Quick now, pick your worst memory, perhaps a family death, an accident, for some it might be a moment of unimaginable embarrassment. If you could select and delete that memory in a flash, would you? The dream of creating a sort of mental erase button is still out of reach for scientists, but there is serious work being done on a drug which would at least dim the memories of severe trauma: the shriek and shattered glass of a car accident, a rape, trauma in combat.
Some scientists believe that those who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder should and someday could be relieved of those memories. Others say trauma has its place, and that the transformative power which pain delivers helps people become more empathic, compassionate, in short: human.
Roger Pitman, Psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
Steven Tice, formerly Director of the Post Traumatic Stress Treatment Program at the American Lake VAMC, and a casualty of the The Battle for Hamburger Hill during the Vietnam War.
