On the Imprint: Its Role in Psychotherapy

It seems that by now in Science, we have a good idea of what the imprint is about. Something I did not know about 50 years ago when I first posited the concept. The reason it is so important is that it determines personality, illness, whether we are constipated or not and many other facets of our lives. It is now an established fact in human development. I will explain but let me first say that once we understand the nature of the imprint we understand that no basic change in personality can take place in therapy without altering the imprint.

So what is the imprint? It is a memory, an ensemble of all the circumstances surrounding a key adverse event; a memory of an early trauma encapsulated. It is not just a “memory” in the usual sense of recall or actively going back to consciously retrieve something forgotten in the past. It is an event sealed-in biochemically forevermore and it affects us forevermore. It drives our behavior and the kind of sickness we will suffer from, will be get Alzheimers disease or cancer? The imprint may be able to answer those questions. And you cannot get there from here; you cannot willfully try to retrieve the memory because “willful” is the opposite of what is needed. One needs to let go of high level cortical processes and descend down the levels of consciousness where the imprint exists. And there we find that we cannot reach out to it because it is encapsulated, surrounded by aspects of the methyl chemical group, which helps encase it and make it unreachable. In effect, it is methylation that is heavily responsible for the imprint and its enduring affects. To retrieve the memory we need to “live” on the level of its existence for a time, use the right brain to lift it toward conscious/awareness, and bit by small bit integrate parts of the memory into the brain and the entire system. Thus, we need to de-methylate the memory. Until we do that there can be no profound change in anyone despite all claims to the contrary, notwithstanding. Not meditation, not cognitive therapy, not mindfulness or hundreds of other nonsense approaches that ignore neurobiology. And, I might add, that ignore evolution; how the brain evolves and what levels of the brain are holdovers from our animal history. No one can make real change when two-thirds of our brains are unacknowledged. We have the tail and the feet but we still don’t know what it is; how can we treat it?

Yes, one might add but this is just a theory. Yes but a substantial one with much research and therapeutic years behind it. And for over fifty years we have not seen any substantial change in patients until they descend down into the levels where the imprint exists. It is the deep unconscious and it has not been seen or observed in any way because it is out of contact with our intellectual brain. It is the province of the shark and chimp brain; the province of non-verbal behavior.

There are easily several hundred current research studies on methylation, acetylation and phosphorylation that describe how imprinted memory reroutes the brain. How it changes brain circuits. Do we really think that changing our perceptions, rationales and attitudes can alter those basic processes? Research says “No.” There are chemical processes that help open up the memory system and others such as with methyl that closes it down. But once locked-in, it lives on and experience does not change it. The evolution of the genes has been rerouted. Epigenetics reigns. That is crucial; experience cannot change it. That is why we cannot love neurosis away or exhort it to change, or plead and beg for it do something “healthy.” Its ineluctable road is already paved with bumps and crevasses. We are destined to travel them unconsciously. We could say in this sense that our lives our predetermined.

Let me give you an example. We see a patient and we do not know why he is so hyperactive, cannot sit still and cannot concentrate. How do we now what’s wrong? We won’t until we know what events at birth or in the womb transpired to fix this affliction in the system. Was the mother on coke, both kinds? What she very active and nervous throughout her pregnancy, especially since her husband left her. Was there a war going on? Was she depressed or was she given heavy drugs to hurry birth along? Hundreds of questions that need answering. A therapist can say, “I’m not interested in the patient’s past; it is her present that counts. Yes but the present is very dependent on that past. This is too often a rationale to simplify therapy but it is simplistic, at best. How did the pregnancy evolve? We know that bickering parents often produce allergic children. Should we ignore the gestation period? We know that a carrying mother takes drugs it has a profound effect on the later drug taking of the offspring. Should we ignore that too? We will never know the true causes of adult cancer and Alzheimers disease without know the patient’s history. So what on earth does paying your attention to your breathing in mindfulness therapy do to the imprint? What does it do to prevent serious disease? Nada!

So how can we understand mental illness with 2/3rds of the brain missing? It is a practice with one arm tied behind. In my clinic with many hundreds of patients over fifty years of primal I have seen what a carrying mother’s heavy smoking does to create severe mental illness. It happens too often to be a chance affair. Or the mother’s drug taking and how it affects later drug use in the offspring. Karen Nyberg’s research, which I quoted in my other blogs, is instructive. There is a heavy correlation between the two. We must change the imprint and begin to reverse the memory and its impact. Our research will tell us more about this. How on earth can we understand anorexia without knowing about the research (Roberts and others) on early trauma and later eating disorders? The research states that it is largely due to epigenetics. And key epigenetic changes take place very early in our lives that alter fetal programming and the evolution of the fetus/baby. Let us not forget the critical window where those events are engraved for a lifetime. That is where we therapists must go; to that window where trauma was impressed into the brain and whole system. If we do not, then we cannot understand anxiety states in our patients or ADD which shuts down focus and concentration. It is not here and now; it is there and then that must be our focus because there and then determines here and now, to a great extent. If we exclude there and then we will not know that later eating disorders are often caused by the nutrition of the carrying mother. That has been confirmed by numerous studies. Let us take off our blinders and look at the whole brain. And above all, the whole person.

We need to make clear that we need to change consciousness in psycho-therapy, not just awareness. Too many therapists conflate awareness with consciousness. Consciousness encompasses many layers of brain function not just the neo-cortex. It is all levels working fluidly together that form consciousness. Awareness is but one level trying to do the work of all layers.