Body memory hypothesis

Modern usage of BM tends to frame it exclusively in the context of traumatic memory and ways in which the body responds to recall of a memory. In this regard, it has become relevant in treatment for PTSD.

Overview

Peter Levine calls BM implicit memory or more specifically procedural memory, things that the body is capable of doing automatically and not in one's consciousness. He clarifies 3 types of BM and frames his work in terms of traumatic memory consequence and resolution:

1. Learned motor actions - Action patterns that can be continuously modified over time by higher brain regions.
2. Emergency response - Hardwired instinctual behaviors (i.e., fight or flight response, etc...).
3. Attraction or repulsion - We are attracted to sources of nourishment and growth and repulsed from sources of injury or toxicity.

Nicola Diamond elaborates on the opinion of philosopher Merleau-Ponty and asserts that BM is formed by doing. Whether practicing a bodily activity or forming a reaction to a traumatic memory.

Edward Casey speaks of BM as, "memory intrinsic to the body, how we remember by and through the body", rather than what is remembered about the body.

Thomas Fuchs defines 6 different types of BM: procedural, situational, intercorporeal, incorporative, pain, and traumatic memory. He notes that they are not strictly separable from one another but "derived from different dimensions of bodily experience. Michelle Summa further refines this definition as an implicit memory. A pre-thematic, operative consciousness of the past expressed through the body.

Antonio Damasio calls these reactions to memories somatic markers or emotions that are expressed primarily as physical feelings.

These memories are often associated with phantom pain in a part or parts of the body – the body appearing to remember the past trauma. The idea of body memory is a belief frequently associated with the idea of repressed memories, in which memories of incest or sexual abuse can be retained and recovered through physical sensations. It may also be associated with phantom limb sensation but this is less common.

Skepticism

In 1993, Susan E. Smith, presented a paper relating the idea of "Survivor Psychology" at a false memory syndrome conference, stated about BM that, "body memories are thought to literally be emotional, kinesthetic, or chemical recordings stored at the cellular level and retrievable by returning to or recreating the chemical, emotional, or kinesthetic conditions under which the memory recordings are filed. She went on in the abstract of the paper, "one of the most commonly used theories to support the ideology of repressed memories or incest and sexual abuse amnesia is body memories." and "The belief in these pseudoscientific concepts appears to be related to scientific illiteracy, gullibility, and a lack of critical thinking skills and reasoning abilities in both the mental health community and in society at large"

A 2017 systematic review of cross-disciplinary research in body memory found that the available data neither largely support or refute the claim that memories are stored outside of the brain and more research is needed.

In the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology Embree notes that, "To posit body memory is to open up a Pandora's Box", and links the idea to physical associations of memory rather than as a memory stored in a bodily manner.