In the 2004 move Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Joel Barish attempts to undergo a quick procedure to erase his failed relationship with his lost love Clementine from his memory after she had already erased him. The company which does this work, Lacuna, performs this task with a machine and in a single night while the patient sleeps. They claim that though this is in fact brain damage, it is only to the extent of a heavy night of drinking. The promise of healing wounds with voluntary, specific, retrograde amnesia may seem like a glorious idea, but realistically this could never happen in real life.
Because of the complexity of the brain and its structures, finding and correctly destroying the areas and only the areas which deal with an ex-lover would be impossible. Inducing a retrograde amnesia would require greater destruction and deterioration of the brain, and could never be nearly so specific. A traumatic enough event may induce a certain level of repression, but unlikely would it erase the complete memory of a person. The complete erasure of painful memories is not possible especially due to their emotional nature, however there is a drug called propranolol which blocks the effect of adrenaline on receptors and consequently inhibits the emotionally arousing part of memories. In a study where a control group was given propranolol after a car crash while the others were given the placebos, those who took the actual drug had little response to tapes recreating the accident. Forty-three percent of those who had taken the placebo still showed a physical reaction.
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind we are lead to ask ourselves whether it is better to have loved and lost or to erase both the pain and the joy of the experience completely - this question is also often pondered by researchers and philosophers. I believe, as this film also expresses at its core, that it is better to remember the hurt and the happiness than to exist as a stoic shell of a human.
^Lacuna's machine erasing Joel's memories of Clementine
I definitely agree with you that it is better to have some bad memories along with the good than to have no memories at all. It seems to me like this memory erasing machine would not be desirable at all anyways because sometimes even the worst memories can be the best learning experiences.
I agree with ottox284 and the thought that bad memories make us stronger in most circumstances. I find it hard for Lacuna's machine to remove memories by killing a few brain cells. The transmission of memories occurs throughout the whole cortex and I find it hard to believe that one machine could totally remove a memory. I think the only true way to help suppress the effects of a painful memory is through therapy instead of a machine.
I agree with both of the previous comments that although having to experience the bad memories is a painful process, it is important because it will only make us stronger in the end. However, I do think that with the advanced technology we currently have and will develop in the future, we will one day be able to locate the exact center of the brain that is responsible for housing our bad memories. Therefore, I think that it would be possible for scientists/doctors to operate on patients and ultimately erase bad or unwanted memories. Although I think that this would be unethical, I do think that there would be very specific circumstances where it would be okay to perform this kind of operation, such as if a child had experienced some sort of physical or sexual abuse or a woman had been kidnapped and held hostage.
I believe that in a almost all cases involving memories, it is better to have them than to erase them, if it were possible. We've all been told that we learn from our experiences, and without the memories of our experiences we would simply repeat mistakes over and over again. If given the choice to remove a painful memory, I would like to believe that I would choose not to.
With the complexity of our brain, I agree that there is no way this procedure could occur in present day real life even with our growing medical technology. Also, I agree with previous comments about erasing bad memories. We all have bad memories from one time or another and that is just a part of life that we have to live with. I feel it would be weird to have my memories structured and changed artificially rather than naturally.