Consultation as Identity Protection

The key to memory is often hidden under the doormat

We like to imagine memories as dust‑free folders in a well‑ordered archive: once filed, they remain safely stored. Reality is more alive – and more delicate. Each time we remember, we do not simply retrieve the folder; we tear it open, unconsciously rearrange, add, omit. In that moment, neuroscience tells us, the content is labile. It passes through minutes, sometimes hours, in which it can be reshaped. The technical term is reconsolidation. Only when it is “filed” again is it considered stable – but by then it is no longer the same.

It takes little imagination to see what this means. In the 1970s, a single word in a question to accident witnesses altered their recollection: a “collision” became a “crash” – leading them to report higher speeds and even to “remember” shards of glass that never existed. Modern studies show similar effects with emotions: if a strong fear memory is reactivated and, in this open phase, paired with calming stimuli, the reaction can be softened; paired with negative stimuli, it can be reinforced.

The window of change

This labile state after a memory is activated is no secret of psychology – and not only advertising has noticed. Politics uses it with equal routine. The trick is always the same: once overwritten, the original can no longer be checked. It no longer exists. The new version feels entirely real and authentic.

That is what makes conversation so sensitive. Early interpretation mixes one’s own colour into the still‑wet clay of memory. Later, it is almost impossible to tell which part came from one’s own experience and which from outside. This applies to the hairdresser’s chair as much as to the therapy room or consulting office. And as we have seen, even the form of a question can alter a memory – before it is even examined to form an answer. At the hairdresser, such effects are usually tolerable. In therapy and consultation, more is at stake.

Consultation and interpretation

Here, consultation and psychotherapy initially stand side by side: both work with narration, with meaning‑making. Therapy does so within the maps of a school; consultation has more formal freedom. In both, those who interpret too soon intervene in a system that is open and changeable.

Experienced consultants can often hear in a client’s language that experiences are no longer in their original, spontaneous form, but have been shaped by a therapeutic interpretive frame. Characteristic terminology, structured narrative patterns, recurring metaphors often even reveal which school or method these interpretations stem from. This imprint can be so strong that the person no longer perceives the therapeutic frame as added, but as an integral part of their own memory.

Therapists might object: we know this process, we use it consciously for good – such a delicate window belongs in trained, regulated hands. Plausible, until the ethical dimension is spelled out. The client has usually not explicitly agreed that parts of their biography may be irreversibly deleted or reformulated. They have not agreed that interpreted, rewritten memories may be anchored indistinguishably as their own. And there is no way back to the original after a misinterpretation.

Three problems converge: the change is irreversible, it happens without explicit permission – and it follows the dogma of a single school. The explosive point is that these schools sometimes contradict each other diametrically – yet all may claim the right to rewrite. From the same starting point, the result can be a completely different “truth” depending on the school. Something is clearly amiss.

One could put it more sharply: with the invention of memory, evolutionary processes were first implemented within the individual. Storage and retrieval, modification and selection now took place in the subject – not only in the environment. Since then, our stories “mutate” with each reconsolidation. Some mutations improve the fit, many cause harm. And as in nature, the environment decides which variants survive – family, public sphere, therapy. Those who interpret early and according to theory are engaging in selection. At this point, ethical aspects can no longer be minimised, nor can responsibility be shifted onto the client through a blanket consent at the start of therapy.

Memories are not merely data, but building blocks of our identity. Any change to them can shift who we believe ourselves to be. If these blocks are quietly replaced, filed down, or painted over, the foundation changes – and with it the story we tell about ourselves. Access to them is therefore no side issue, but an intervention at the centre of the person.

At the same time, with clear agreement and the informed client’s consent, this window of change can be used in consultation to shape perspectives deliberately. Especially outside the field of treatment, there are many possible applications – always in the hands of the one to whom the memory belongs. Such techniques require time, care, and the guidance of an experienced consultant.

This does not mean that therapy should be rejected – on the contrary: where there is a disorder requiring treatment, it is the first choice and may act decisively. The structure of the respective school provides stability, but also dictates that interpretation be set within that school’s frame, usually very promptly. The school influences how questions are asked – the structure prescribes it – and it always bears the signature of its system. Consultation is, in principle, freer; it need not tick off manual steps internally. It may wait, secure the first version of the account, take the words literally, and set pauses until the client decides which meanings to admit.

Entering Unused Spaces

In practice, this freedom of the consulting format is often squandered. Many consultants lean closely on therapeutic schools, adopting their language, explanatory models, and structured procedures – and with them, their reflex for early interpretation. The open map becomes a grid once more.

Responsible consultation recognises and protects the open window of memory. It resists the temptation to play into it immediately. Hypotheses are offers, not corrections; changes remain recognisable as such. Sometimes the best thing one can do for a living system is to keep one’s hands still for a moment.

Evolutionary strength and human vulnerability

The adaptability inherent in reconsolidation has undoubtedly brought evolutionary advantages. Abandoning the function of memory as a secure archive allows us to integrate experiences, adjust meanings, remain in motion. And perhaps the fact that we do not perceive altered memories as new is a kind of protection for our sense of identity. Identity changes – yet we experience constancy.

But perhaps this system was never built to protect those moments when a person opens consciously – not to survive, but to be understood.

Those who begin to speak the highly sensitive switch off their inner virus protection for a moment. No doubt, no shielding, no loops that hold back. Such moments are rare, precious – and extremely vulnerable. Perhaps they were never foreseen in the original programme.

And here responsibility begins. To ask is to change. To interpret is to intervene. Openness does not need quick answers – it needs space to exist without already being altered.

An archive without originals

Those who grasp that their remembered past consists of overpaintings also see how vulnerable this archive is. Precisely because originals often no longer exist, no one should write further into it uninvited. Each new colour not only paints over the picture, it changes what we believe to be true. This knowledge can help us act with care in our own handling – and makes all the clearer how responsibly others should act.

Consultation, understood as a protected space, preserves the original before it is interpreted, and keeps the doors open so that what you remember remains yours. In a world where every touch changes something, this may be the quietest – and most effective – form of accompaniment.

Privacy policies are often text‑heavy. This was mine – on the handling of your memories.

In Kürze

• Malleability after activation: Any memory brought into awareness remains labile for hours and open to influence – the original is, at that moment, effectively no longer present.
• Triggers are varied: Activation can be self‑initiated or external – deliberate or unconscious, through questions, reactions, or subtle cues.
• Context decides: Often unproblematic in everyday life, highly sensitive in conversations that reach the core of the person.
• Structural risks: Preset treatment frameworks often produce premature interpretations and method‑driven questions – in therapy as well as with consultants who closely follow the therapeutic setting.
• Consulting freedom as a resource: Free from rigid manuals, consultation – practised with care and expertise – can protect the open window of memory, delay interpretation, and shape change only with consent. It requires consultants willing to enter these free spaces.

References

• Schacter, D. L. (1999). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers.
• Tempel, T., & Pastöter, B. (2014). Abrufeffekte im Gedächtnis: Ein Überblick zur aktuellen Grundlagenforschung. Hogrefe Publishing.
• Schiller, D., Monfils, M.-H., Raio, C. M., Johnson, D. C., LeDoux, J. E., & Phelps, E. A. (2010). Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms. Nature, 463(7277), 49–53.
• Nader, K., Schafe, G. E., & LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Fear Memories Require Protein Synthesis in the Amygdala for Reconsolidation After Retrieval. Nature, 406, 722–726.
• Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585–589.

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