For today...

I am deep into work on a writing project. So for today, a repost about memory. I first saw Magritte’s “La Memoir” or “Mnemosyne” on a book jacket 20 or so  years ago. As is often the case with Magritte, there are a number of versions of La Memoire. She is an arresting image, Memory with a wound to her head. Is it memory bleeding out? Will memory be lost if the wound is not bandaged and the blood flow stopped? Or does she show the wound to the head that any of us has from one or another childhood insult or injury? Does the effort to re-member heal the wound and thus stanch the bleeding? Save the memory? And what about the bell and the leaf -- are they bits of memory? Has she forgotten? Did she ever know? Are we all surrounded by artifacts of memory that if we can only see them will allow memory to heal? The words "memoir" and "memory" come to us from the middle English/Anglo-French word memorie, and from the Latin memoria, derived from memor, which means "mindful." Russell Lockhart  in Words As Eggs: Psyche in Language and Clinic  traces it also to an Indo-European root smer- -- which in one form refers to grease and fat. How is memory connected to ‘fat’? Think about how difficult it is to get rid of fat.  It sticks. It adheres. It won't leave. It leaves traces. A memory is what sticks, what adheres in the mind. Memory is the fat of the mind.  Related words that share the history of memoir include...
Source: Jung At Heart - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs