it into account. In a second phase he “fixes” on the idea of ​​having to write everything down, verify, have fixed points, also know the obvious, and that the obvious no longer exists, there must be a certainty before affirming even normal or trivial things . In a third phase he ends up not being sure of anything anymore, and having to ask others by pretending not to remember, to be forgetful, or to be “confused”. In this way the obsession ends up creating a sort of operational “confusion”, flooding of the memory, that is what was the initial fear that the obsession should have avoided, keeping the memory under control in a continuous and scrupulous way. Anyone who tries to remember all the phone numbers on the list to make sure they remember their own will eventually remember two or three of people they don’t even know and they won’t be sure of their own. Obsession is not madness with respect to logic, but to the “operational” level, because it proceeds by logic but interferes with the ability to make choices, actions and to live naturally, in that mixture of experience, theoretical knowledge and instinct that and the real, uncontrollable key to human activities. keeping the memory under control continuously and scrupulously. Anyone who tries to remember all the phone numbers on the list to make sure they remember their own will eventually remember two or three of people they don’t even know and they won’t be sure of their own. Obsession is not madness with respect to logic, but to the “operational” level, because it proceeds by logic but interferes with the ability to make choices, actions and to live naturally, in that mixture of experience, theoretical knowledge and instinct that and the real, uncontrollable key to human activities. keeping the memory under control continuously and scrupulously. Anyone who tries to remember all the phone numbers on the list to make sure they remember their own will eventually remember two or three of people they don’t even know and won’t be sure of their own. Obsession is not madness with respect to logic, but to the “operational” level, because it proceeds by logic but interferes with the ability to make choices, actions and to live naturally, in that mixture of experience, theoretical knowledge and instinct that and the real, uncontrollable key to human activities.
A thousand tests will create a memory problem, and take your mind off the obvious and instinctive truths that have always been there, at your fingertips. A thousand checks also increase the probability of error, because they open a thousand “ifs” and “buts” starting from a truth already known or suspected, and therefore strengthen the hypothesis contrary to infinity, only on a logical basis. On the one hand a provisional truth, empirical but natural, on the other an infinite series of purely logical confirmations to a contrary hypothesis, whereby the person will end up choosing according to logic and making a mistake. Worse, at times he will discover that he has manipulated the empirical truth to return the logical confirmations to the other hypothesis, and to have therefore obsessively constructed his own error with the very method that he believed to be perfect for avoiding it.
