Charles Fernyhough On Memory

You are what you remember. It’s hard to imagine being you, being anybody, without some access to your remembered life story. But the new science of memory tells us that remembering is just that: a story. Memories are not stashed away, fully formed, in the vaults of the brain; they are constructed, when needed, according to the demands of the present. And they are soberingly fragile as a result. You can have vivid memories for things that never happened, and you can come away with only the sketchiest recollections of events that actually did.

 

Memories of childhood are particularly suspect. When I recall my first day at school, I know that I’m not remembering the event itself, so much as my last act of remembering it. The brain stores all kinds of autobiographical information in many different systems, and the particular sensory qualities of an early experience are likely stored quite accurately. It’s the mental home movie into which they’re assembled that may not bear much resemblance to reality.

   

Here we go again, the complaint might sound. Science gets its teeth into something quintessentially human, and chews it to bits. But I think that coming to terms with the slipperiness of memory can be surprisingly liberating. I happen to cherish that first-day memory: the sound of my mother’s voice, the floating dust-motes in the September-warm school hall. Understanding that it probably didn’t happen in quite that way doesn’t make the memory any less precious. If anything, my scepticism about memory makes me freer to be the person I am now. I don’t have to be constrained by particular habits of remembering; I can make myself anew each day. Memory may be a kind of storytelling, but I happen to like stories. They contain a rather wonderful kind of truth.

 

Charles Fernyhough is authour of 'A Thousand Days of Wonder''. www.charlesfernyhough.com

Comments

[Meg]

This is a great piece, mostly because few people acknowledge that memories are special because you remember them, and not because they are an exact replica of fact. We want to remember how an event felt - its smells and moods and colors - because that's why it's worth remembering.