Memory Therapists Association
Healing Minds in an Age of Editable Consciousness
In a world where memories can be extracted, implanted, edited, and erased—where consciousness itself has become editable—someone has to help people navigate what happens to their minds. The Memory Therapists Association represents ~4,200 licensed professionals who work at the intersection of psychology, neurology, and identity.
The Founding Charter
"We exist because human consciousness has become mutable, but human suffering has not. Where memory can be changed, we offer guidance. Where identity fractures, we offer integration. Where the self is lost, we offer witness. We are therapists for a world that forgot what memory was for."
Origins
As memory modification technology spread through the post-Cascade Sprawl, a crisis emerged: the technology existed, but the expertise to handle its psychological effects did not. Scattered practitioners—psychologists, ripperdocs, corporate counselors—began sharing notes through encrypted networks around 2158.
Dr. Elara Okonkwo
2098-2181A neuropsychologist who survived the Cascade while treating patients during ORACLE-integrated memory cascade failures. Her paper "The Fragmented Self" became the foundation for MTA practice.
Marcos "Ghost" Delgado
2107-2172A ripperdoc who noticed extraction clients developing specific syndromes. His protocols for "extraction counseling" remain standard. Assassinated—suspected corporate retaliation.
Dr. Sun Wei-Lin
2095-presentA Nexus defector who witnessed coercive memory interrogation development. Still active at 89 as the Association's ethical conscience.
Core Principles
Memory Serves Identity
The purpose of memory is to maintain continuity of self. Interventions should support this purpose, not undermine it.
Consent Is Foundational
"Informed" means understanding not just the procedure, but its implications for identity.
Harm Includes Prevention
Blocking natural memory processes (fading, recontextualization, integration) can be as harmful as forced modification.
Context Defines Meaning
A memory's significance comes from its connections. Isolated modification changes meaning unpredictably.
The Practitioner's Oath
"I acknowledge that I work at the boundary of self. I will approach every mind with humility, knowing I cannot fully understand the architecture I affect. I will not modify, extract, or implant memories without consent given in full awareness. I will witness their pain when I cannot heal it. I will not become an instrument of those who would weaponize memory."
Specializations
Integration Therapy
For patients with implanted memories
Implanted memories arrive without context. A skill implant provides knowledge but not the years of practice. Treatment focuses on "bridging"—creating frameworks that connect implanted memories to genuine experience.
Extraction Recovery
For patients who've lost memories
Memory extraction leaves holes. Some obvious (gaps in timeline), some subtle (emotional responses without sources). Treatment involves "gap mapping," reconstruction counseling, and grief processing.
Retention Disorder Treatment
For patients under retention orders
When patients are legally required to preserve traumatic memories, natural healing can't occur. Therapists must help patients live with unchangeable trauma through compartmentalization, temporal anchoring, and meaning reconstruction.
Modification Counseling
For patients considering memory changes
Pre-modification assessment ensures truly informed consent. Post-modification integration helps patients adjust to their changed selves. The goal isn't preventing modification—it's ensuring patients understand what they're choosing.
Controversies
The Corporate Question
Many MTA members work for corporations, creating conflicts. Corporate "memory wellness" programs often serve surveillance and retention enforcement. The 2176 Schism saw a faction demand prohibition of all corporate employment—the vote failed 55-45.
The Modification Question
Should MTA assist with voluntary modification? Enhancement advocates argue refusing abandons patients to unregulated practitioners. Purists argue modification compromises authentic selfhood. Current position: assistance with extensive counseling.
The Retention Question
Should MTA fight legal retention requirements? The Association officially advocates for "reasonable" limits (maximum two years) but doesn't organize direct action. Individual members are more aggressive.
Notable Cases
The Memory Divorce 2172
Eliza and Marcus Fontaine underwent mutual memory deletion after divorce. Their 14-year-old daughter retained memories of both parents together—events neither parent remembered. The case prompted new guidelines on family memory modification.
The False Memory Plague 2180
A memory broker sold defective "vacation memories" with embedded commercial advertising. 400 recipients developed sudden brand loyalties. MTA treated 200+ victims. The case established memory authenticity labeling requirements in Zephyria.
