The memory sessions : a memoir / Suzanne Farrell Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Farrell Smith, Suzanne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Farrell Smith, Suzanne--Childhood and youth.

Farrell Smith, Suzanne.

Farrell Smith, Suzanne--Mental health.

Memory disorders--Patients--United States--Biography.

Memory disorders.

Autobiography--Authorship--Psychological aspects--Case studies.

Autobiography.

Psychic trauma in children--Case studies.

Psychic trauma in children.

Fathers--Death--Psychological aspects--Case studies.

Fathers.

Fires--Psychological aspects--Case studies.

Fires.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (152 pages)

Place of Publication:

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Suzanne Farrell Smith’s father was killed by a drunk driver when she was six, and a devastating fire nearly destroyed her house when she was eight. She remembers those two—and only those two—events from her first nearly twelve years of life. While her three older sisters hold on to rich and rewarding memories of their father, Smith recalls nothing of him. Her entire childhood was, seemingly, erased. In The Memory Sessions, Smith attempts to excavate lost childhood memories. She puts herself through multiple therapies and exercises, including psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, somatic experiencing, and acupuncture. She digs for clues in her mother’s long-stored boxes. She creates—with objects, photographs, and captions—a physical timeline to compensate for the one that’s missing in her memory. She travels to San Diego, where her family vacationed with her father right before he died. She researches, interviews, and meditates, all while facing down the two traumatic memories that defined her early life. The result is an experimental memoir that upends our understanding of the genre. Rather than recount a childhood, The Memory Sessions attempts to create one from research, archives, imagination, and the memories of others. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

I . The Bridge

i. Television

ii. Time of Death

iii. Blaze of Gloria

iv. Table for Five

v. Bridges and Tunnels

II. A Peculiar Darkness

i. Going on a Hunt

ii. Of Myth and Memory

III . To Light

i. Another Version of Us

ii. To Make One’s Way through the Earth

iii. The Death Thing

iv. Everything Reaches to Light

v. Light

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68448-151-1

OCLC:

1257323836