F.Medeiros Paiva*

Summary: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and the dysfunction of neurotransmitter systems. The functional and structural anomalies of the brain caused by biological modifications and its expression as symptoms. The psychological trauma and its memory.

Key-words: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Disturbances of the memory.Psychological Trauma.

*Chefe de Serviço do Departamento de Psiquiatria e Saúde Mental do Hospital de S. João. Mestre e Docente Voluntário da Faculdade de Medicina do Porto.

Fernando Guimarães*

Summary: The problem of memory, in the literary field, is studied in Rhetoric (part of it deals with memory). If we expand its meaning, we may admit that Rhetoric is nowadays related with an application of Semiotics to Literature itself.

Key-words: Memory. Language. Writing. Rhetoric. Literature. Symbolism. 

*Poeta e Ensaísta.

Afeição/Afecção. O presente do passado. A propósito de uma estória de vida

M. Fernanda Santos*

Summary: The author reviews the complaints presented by elderly patients in the Sé (Porto) area and the therapeutic importance of the autobiographical memory.

Key-words: Elderly; Life stories; Autobiographical memory; Therapy

*Psicóloga Clínica. Psicoterapeuta

Memória e Construção do Futuro

Alexandre Alves Costa*

Summary: The author reflects on the three circumstances where the invocation of the memory was or is instrumental.
1. Process of creation in architecture.
2. Aspirations to construct the new.
3. Contemporary circumstances, at the moment where Portugal joins Europe.

Key-words: Architecture; Memory; Creativity; Liberation

* Arquitecto. Professor Catedrático da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Arte de Esquecer

Guimarães Lopes*

Summary: The author makes a digression in the thematic Literature of the Forgetfulness.
Searchs to help who intends "to forget". Here it is the privileged field of work of the existencial psychotherapy.

Key-words: Forgetfullness; Lethe; Aletheia; Art; Literature; Form, Training, Transformation; Existential Psychotherapy

*Psiquiatra

Memória e Afectos: Memória de Quê; de Quem?

Maria Rita Mendes Leal*

Summary: Memory is today thought of as a mediating instance processing and integrating information at several functional levels to satisfy the needs and objectives of a self and its body, a psychosomatic whole. More recent studies have centered on the regularities of «implicit memory» (which manifests itself from the beginning of life and is automatic) as distinct from «declarative memory» (which is conscious and subject to deliberate strategies and which until recently has been the principle center of study). The concept of «implicit memory» may open the way to explaining «infantile amnesia», a phenomenon first described by Freud, and also supports reasoning on the intimate association between memory and affect - now understood to proceed largely at a cellular level. Following the neuro-biologist Candice Pert (1999), heavy proof is being found for the hypothesis of a psychosomatic network where peptides and their specialized receptors serve to weave the brain and the body and its organs into a single web that reacts to external and internal environmental changes. Neuropeptides and their specialized receptors, which act as ligands to shape our memories, are found concentrated not only in the brain in cerebral nuclei but have been found conveniently distributed in all regions and organs of the body.

Key-words: Emotional memory. Functional relation. Complexity

Memória, Recordações e Afectos

Pedro Lau Ribeiro*

Summary: Since affections are real memory builders, they also allow weaving the conducting thread of experiences, wrapping them up with coherence and meaning.
When this does not happen, such as in the cases of affective anaesthesia emphasised by the concept «surgical thought» which allegedly and frequently occurs with the so-called psychosomatic patients: the narration becomes intersected, uncompleted and consequently unintelligible, in the jasperian sense.
Focused mainly on the cases traditionally problematic for the psychotherapeutic approach, we will return to the concept of Empire of the Present and from that standpoint follow up the steps of affectivity of these specific patients, who attribute their affections to things and situations and not to the real persons they are related to.
Therefore, it is necessary to enter the patients' world and see how he has build up his own speech and the way to try to unveil it by means of a phenomenological-existential approach.

Key-words: Memory. Metaphor. Affections. Psychosomatic

Factores que Influenciam os Casais a Não Repetir a FIV ¹

José Manuel S. Raio* , Alucíndio Valente** , Ineborg Chaves***

Summary: In vitro fertilization (IVF) is often felt by the couples as the last chance to have the child they always desired. We survey couples that pursued only one IVF cycle despited the failure. The major causes pointed out by the couples, by decreased order of importance, for not pursuing a second cycle, are emotional causes, physical and economical ones. As negative souvenirs they remember the emotional stress of failing the cycle and not being psychological supported in the day after.

Key-words: In vitro fertilization. Emotional factors. Physical factors. Economical factores