Re: "Santa on the Brain" — Letters that should have been in the new york times

To the editor:

  Kelly Lambert (12/22/13, Santa on the Brain) discusses the value of fostering 'mental time travel memories' in childhood so as to create enduring visceral and emotional links to our past that are evoked by stimuli in our present life. This phenomenon, no doubt universal, is at the heart of insight oriented psychotherapies where such excursions into the past are encouraged in interaction with the therapist. But what makes the mental time travel in psychotherapy different?  Unlike other relationships where such experiences occur implicitly and automatically, the ability to explore such memories in a therapeutic setting can change or deepen the emotional meaning of one's past. This is because memories are not stored as unmodifiable files in the brain - remembering helps to re-memorialize the past!  Since past is prologue, the consequences can be life changing.   

Respectfully submitted,

Larry S. Sandberg