Summary: The Case Of Jill

The article focuses on the case of Jill, a patient incapable of moving out of her mother’s house despite her fierce desire to do so. Whenever Jill seriously contemplated moving out, she would suffer from fear, angry outbursts, and defensiveness against herself and others. As the therapist begins working with Jill, they discover that Jill believed that if she were to physically leave her mother, her mother would die. This irrational thought was enhanced by the fact that, as a child, Jill stepped between her mother and father during a violent altercation. This event lead Jill to believe that her physical presence had stopped her father from killing her mother, which unconsciously convinced Jill to stay with her mother in order to keep her alive. The therapist works with Jill through various steps after identifying her symptoms and the schema behind her actions.
With therapeutic reconsolidation, Jill maintains a conscious memory of her false reality while simultaneously destroying the emotional learning that leads to her emotional memory and reaction, preventing it from reoccurring. Six months after Jill’s successful therapy sessions, she moves out from her mother’s house and is living happily with her fiancé (Sibson and Tick). Even though Jill’s therapist deals with emotional memory rather than fear memory, therapeutic reconsolidation had a stronger and faster effect on Jill than any chemically induced process scientists are currently