The Ethics of Memory

A reflection from practice

Since the early 1980s, I have worked with cases involving sexual abuse of children and violence in close relationships. Again and again, I have found myself sitting with people who try to remember.

Not just what happened —
but how it felt,
and what it has done to their lives.

In every case, memory has mattered.

In therapy, something decisive often happens when a person begins to remember — and to find words for what has been carried in silence. I have returned to this many times: What is memory, really? And why does it matter so deeply that we remember?

At times, the question becomes uncomfortable:

Would it not be easier to forget?
To leave painful memories behind and move on?

But experience tells me something else.

We do not remember only to know.

We remember in order to become.

Memory, truth — and uncertainty

We often think of memory as a kind of knowledge. Something that gives us access to the past — and therefore to truth.

But memory is not stable.

I have seen how several people can live through the same event — and remember it very differently. In a courtroom, we ask people to tell the truth. Yet what they can offer is always their memory of the truth.

And sometimes, even careful systems of judgment fail.

This is where the question begins to deepen:

If memory is uncertain,
what does it mean to use it well?

Memory as something we do

Gradually, I have come to think of memory not only as something we have, but as something we do.

We work with memory.
We return to it.
We shape it.

In this sense, memory is a form of action.

And because it is something we do, it can also be done badly.

We can avoid it.
Distort it.
Repeat it in ways that keep us trapped.

Ethical questions arise exactly here — in the space between using and misusing memory.

This is not a new idea. Already in Plato’s Sophist, memory is described as a form of imitation (mimētikē technē). Some forms of imitation bring us closer to truth, others pull us away from it. And much later, Friedrich Nietzsche would argue that we often misuse our historical consciousness — even to the point where it becomes something like an illness (Nietzsche, 1873/1981).

I recognize something of this in practice.

When memory becomes work

In therapy, memory is rarely a simple act of recalling.

It is work.

Sigmund Freud described this in a way that still resonates deeply. In Remembering, Repetition and Working Through, he observed how patients often do not remember directly. Instead, they repeat.

The past returns — not as a clear story,
but as patterns, reactions, symptoms.

And this repetition can block memory.

What is needed is patience. A slow process of working through — what Freud called Erinnerungsarbeit (memory work) (Freud, 1962).

I have seen how true this is.

Memory cannot be forced.
It has to be lived through — again, but differently.

In Mourning and Melancholia, Freud also shows how memory is tied to loss. To remember is often to mourn. And here, Paul Ricoeur offers a powerful insight: memory itself can be understood as a form of mourning (Ricoeur, 1999).

We remember because something mattered.
And because something was lost.

When memory shifts: on false memories

In my work, I have sometimes encountered something that at first feels unsettling:

A memory that does not quite hold.

Not because the person is lying —
but because the memory itself seems to have moved.

Over time, details change.
Events are rearranged.
Sometimes, something deeply painful disappears —
and something else takes its place.

We often call this false memory. But that term can easily mislead us if we hear it as accusation. In many cases, it is not about deception. It is about protection.

Memory is not a recording device. It is shaped by emotion, by fear, by meaning. When an experience becomes overwhelming — especially when it threatens one’s sense of safety, or even life itself — the mind does not simply store it as it is. It works on it.

Fragments may be pushed away.
Other elements may be strengthened.
Connections may be altered.

In this sense, a “false” memory may emerge not as a failure, but as an attempt at survival.

I have seen individuals carry memories that seem to protect them from something even more painful — something that may be too difficult to face directly. The mind does not always say: this is what happened. Sometimes it says: this is what I can bear.

This places us in an ethically complex space.

The question is not only whether a memory is true,
but also what it does for the person who carries it.

Sometimes, moving too quickly toward correcting a memory can break something fragile. At other times, the work is to slowly approach what has been avoided.

Research within cognitive psychology also reminds us how reconstructive memory is — how easily it can be reshaped by suggestion, context, and emotional need (Loftus, 2005).

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that memory is not simply true or false.

It is alive.

Memory and identity

At a deeper level, memory is closely tied to who we are.

