Memory

Last updated on: January 31, 2017 at 3:08 pm by Kate Cousino

Memory 2017-01-31T15:08:53-04:00 Kate Cousino

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

My brother mentioned something to me a few weeks ago that I find compelling, a bit scary, and fascinating. He was telling me that memory is a lot more like a filing system than something concrete and unchanging. When we ‘remember’ something, we essentially take the file out of its folder and file cabinet, open it up, and read it. But, when we read it, we also change it – we can erase emotional data (extinction), or add extra data (consolidation). There seem to be times when our files are more prone to being altered – when we are reading with a pencil, eraser and whiteout in hand. Neuroscience confirms that there are different chemical pathways triggered when a memory is being altered. And then – we put it away again, and the resulting revision seems as relevant and real to us as the original memory.

Apparently, the older a memory is, the more firm it is, the harder it is to erase any of it. But of course, by the time you’ve grown up, you’ve revisited and consolidated your childhood memories over and over again, refining them, adding levels of emotion and meaning. Which helps understand why siblings who grew up together can have passionate disagreements about the things that happened when they were children. Ironically, those who have revisited the memory most often – talked it over, written about it, mused on it, etc – are both more likely to be confident of their version of events, and more likely to have almost completely altered details through this process of revision. I wonder how often it is that someone who is more confident but less accurate manages to prevail in conversation and actually force a revision in other’s memories?

This is all fascinating to me because I have never had a good memory for my own past, and have consequently rarely felt able to trust my own memories. My memories aren’t visual or narrative, they are clusters of impressions and emotions – the very things that neuroscience seems to show are most easily altered. How I feel about a person, a situation, my hopes, my fears…those things color all of my memories. I have always felt that my memories were unreliable in detail, but I had tended to trust the impressions they left on me – because how else can I live? I feel unrooted from my own past already, and to have it confirmed that memory is not reliable leaves me unsure how to remedy that feeling of disconnection from my own life.

What relevance does all this have? Well, there’s something scary about the thought that we can’t rely on our own recollections. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable and easy to influence. As I try to make sense of my life, I am acutely aware that not only may I not accurately remember what has happened in the past, I may actually make my memories more unreliable, less in accord with reality, by trying too hard to reconstruct and make sense of them. We want to think that we can shed light on the past by adding some new piece of information that will make all the pieces fit together. But during a moment of trauma, it is just as likely that we will wind up rewriting our personal history to fit a new preconception, to tell a better story.

More scary – the same is true of everyone else. The same is true of you, and your neighbors, and your family, and your friends. We are all subject to the variability of our own memory, and the more confident we are of our recollections and conclusions – the more we revisit them for proof of this or that – the more likely we are to have written our prejudices into the files of our minds.

The hopeful side of it – the potential that we can give ourselves peaceful and beautiful dispositions by dwelling on ‘whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.’

Therapists use this neuroscience to help people recover from past traumatic experiences, by revisiting the traumatic memories in a safe environment to eliminate the negative emotional content (extinction). I think this is a large part of why cognitive therapy is effective as well – because changing the way we think can change what kind of memories we form.

What this means to me now, as I try to pick up the pieces of my life and aspire to conform myself to reality, I don’t quite know.

Previous Post

February 21, 2012

Prayer requests for Lent

Next Post

March 1, 2012 A lovely meditation

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category ADHD Blog Business Body and Soul Books Faith Faith in Action Family Feminism Fertility Awareness Friendship Geekiness Guest Post History Hope Just For Fun Love Marriage Memory Mental Exercise Movies Parenting Personalism Poetry Prayer Quotes Scripture Seven Quick Takes Striving for Holiness Television The Stories We Tell The World Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 August 2016 June 2016 March 2016 January 2016 November 2015 October 2015 August 2015 July 2015 May 2015 April 2015 February 2015 December 2014 November 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 August 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 November 2009 October 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What city did David capture and make his capital?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jerusalem Hebron Bethlehem Gibeon

Support this
Column