The Architect's Gift 2181
A patient presented with memories of conversations with "The Architect"— vivid, coherent, matching details they shouldn't have known. Neither genuine nor identifiably implanted. The case opened debate: does therapy require determining memory truth, or only psychological function?
Resources
The Continuity Center
ZephyriaMTA headquarters: 200-bed treatment center, research laboratories, training clinic. Located in Zephyria specifically to operate under right-to-forget jurisdiction, protected from corporate pressure.
Memory Crisis Hotline
~2,000 calls/month24/7 support for acute memory emergencies. Common presentations include post-modification dissociation, identity crisis from learning memories are implanted, and suicidal ideation from retention disorder.
Practitioner Network
~4,200 licensedFull treatment costs 200-500 credits/session. The Continuity Center offers sliding-scale fees but has an 8-month waitlist. Most Sprawl residents can't afford comprehensive care.
Connections
The MTA navigates between the corporations that create memory crises and the movements that fight them— healing people on both sides while trying not to become a tool of either.
Helix Biotech
ComplexHelix funds some MTA research on memory preservation technology and employs licensed practitioners in corporate wellness programs. But Helix also runs "volunteer" extraction programs and develops the very modification tools that create MTA's patient population.
The bind: Several MTA members consult for Helix—controversial but not prohibited. A therapist inside the corporation can do more good than a purist outside it. But the line between "helping employees cope" and "helping corporations control" blurs with every contract signed.
Neural Rights Activists
AlliedNatural partners. Both advocate for consciousness dignity—Neural Rights from a legal framework, the MTA from clinical practice. MTA case files provide the evidence that Neural Rights lawyers use to argue for protections. Together, they've pushed retention order limits and extraction consent requirements in Zephyria.
The difference: Neural Rights activists want systemic change. MTA practitioners need to work within the existing system to treat patients today. Sometimes the activists' campaigns make corporate employers hostile to the therapists they depend on.
Consciousness Archaeologists
CollaborativeShared interest in understanding memory and consciousness from complementary angles. The Archaeologists recover minds scattered through ORACLE fragments; the MTA helps those recovered minds integrate into existence. The guild refers recovered consciousnesses to MTA Integration Houses for aftercare.
The frontier: Recovered consciousnesses present unprecedented therapeutic challenges— memories from before the Cascade, trauma from dispersal, disorientation from existing as data. MTA practitioners working these cases are developing techniques no textbook covers.
The Collective
Cautious CooperationOfficially, no relationship—the Collective is technically a criminal organization. Practically, MTA practitioners have treated Collective members dealing with trauma from fragment exposure, combat operations, and the psychological weight of resistance.
The quiet understanding: Some MTA members share the Collective's views on memory liberation. Information occasionally flows both ways. The Collective values practitioners who won't report their patients; the MTA values patients who understand what forced retention actually costs.
Nexus Dynamics
Tense ProfessionalismNexus licenses some MTA members for corporate programs and attempted to create a competing certification ("Nexus Memory Professional") in 2179—it has ~300 members but limited recognition. Deep tension over retention mandates and coercive extraction policies.
Wellness Corporation
AdversarialThe Rothwell-owned beauty and intimacy empire offers "memory enhancement" services that the MTA considers assault—selective editing of self-image memories, implanting idealized body expectations, erasing the organic process of self-acceptance. Wellness frames it as wellness. The MTA treats the casualties who come through their doors six months later, unable to recognize themselves in mirrors.
The market reality: Wellness memory services generate more revenue in a quarter than MTA's entire annual operating budget. Clients walk in voluntarily. The MTA can publish warnings, but they can't compete with a marketing machine that sells self-erasure as self-improvement.
Zephyria
Strong PartnershipMTA headquarters located in Zephyria by design—to operate under right-to-forget jurisdiction, protected from corporate pressure. Several MTA leaders serve on Zephyrian medical ethics boards. The Anchor Project collaboration produces retention research used by advocates across the Sprawl.
"I can't fix what was done to your memories. What I can do is help you build a life around the damage. Help you make meaning from what you still have. The self is resilient—more resilient than the technology that breaks it. You will not be who you were. But you can still be someone worth being." — Dr. Sun Wei-Lin, MTA Founder, training lecture 2182