Ricoeur suggests that the real question is not “What am I?” but “Who am I?” (Ricoeur, 1992).

Yet we often try to answer the who with a list of whats.

And something essential is lost.

Identity is not fixed. It moves. It changes.

Ricoeur describes this as the tension between sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse) (Ricoeur, 1984–1987).

This is where memory becomes vulnerable.

Closing reflection

In my work, I have seen how memory can wound —
but also how it can heal.

Not by returning us to the past as it was,
but by helping us live with it in a different way.

Perhaps this is where an ethics of memory begins:

Not in perfect truth.
Not in complete understanding.

But in the ongoing work of remembering —
honestly, carefully, and with responsibility
for both past and future.

References 

Arendt, H. (1992). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Freud, S. (1962). On metapsychology: The theory of psychoanalysis. Penguin.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. Harper & Row. (Original work published 1926)
Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366.
Nietzsche, F. (1981). Untimely meditations. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1873)
Plato. (1997). Complete works. Hackett.
Ricoeur, P. (1984–1987). Time and narrative (Vol. 1–3). University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as another. University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1999). Memory and forgetting. In R. Kearney & M. Dooley (Eds.), Questioning ethics. Routledge

This text is mine, refined in a conversation with OpenAI/ChateGPT

The illustrations are created by OpenAI/ChatGPT with my instructions

To understand another human being, begin with yourself

 

To understand another human being, begin with yourself

A reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s psychology

There is something paradoxical about research in the human sciences.

We often speak of “results,” as if the goal were clear answers—something we can underline and settle. But when the subject is the human being, something resists closure.

Perhaps what truly matters is not the answers, but the questions.

Research, then, is not a finished product, but a movement. A conversation that does not end. Søren Kierkegaard writes within this movement—not to conclude, but to open.

“To live is to remain inwardly engaged.”

Not as a doctor—but as one of the sick

Kierkegaard does not write as a detached observer. He refuses the safety of distance.

“I am not the physician—I am one of the sick.”

To understand another human being is not to stand outside life, but to step into it. It requires risk. Involvement.

The observer who is involved

Kierkegaard distinguishes between observers.

The curious one sees much.
The scientific one is worthy of respect.
But the one who is inwardly concerned sees what others do not.

This is not a weakness.

In my own experience from child welfare, it was often in moments of unease—when something touched me—that understanding deepened. Technical knowledge was not enough.

Engagement sharpens perception.

Unum noris omnes

Unum noris, omnes — If you know one, you know all.

For Kierkegaard, this “one” is yourself.

All understanding of others begins here.

Not as introspection alone, but as ethical self-reflection. To study human beings is to be personally involved. There is no neutral position.

When life breaks open

Human life begins in immediacy—before reflection.

Then something happens.

A crisis. A loss. A disruption.

And we become aware—of ourselves, of choice, of responsibility.

Kierkegaard calls this awakening spirit.

These moments are rarely comfortable. But they are often decisive.

The task of becoming oneself

The human being is a synthesis:

of the finite and the infinite,
of necessity and freedom.

And the self?

The self is the relation that relates itself to itself.

We are not simply given to ourselves. We must become ourselves.

This is where despair appears.

• Not wanting to be oneself
• Wanting to be oneself on one’s own terms

Both are forms of resistance.

Because the self is not self-created.

Freedom as acceptance

Here Kierkegaard differs from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

For Hegel, freedom is insight into necessity.
For Kierkegaard, it is the acceptance of necessity.

Not resignation—but a passionate act.

To become oneself is to respond to a task.

Truth without certainty

Truth is not certainty.

It is:

“objective uncertainty held fast in passionate inwardness.”

Faith is the tension between passion and uncertainty.

This means uncertainty is not something to remove—but something to live with.

The limits of understanding others

We can understand something of another person—but never fully.

Each individual lives within their own self-understanding.

This cannot be reduced to concepts.

Communication, then, is not transfer of information, but awakening.

The other must recognize themselves in what is said.

Despair as possibility

Despair is not only suffering.

It is also possibility.

Without despair, no real self-understanding.
Without crisis, no transformation.

