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great; it's a lovely warm feeling, doing this." Then, her parents had come in, and she began to feel sad about what she had done. I suggested that she stay in touch with the feeling of pleasure at emptying her bowel. I asked her to notice how the feeling changed over time. She reported that, as the stools got cold, the feeling became disgusting. Because of her parents arguing, she hadn't noticed that feeling before. Doing so reframed her memory of the pleasure of 'controlling' her bowel movement, so that the memory of it was not so pleasurable after all.

I knew that Catherine felt disgusted by her body because, when I asked how she felt about putting on weight, she had responded fervently, "My body feels disgusting when I put on weight. I know I’m not fat but I just hate the feeling of it. I feel as though I'm sticking out in all the wrong places." Her expression was one of disgust. So I asked her to focus on that feeling, too, and see what memory came up for her. She instantly went back to the time of her first period, which had occurred in class at school, and vividly recalled the dreadful embarrassment of having to rush from the room to clean herself up. But, as she relived the experience, while holding on to the feeling of disgust, the disgust she had felt at the time started to surface: "There's blood coming out all over the place and it’s all sticky and it’s a mess; it’s all disgusting!" What made it worse to her was that it felt unnatural; her older sister had not even started her periods yet.

I then reframed the experience for her. "Yes, it must have felt disgusting when you had your period because you weren’t properly prepared for it, and it felt unnatural. But it isn't unnatural now. Your body is at its most beautiful when it is putting on normal curves. It's not disgusting; it's something beautiful." I talked to her about feeding and nourishing her body and looking after it and invited her to experience her body as healthy when putting on weight. That was the end of the session.

The next day, she phoned up my house and left an excited message, telling me about the changes that had happened since the session. She had gone home and eaten a normal dinner, with dessert, for the first time in 25 years, with no voices in her head telling her not to. I have seen her since and she has reported that only occasionally, when under stress, has she felt an urge to restrict her eating. But, since it no longer felt compulsive, she could recognise it and deal with it. She is now steadily gaining weight and enjoying a range of foods she has never eaten before and her life is free from debilitating compulsive rituals.

The reframes that worked
This was an astounding outcome and what I think had happened was this. When she used to relieve herself in her pants, the desire for the pleasure of doing so immediately, under her own control, vied with the feeling that she should obey her parents' instruction that she should go to the toilet. The action she took was to soil her pants and experience the lovely warmth. Taking that control was worth the price of making her parents angry, even though that made her sad. Obsessively controlling her body in this way ‘worked’ for her at that time (she would later choose to no longer do it) because her risk assessment of the pain likely to be experienced concluded that the pain of her parent’s displeasure was worth the feeling of pleasure she got when evacuating her bowels when she herself wanted. When her period arrived, it was out of the blue — she had been in class, enjoying her lesson and, suddenly, she had had to rush out to take care of herself. Now her body felt dangerously out of her control — not only had it let her down, it had done something unnatural, because her older sister hadn't even started her periods yet. She had already been feeling uncomfortable with her changing body shape "sticking out in all the wrong places". Her older sister's body hadn't changed like this. Now her body was even more out of her control, with this embarrassing, disgusting, sticky mess.

This was a traumatising experience for her. Her memory pattern matched back to the wonderful feeling of control she had when she controlled the emptying of the disgusting mess her bowels made. She had pattern matched to a pain–pleasure (molar) memory as the way to deal with the trauma of her unexpected and unprepared-for first period. The solution therefore was to take back control over her body shape and over her periods, just as she had kept control over her messy bowel movements and not allowed her parents to control them. And the way to do this was by controlling her eating, thereby reducing her food intake, so that her body would get thin and stop sticking out in "all the wrong places". An added bonus, she was to discover later, was that her messy periods would actually stop. Of course, just as in keeping control of her bowel movements, there was a price to be paid — her parent's disapproval of her action which, in this case, was her restricted eating. Clearly, her unconscious risk assessment had concluded that this price was worth paying for the pleasure gained from controlling her bodily functions.

