About the Historian Personality Subself

        One amazing facility of healthy brains is short-term and long-term memory. Adults and kids vary in their ability to remember trivial and vital things, including abstract concepts.

     A way of looking at this ability is to say that a normal personality subself specializes in retrieving historical information, like an internal librarian. The Observer subself notices things objectively, and passes them on to this Historian for storage and retrieval. The Inner Critic, Perfectionist, Guilty and Shamed inner Kids, Analyzer, Moralizer, and Adult subselves may process the Historian's data to produce local meaning and help make local decisions ("The last time I lied to my boss, I got fired.")

     The Magician subself may distort remembered information to protect Inner Kids against significant pain. The Anesthetist and/or Analyzer may allow remembering painful things but numb out or avoid related emotions. The Blocker may prevent remembering risky things (repression). 

    Here, Lesson 1 provides an effective way to help integrate and optimize the Historian's talent with other active subselves, to make the best use of this vital ability to remember.