It reveals that we are not yet who we are meant to be.

A closing reflection

Kierkegaard’s psychology is not a theory to apply, but a demand to live.

It asks:

Where am I in this?

What does it mean—for me—to become myself?

Reference (APA style)

Nordentoft, K. (1972). Kierkegaards psykologi. København: Hans Reitzel Forlag.

In a world searching for certainty, Kierkegaard reminds us:

To be human is not to arrive at final answers—

but to live the questions,

with seriousness,

with responsibility,

and with the courage to remain inwardly engaged.

That is where practical philosophy begins.

This text is written by me with suggestions from OpenAI/ChatGPT

The illustration is made by OpenAI/ChatGPT with suggestions from me.

Existential Pain – A Path Toward Ourselves

 

Existential Pain – A Path Toward Ourselves

We often speak about pain as something physical. A wound. An illness. Something we can point to.

But pain is not only of the body.

The World Health Organization reminds us that pain is both sensory and emotional—something we experience, not just something that happens to us. And in that small shift, something important opens: pain is not only located in the body. It lives in our experience of being human.

I have come to realize that some of the deepest forms of pain I have known are not physical at all.

They belong to another dimension.

Grief. Loss. Anxiety. The quiet aftermath of trauma.

These are forms of pain that cannot easily be measured, but they can shape a life just as powerfully as any physical injury. Some neuroscientists suggest that the brain itself does not clearly distinguish between these forms—that physical and psychological pain may travel along similar neural pathways. Perhaps this is why relief can sometimes feel similar, regardless of where the pain originates.

But even this distinction—between physical and psychological—does not fully capture what I am trying to understand.

When I sit quietly and turn toward my own pain, something else appears.

In moments of meditation, I have tried to draw it—what I call Mindfulness Art. Not as an explanation, but as a way of seeing.

Pain, for me, becomes color.

Blue and green tones carry my vulnerability.
Yellow and orange hold energy—something still alive, still moving.
And then there is red. The color of rupture. Of crisis. Of moments where I feel a distance from who I truly am.

It is here I recognize something deeper:

Not only physical pain.
Not only psychological pain.
But something I can only call existential pain.

“Not all pain is something to escape. 

Some of it is something to understand.”

A Life Touched by Suffering

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer would not have been surprised by this.

For him, suffering is not an exception—it is the structure of life itself.

We are driven, he says, by a blind will. A force that pushes us to want, to strive, to long. And even when we reach what we desire, something shifts. A new longing appears. Satisfaction slips away.

There is a certain honesty in this perspective.

Perhaps even something unsettling.

Because if Schopenhauer is right, then suffering is not something we simply overcome. It is something we live within.

And yet, there is another voice.

Meaning in the Midst of Pain

The psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, shaped by his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, offers a different way of understanding pain.

He does not deny suffering.

But he asks a different question:

Can suffering carry meaning?

Frankl believed it can.

Even in the most extreme conditions, he observed that some people were able to hold onto a sense of inner freedom—a capacity to choose their attitude, even when everything else was taken from them.

He called this search for meaning logotherapy.

And he introduced a powerful idea: that existential pain often arises not from what happens to us, but from a loss of meaning in how we understand our lives.

He called it the existential vacuum.

And perhaps many of us have touched this space, at least for a moment.

Pain as a Signal

When I try to understand this more deeply, I find myself returning again and again to Søren Kierkegaard.

He writes about despair—not as a failure, but as a condition of the soul.

A signal.

In The Sickness Unto Death, he describes three forms of despair. And I recognize something of myself in each of them:

There are moments when I do not fully know who I am.
Moments when I turn away from myself.
And moments when I try to stand alone—self-sufficient, closed, without relation.

For Kierkegaard, this is not simply psychological difficulty.

It is existential.

And anxiety—what he calls angst—is not merely fear. It is the dizziness of freedom. The realization that we are always standing in the space of possibility, always having to choose.

To live, then, is to carry this weight.

