Car companies do the same thru advertising. As in the spate a new model vehicles targeted at ‘Boomers: airbrushed with a soundtrack from the 60s & other sorts of “intentional editing” for memory revision that relays ‘hey, even grunts in ‘Nam didn’t miss a beat because you may now be in your 60s but you can still drive a Mustang convertible like it was the 60s’.

Another route: meds can be administered to prevent the memories' re-consolidation.

Propranolol, for instance, a memory-dampening beta-blocker for, say, being mugged & beaten.

On the horizon: scientists discovered that proteins -- called calcium-permeable AMPARS -- can be removed from the brain’s amygdala to erase memories forever. “When a traumatic event occurs, it creates a fearful memory that can last a lifetime & have a debilitating effect on a person’s life,” says Richard L. Huganir, professor & chair of neuroscience in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He said his finding on the molecular process “raises the possibility of manipulating those mechanisms with drugs to enhance behavioral therapy” for such conditions as PTSD (re: once called shell-shock, remember?), depression, drug addiction or a Ga-Ga-like bad romance depicted in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

So much for people growing & learning from their experiences, & adversity improving the breed. Creating such a hole in a person’s memory bank – Designer Alzheimer -- used to be referred to as dementia.

The message loud ‘n clear: forget cognition.

Or here, just try this bar – to miraculously wake the id back up to enhance a couple quick 15-minute sessions of CBM (Cognitive-Bias Modification) which involves neither drugs nor psychoanalysis (the interminable discussion of feelings). Doesn't even need a therapist. All it requires is a simple de-biasing technique. Based on the idea that many psychological problems are caused by automatic, unconscious biases in thinking, CBM is a kind of cognitive vaccine. According to Yair Bar-Haim, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University who has been experimenting with it on patients as diverse as children & soldiers, “It’s not often that a new evidence-based treatment for a major psychopathology comes around.”

Chocolate Therapy... been around since well before the common era of psychology.