Deep Memory Process
Deep Memory Process (DMP for short) is a synthesis developed by Roger J. Woolger, Ph.D after many years of working with Jungian active imagination, psychodrama, hypnotic regression, Reichian body therapy and transpersonal psychology. It is a widely applicable therapy which has been successfully used in treating difficulties in interpersonal relationships and family systems; issues of self-esteem and personal empowerment; residual psychic scars from adult or childhood sexual abuse and all forms of domestic and urban violence. It can provide swift and effective release of deep emotional blockages, states of anxiety, phobias, much chronic pain and persistant symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.

Each session of DMP begins by focusing on those deep memory images that may be underlying any number of complaints, somatic symptoms or dissociative disorders. The therapist then works to free negative residues of trauma, loss or abuse frozen in the body and in the unconscious mind. In a way that is both safe and structured, the process helps sufferers work through patterns of traumatisation and dissociation and gently encourages somato-emotional energy release, facilitating the re-integration of fragmented parts of the psyche.

Many layers of "deep memory" images live in the unconscious mind until triggered by certain highly charged situations. The careful guiding of this kind of inner psychodrama to acces traumatic residues can enable old frozen scenes to come to life and bring catharsis as well as deep somatic releases.

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Guided Imagery and Psychodrama
Guided imagery has a long and respectable history in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Various schools that have used it since the early days of psychoanalysis are described in Mary Watkins scholarly study Waking Dream (Watkins,1976). As early as 1935 Jung proposed the use of "active imagination" as the cornerstone of his method. Practically all psychotherapy and hypnotherapy procedures entail some combination of imagery and suggestion.

Bringing to life all kinds of dream and archetypal figures as well as "past life" fantasies is in fact one of the most powerful tools we have to facilitate the healing and resolution of psychological conflicts. It allows the patient to displace conflicts and emotions that are impossible for the ego to face and experience them in a realistic past life/archetypal scenario where they may be worked through to completion. This is particularly effective in the case of sexual and incest traumas. "Past life" imagery of rape, prostitution or sexual servitude often surface in the dreams or fantasies of sexually abused clients who are otherwise blocked with regard to their actual abuse. The fantasies can be simply treated as if they were real for the purposes of the therapeutic session.

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Trauma is Many-Layered
When the psyche is shattered by an overwhelming or horrific event it has long been observed how the personality seems to splinter into different fragments or separate parts of itself. The deeply traumatized part stays frozen in the original event, which is often forgotten, and another part of the self dissociates or "goes away", often to another "world" that is safe or far from the pain. At the same time a strong "survivor" self will emerge as an adaptive mask, helping, getting on with life, impervious to pain. In extreme cases, as in so called multiple personality disorder, a whole host of part selves will appear, each protecting or hiding from each other in a highly complex web of dissociation from the memory of the original wound.
Probing and awakening these different selves can be like peeling skins from an onion some times and it takes considerable skill from the therapist to respect and contain the various layers of memory that may emerge as the protective structure around the original trauma starts to unfreeze.

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Body Memories
A child who lives in fear of being hit by violent parents may learn to cringe, twist his/her head away and put his/her hands to protect his/her head. If this continues the threats of violence activate the muscles in the body until the muscles "learn" this posture unconsciously. The child will be permanently on the alert so the fear remains locked in their organism together with chronically raised shoulders, twisted head, and tight nervous stomach. This holding pattern over the years can degenerate into a fixed posture and the inability to resolve the situation results in a frozen body memory. Wilhelm Reich called this body armour and went on to describe rigid patterns of unconscious muscular holding that can be found in the head, jaw, neck, shoulder, thorax, diaphragm, pelvis, legs, arms, hands and feet.

In line with the more physical releases sought by Wilhelm Reich, Deep Memory Processing very frequently brings about the spontaneous dissolving of bodily armouring and the recovery of blocked physical libido.

Regression has to date been more widely associated with hypnosis, whereby the hypnotist guides the subject to areas of their past, whilst in a trance state. However, in DMP therapy, the subject remains in a cognitive (fully conscious) state and indeed, a striking aspect of much of this therapy when seen for the first time by an observer, is the obvious physical involvement of the client in the story that is being relived. In many sessions the client doesnt just sit or lie passively recounting an inner vision with his or her eyes closed. Instead, he or she may be subject to dramatic body movements that resemble convulsions, contortions, heavings, and thrashings.

Deep Memory Process remains focused in the body for the simple reason that it is in the body that both physical violence and emotion are most vividly experienced. The implications for trauma therapy are clearly that effective remembering and release of traumatic residues must involve the body.

As an example of how deeply both emotions and highly charged stories are held in the body we cite the case of Mark, a Puerto Rican psychiatrist who suffered from two seemingly unrelated problems: severe back ache and recurrent depressions. At the time of consulting a therapist he was feeling very stuck and trapped in his hospital consultancy. The therapist started the session by having him focus on his back pain and asked what it felt like."Its as if Im tensing against being hit there.""Tensing against what?" "Blows from something - maybe a whip! Now my hands feel as if tied to something". The emergent image is psychodrama-ed with a couple of towels around his wrists and with a light beating on his back to suggest the scene. The image became more pronounced and he reported the pain was now very intense, but that he also was starting to feel extremely angry. "Angry at what?" the therapist asked. "Them. The masters. Im a black slave. I keep running away and they keep catching me." He then reported that the beating went on and on and that eventually he was left to die. The slaves dying thoughts, mingled with huge anger and bitterness were "Whats the use. Its hopeless. Ill never get out of this. They have the upper hand."

He saw himself leaving the body but the tension still remained. "What are you still holding in your back?" asked the therapist. "I could kill them all. I am so full of rage." So he was invited to pull his arms out of the bonds and to beat a mattress any way he liked. He took a tennis racket and released a huge amount of rage, hitting the mattress repeatedly. When he had exhausted himself he reported a flow of energy in his back and a lightening he had never known before. "I was beating them back" he said, "but I also realised I was beating my superiors in the hospital where I work!" He had unconsciously turned them into his new slave masters and was playing out the "hopeless" depression of the slave in his life today. Shortly afterwards, he left the hospital to go into private practice. Both his backache and his depressions cleared up after this session.

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THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE RAINBOW
IS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD