Mark Solms and David Bullard explain how the flash technique treats distressing memories by overloading working memory with a simple task, shifting the memory into a labile state where it reconsolidates as less distressing. They contrast this with subliminal methods, which affect cognition unconsciously but still trigger affective responses people feel without knowing why.
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What I remember of when you did it with me, you said I must think of a distressing memory. And I know that later you asked me to think of a pleasant memory. Yeah.
And it doesn't have to be, but it's more fun.
Yeah. And then there was this some task that I had to do which filled up my working memory with, with this mindless task.
Yeah. So the people who do this flash technique thing have you do some form of bilateral stimulation, and they do tapping or left hand, left. Um, and then every 10 seconds or so they say flash and blink 3 times, and people blink 3 times.
Mm-hmm.
I know there's a colleague in London who said he's been doing this for a few years. He said he gets the same results without this thing or without the blinking. I still often usually will do it, but it may be the essential component is just where the working memory goes. Not this additional stuff, but they would quarrel with me on that. They think it's important.
Okay. Well, when I, when I experienced it with you. Yeah. The thing that struck me about the, the, the experience, in other words, what it felt like, was that you had to concentrate quite a bit on the task. You know, it engaged your working memory, which is a very small place And so that I thought was, it was a crucial part of the technique is that, and that's what makes, that's what makes, that is what makes me persuaded that what you're doing is genuinely not exposure therapy, you know, it's, it's the, the person has the memory, So that's conscious, whether they tell it to you or not, it makes no difference. But then the very next experience that they have is pleasant.
And they are engaging or engaging.
There are people— so what is the point? The important thing is it's not, it's not unpleasant. So you can't dwell on the memory.
Exactly.
On the distressing memory. Yeah, because you're now engaged in this other memory. Which fully occupies your working memory.
Would you say it goes into latent working?
Well, that's another, that's another matter. But what's— I'll come to that. Okay. But for now, what matters is that it clearly is not in your working memory because you can't do this task whilst you simultaneously thinking about the distressing event. So that is a— I would say, wherever that memory is. So let me deal with it now. The distressing memory, you're saying it's in latent working memory. That may be so. It may also simply be in episodic memory, which— but the important thing is it is not currently conscious. Because episodic memory is declarative in the sense that it is possible for you to bring it back to consciousness. But that doesn't mean that you currently have it in consciousness. So it's there, recently activated, but not currently activated. Either it's in latent working memory or it's in episodic memory in a latent state because you're not busy remembering it. So And why I draw the distinction is because there's some controversy as to whether or not there really is such a thing as latent working memory. So we don't have—
Nobody disagrees with episodic memory.
Yes. So you don't need to have recourse to controversial concepts. You just say it is no longer in working memory. It is— it was recently activated. So it's in a— it's in a relatively labile state. You know, but it is no longer in consciousness. And the very next experience you have is either neutral or pleasant, and it fully engages your working memory. So you can— if you are prevented from bringing the distressing memory back into consciousness, and it's a low arousal state. So the recently activated distressing memory now comes to be associated with a low arousal, neutral or pleasant experience. Because so it's reconsolidated now. Normally when your patient, the 75-year-old woman, she would wake up in the morning, she'd have this image in her mind, she would not be able to get it out of her mind. And the whole distressing experience, remembering it, thinking about it, oh my God, you know, so awful. It's a kind of a vicious cycle. You kind of reconsolidating it in and not only the original trauma, but all the reverberations or, you know, all the further thoughts you've had about it. It wasn't— it's not just an event now. It's an event associated with all of these bloody awful things you've thought, you know. So you've, you've made a hornet's nest out of it. Your technique does the opposite. It's— so you had that distressing memory, but it's immediately followed by either a pleasant or non-distressing neutral and low arousal state because it's low arousal. That task is pretty mundane.
You actually hear wonderful things from people about— it's a savoring of their life when they could tell you out loud some of the wonderful things. People have taken me places I'll never be able to go to and tell me wonderful things about it. So that's a side effect.
So, so that is that mechanism. As I said to you, I find it convincing that that's why it works. I find it convincing that it works, and I find it convincing that that's why it works. But it's not the same as the subliminal method. Yes. And, and, and, and I think that's all to the good. I'll tell you why. Because there is a great deal of— there's a great problem with subliminal techniques. They, they, they're described as unconscious. And that's true. Only cognitively is it unconscious. In other words, you don't know what you've seen. But you've seen something.
And where you're going, this is wonderful. This is The Hidden Spring.
Yes, yes. So, so in The Hidden Spring, I give the example of the experiment where you're shown subliminally face A with the word rapist underneath and face B with the word philanthropist underneath. And they, they, they, they, they, it's a split second, you know, like like 100 milliseconds, it's zero prime. There's no awareness of any visual experience at all, let alone a face, you know, or an indistinct face. So you see nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. But then after the experiment, you're shown the two faces superliminally and you're asked, which one of these two guys do you prefer? And they say, I've never met them in my life before. And you give them a forced choice, you say, you've got to choose one. And way above chance, people go for face B. Then you say to them, why? Then they say, well, you told me I had to guess. It was random. But what some patients say— some patients, not many, not patients, some research participants— they say, well, it was just a gut feeling. And I think that's a better description of because how can you make a choice reliably? It's made in the direction of face B. So there's a preference for face B. They just don't know where the preference comes from. Yes. So there's an aspect—
because it's unconscious in their declarative.
Well, the cognitive part, what they perceived, what they remember, what they read, you know, all of that is unconscious. But when they see face A again, they feel, don't like this guy. They don't know why, but they don't like him. So the crucial thing in what I'm saying is they feel something consciously. They just don't know why they feel it. They feel a preference for B and an aversion to A. Now, so the reason that it's called an unconscious technique is because people overemphasize the cognitive and they underemphasize the affective.