It is worth stressing again that this molar memory influence is not a conscious process. We experience the gut feeling and feel compelled to act upon it, however inappropriate we recognise it to be and to whatever degree we may manage to modify some of our reactions: Catherine knew to ingest just enough food to keep her alive. Once the original molar memory linked to her bowel training was accessed, however, making both the pain and the pleasure conscious, and the pleasure element had been reframed to include the feeling of disgust linked to cold stools, the molar memory's power was dissolved. As this molar memory had been controlling her traumatic reaction to her first unexpected period, accessing that memory and reframing the experience as a normal and beautiful part of a young woman’s development enabled that trauma to be resolved. There was no need for the anorexia any more, so she could go home and eat dinner, followed by dessert, and enjoy it.

The cross-dresser
Jake, a man in his 30s, came to see me because he was a secret cross-dresser, and had been since childhood. He was finding it more and more stressful to live his double life. He admitted that he experienced sexual arousal when cross-dressing, so, in guided imagery, I asked him to find and focus on that feeling and then to let it take him back to wherever it wanted to go. The memory that came up for him was of being caught by his mother, when he was a young boy, trying on his sister's knickers in the bathroom, and seeing what it was like to pee like a girl. Jake instantly recalled the terrible guilt he felt at being caught and the horror on his mother's face. I suggested to him that he tell his mum that he wanted to try out what it felt like to wear girls' clothes. He then got a feeling of sexual excitement as his young self, as he experimented with his sister's clothing. Reliving that feeling was a shock to Jake. It was completely concealed from his consciousness — he hadn't realised that, at such a young age, he was even capable of sexual feelings.

The pain–pleasure recall principle would hold that this experience was bound to trigger a molar memory. A boy with natural childhood curiosity explores aspects of female sexual identity, experiences sexual arousal in the process, and is then humiliated by his mother’s disapproval. The pain is consciously recalled but the pleasure is not. However, ever afterwards, when he encounters female underwear, his brain pattern matches back to the molar memory. He does an automatic risk assessment for potential embarrassment and, if that is not problematic, experiences the desire to wear female clothing.

If acted upon, this reinforces the pattern. Such fetishist behaviours are notoriously difficult to change in therapy. However, if we bring the underlying molar memory into conscious awareness, the inappropriate pattern match dissolves and so does the fetish. After that therapy session, during which the memory and associated pattern matches were reprogrammed by consciously putting them into context, Jake never again experienced a desire to wear female underwear.

Pain and pleasure are at the core of what motivates us in life. Pleasure is nature's currency for rewarding behaviour that gets needs met. Pain exists to warn us of danger. It is the way our ancient animal ancestors evolved to make the best use of these two systems, however, that leaves us so vulnerable to maladaptive conditioning as we grow up. I suggest that molar memories play a significant role in many neurotic, over-the-top reactions that involve both positive and negative emotions and with an understanding of this process we can significantly improve the quality of our own lives as well as that of our patients.

As well as using it with their clients, several of the psychotherapists with whom I have discussed this principle have also experimented on elements of their own behaviour too, reporting back that it brought equally rapid and effective results. Bringing molar memories into consciousness, therefore, is not only a powerful way (where applicable) to help patients, it has huge potential as a self-development tool, creating spare capacity by allowing individuals to become more objective about themselves and the way they react to life circumstances. Difficult though it can be, doing this is, of course, subject to our being ready to admit that our angry outbursts and pursuit of pleasurable experiences are not entirely due to external factors. Thus the usefulness of this technique as a self-developmental tool is entirely dependent on our willingness to investigate the sources of our own emotional responses in those very instances when we are most likely to be defensive of them because of the emotional intensity that motivates them.

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© Joe Griffin (2006)

This article is a revised version of an article which first appeared in Volume 13, No, 3 (2006) of the Human Givens journal.

JOE GRIFFIN is a psychotherapist who, with IVAN TYRRELL developed the human givens approach.

This article appears in the new human givens book An Idea In Practice: using the human givens approach

Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Beard

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Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Beard

Return to top

This article appears in the new human givens book An Idea In Practice: using the human givens approach

Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Beard