> every time you retrieve a memory from long-term storage, it gets re-encoded before it goes back to storage
I don't know how literal you're being (e.g. read once, fully overwrite previous), but it's a good model for "reinterpreting past events, with a new perspective".
This may be a tool/strategy for therapists -- I've spent zero hours in clinical psychology classes.
But anecdotally, very few people are open to reflecting on past events with greater charity for the remembered villain of the story. :)
Well, another one of the "sins of memory" (categorised along the sins of <i>comission</i>, instead of <i>omission</i>) is <i>bias</i>, which means modifying the actual transpired event with our beliefs and previous knowledge, either at encoding or during retrieval.
So, if at retrieval time, your beliefs (e.g. now you support legalisation of marijuana) and knowledge are different than what they were during the memory encoding (e.g. you didn't support legalisation of marijuana), because you see yourself as "consistent" you may actually remember the memory tinted with your actual beliefs (e.g. you were a supporter all along).
Furthermore, as we lose the complete experience details from our episodic memories, we start filling the gaps with our current knowledge and beliefs, too, to achieve some consistency of the event...
Quite interesting, but obviously, lots of variables and different things come into play in this topic.