would you go through with the procedure?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Skybird, I reject your view that past trauma renders every individual a suffering wreck or psychopath, which seems to be your general belief, both stated in this thread and in others.

Thats something you read into it. I cannot recall that I made any quantitative assessment that allows the conclusion that I think every traumatization leads to utmost existential breakdown. As a matter of fact traumatization can come in many shades, forms and grades of severity. Thats why studies seriously researching on them often do - at least should - include the definitions of grades or diagnostic keys on which the researchers based when categorizing different grades of traumata.

Painful memories are part of who I am as well. I would not have the procedure done.

Yes. I hinted at that myself two posts above. But pain can have different degrees of intensity, from pain you can bear, to pain that makes you breaking down and loosing your mind and senses, and/or leads to social and psychic handicaps that let your social life collapse and turn your life into a mess, even lead to changes in your personality. I think one of the links I gave in the thread on PTSD even illustrates cases they examined where traumatization that became chronic and got not treated led to both physical changes in the brain structure (loss of grey matter in the brain, with possible decline of IQ as well although that is not always the case), and lasting personality changes.

That extends the original question of this thread here by a whole new dimension. Are you still "yourself" if your suffering is such that it already has turned you into a different person?

EDIT: The procedure theorized is something I would compare to mental liposuction. As real liposuction will remove fat and make you thinner, it will ironically, not make you any healthier. Your plaque build-up, cholestorol, diabetes, etc, will remain. You've addressed only the superficial. This theorized procedure will remove your bad memories, leaving only a bland euphoria. It sounds like a less traumatic lobotomy. It's not something that I would be comfortable with.

A liposuction it would be if memories get extracted for the mere purpose of heaving it easy, for comfort, in other word: for reasons that would fall under the label of luxury. But when memories get extracted that are so traumatizing that they affect your cardiovascular health, your personality, your brain, your IQ? I think then it more compares to the extraction of cancer tumurs in a fight for your very life, or to lessen incredible physical pain.

I read about this American idiot of a senator who recently should have said that when a women got raped and gets pregnant, then it was God's will (no religious debate intended, mind you). I now try to imagine the victim of such an attack. And when (and why) some victims may wish they could just "forget" that memory of such an attack, while others maybe would not. Can a clear criterion be given that decides when such a memory helps you to realize your "real" nature, and when it hinders you? Can one really say that easily "But that experience of having gotten raped just defines her what she afterwards is, after the rape?" That would sound as bright an answer to me as the remark of that senator.