The Pain in Kierkegaards Life

There is something deeply personal in Søren Kierkegaard’s writings on pain. One senses that he does not speak about suffering from a distance, but from within it. He grew up under the shadow of a strict and deeply religious father, a man burdened by guilt and a sense of divine judgment, which left its mark on the young Kierkegaard. This early atmosphere of seriousness and melancholy followed him throughout life. 

Perhaps the most painful expression of this inner struggle was his decision to break off his engagement to Regine Olsen—the great love of his life. He believed, in a way that still unsettles us, that he could not become himself within that relationship. So he chose solitude over love, at a great personal cost. 

Added to this were his own physical frailties and a life marked by exhaustion and suffering, culminating in a difficult and painful death. And yet—through all this—Kierkegaard insists that pain is not meaningless. On the contrary, it is precisely through despair, anxiety, and suffering that a human being is called to become oneself. Not by avoiding pain, but by passing through it, and allowing it to speak.

Through Pain, Not Around It

There is a temptation in our time to remove pain as quickly as possible.

To fix it. Silence it. Medicate it.

And sometimes, that is necessary.

But existential pain does not always respond to solutions.

Sometimes it asks something else of us.

To stay.
To listen.
To move through.

Kierkegaard describes how a human being can live in what he calls the aesthetic stage—seeking pleasure, avoiding discomfort, staying on the surface. But sooner or later, life interrupts this. A crisis comes. A rupture.

And with it, the possibility of something deeper.

The ethical.
The religious.
A life lived with greater truth.

But this movement does not happen without cost.

It often passes through existential pain.

A Quiet Realization

I find myself returning to this insight:

Pain is not only something to be avoided.

It is also something that reveals.

Something that calls us back to ourselves.

Not all pain is meaningful. Not all suffering transforms. But sometimes—perhaps more often than we expect—it opens a space where something true can emerge.

And in that space, we are confronted with something essential:

Our freedom.
Our responsibility.
And the fragile possibility of becoming who we are.

Closing Reflection

Perhaps existential pain is not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Perhaps it is a sign that something in us is still unfinished.

That life is still asking something of us.

And that, even in the midst of discomfort, we are being invited—

not away from ourselves,
but deeper into who we are becoming.

—Kaare

References

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)

Kierkegaard, S. (1980). The sickness unto death (H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1849)

Schopenhauer, A. (1969). The world as will and representation (E. F. J. Payne, Trans.). Dover Publications. (Original work published 1818)

World Health Organization. (2020). WHO guidelines on the pharmacological treatment of persisting pain in children. WHO.

International Association for the Study of Pain. (2020). IASP revises its definition of pain. IASP News.

I have often felt that I live on the edge of existence.

Not outside of life—but not entirely within it either.

There is a certain distance there.

A way of seeing that does not always follow what is expected.

And perhaps this is where my experience of being "a little different" becomes part of the picture.

I do not always read the world as others do.

But I see it—sometimes with a clarity, sometimes with an intensity—that feels deeply my own.

It is not always easy.

But it is real.

This text is written by me, but with suggestions from OpenAI/ChatGPT. 

The illustration is created by Open AI/ChatGPT

 

When Cells Become Questions

A reflection on autism research, science, and the limits of understanding

A brief summary of the research

A recent study published in Nature investigates how different genetic forms of autism affect early brain development. Researchers took ordinary cells (such as skin or blood cells) from individuals with and without autism and reprogrammed them into stem cells. These were then grown into small, brain-like structures—so-called cortical organoids—that model early stages of human brain development.

By following these organoids over time, the researchers found something striking:

Although different genetic mutations initially produce different effects, these differences tend to converge as development progresses. In other words, many distinct biological starting points may lead into shared developmental pathways, particularly affecting how neurons form, mature, and connect.

This suggests that autism, despite its many causes, may involve common underlying biological processes—especially in early brain development.

Science and reflection at sunrise

Created by OpenAI/GPT togeter with me

When understanding begins with hesitation

I must admit:
When I first read this research, I hesitated.

There was something in me that resisted.
Something that felt close to what Kierkegaard once called fear and trembling.

