Remembering What’s Good for You
In the wake of Sept. 11, media contacted University of Arkansas psychologist Denise Beike to ask how mourning relatives and friends might eventually find “closure” for their grief. She told them closure is a property of memory, and ultimately what counts is how we remember our experiences, both painful and pleasurable.
For 15 years, Beike has been studying that mysterious process called memory. She defines two types, open and closed. Open memories are those that still haunt us, that perhaps we dwell on, while closed memories are marked by an absence of emotion and an objectivity that Beike believes is psychologically healthy for people.