Not because the science was weak—
on the contrary, it is among the most advanced we have.
But because of what it does:

It takes living human cells, reprograms them,
and allows them to grow into small, brain-like structures—
organoids—so that we may study development as it unfolds.

There is something both fascinating and unsettling in this.

A new kind of window

The promise is clear.

For decades, autism research has been marked by fragmentation:
many causes, many pathways, many stories.

But here, something different appears.

Even if autism begins in many different genetic variations,
these differences may converge—
meeting in shared biological pathways during early brain development.

Different beginnings.
A kind of shared unfolding.

From a scientific perspective, this is powerful.
It offers coherence where there has been complexity.

But it also raises a deeper question:

What kind of understanding is this?

Understanding as explanation—and as interpretation

Here I find myself turning, almost instinctively, to Gadamer.

For Gadamer, understanding is never just explanation.
It is always interpretation—
a meeting between what we study and who we are.

Science seeks what can be measured,
what can be repeated,
what can be placed—so to speak—“two lines under.”

And this study does exactly that—beautifully.

It maps gene expression,
tracks development over time,
identifies networks that seem to regulate other networks.

It gives us clarity.

But Gadamer would gently remind us:

Understanding is not only about what we can see—
but about how we make sense of what we see.

And here, something remains open.

The human being beyond the model

Because what is being studied is not the human being as lived.

Not the child who struggles—or flourishes.
Not the adult who experiences the world differently.
Not the quiet, often invisible work of making meaning in one’s own life.

What is studied are cells.
Signals.
Patterns.

Important, yes.
Necessary, even.

But still only one layer of what it means to be human.

Heidegger and the question of technology

At this point, Heidegger enters the room.

Not to reject science—
but to ask a different kind of question:

What happens when we begin to understand life primarily as something that can be produced, modeled, and controlled?

The stem cell, once part of a human body,
is now part of a laboratory system.

It is reprogrammed.
Directed.
Observed.

Nothing here is careless.
Everything is ethically regulated.

And yet—

Heidegger might say that something subtle shifts:

The human being begins to appear as something that can be
revealed through technical processes.

Not wrong.
But incomplete.

Kierkegaard and the single individual

And then, perhaps most importantly,
Kierkegaard.

Because in all convergence, all patterns, all shared pathways,
he would insist on one thing:

The single individual cannot be reduced.

Autism, in lived experience, is never just a pathway.
Never just a network of genes.

It is a way of being in the world.
A way of relating.
A way of sensing, understanding, and sometimes struggling.

There is no convergence that can fully capture that.

Between insight and humility

So where does that leave us?

Not in rejection.
Not in fear.

But perhaps in something more demanding:

a double movement.

On the one hand:

• To recognize the power of this research
• To acknowledge that it reveals something real about human development

On the other:

• To resist the temptation to believe that this is the whole story

Because it is not.

A quiet closing

There is something deeply human in wanting to understand.

To look closer.
To see patterns.
To find connections where there was confusion.

This research is part of that movement.

But perhaps practical philosophy asks us to remain aware of something else:

That understanding is not only something we achieve—
it is also something we live into.

And maybe the most important thing we can say is this:

Even when science brings us closer to the mechanisms of life,
the meaning of a human life still asks to be understood—
not in the laboratory, but in the encounter.

References

Gordon, A., Yoon, S.-J., Bicks, L. K., Martín, J. M., Pintacuda, G., Arteaga, S., Wamsley, B., Guo, Q., Elahi, L., Dolmetsch, R. E., Bernstein, J. A., O’Hara, R., Hallmayer, J. F., Lage, K., Pașca, S. P., & Geschwind, D. H. (2026). Developmental convergence and divergence in human stem cell models of autism. Nature, 651, 707–715. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-10047-5

Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd rev. ed.). Continuum. (Original work published 1960)

Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays. Harper & Row.

Kierkegaard, S. (1985). Fear and trembling (A. Hannay, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1843)

Even when science brings us closer to the mechanisms of life,

the meaning of a human life still asks to be understood—

not in the laboratory, but in the encounter.

This text was written by me in conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT