I have such a bad memory which is bad but it’s also amazing and terrific which is also bad. I sometimes think back to my childhood and all the amazing adventures I had and all the amazing people I’ve met and that’s when things start going wrong. I can’t remember anything short term but my long term is so sharp and crystal clear, it’s a curse really. I remember all the people I’ve ever met or made friends with on family vacations and I think “Where are you now? Do you remember me? Would we still be friends? Do you ever think about me?” I have a few good friends and an amazing girlfriend but when I start thinking of those friends, the friend’s I’ve lost to time, it all becomes hauntingly lonely. I’ll most likely never seen any of them again, I don’t remember their names but I remember their faces, I remember all my child hood crushes. People have told me they can forget people so easily, I wish I could, that way I wouldn’t be in so much pain. Their faces are what haunt me the most —A slave to memory
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2015.
Wait until you’re older…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OI0iLzZG4…
Is it really that the wonderful people from your past haunt you, or do they live on , preserved in the Amber of your memory like an instant of perfection. Free from the corruption of time.
I’d say, remembering the good things is a blessing. The curse is to be like Reid and Morgan in the clip; to have an elephant’s memory for every insult ,humiliation and wrong done to you.
*3 years on, We still miss you, Amber.*
Memory, the foundation of personal identity.
^^^ or is personal identity the filter of memory?
As memories grow more distant we remember and interpret them through a filter of our own sense of self. That is why two people may remember different details of an event or may view them differently. Thus, we have the frequent “that’s not how I remember it!” conversations.
Try listening to the underrated Skid Row classic “I Remember You,” at full volume, as I am doing right now.
op, are you depressed, anxious? those kill short term memory
The past is past, accept that, Slave. Look back in fondness occasionally but don’t dwell there. All that truly matters is right now.
My memory is completely shot OP in regard to important everyday things to do. What is it a month and I still can’t remember to return that cable box thingy to Bell. Still I do remember events from my childhood exploring nature, lines from movies etc. Maybe my brain prioritizes things to maintain my sanity i.e. going to watch Westerns at the Middleton cinema with my brother when I was seven as opposed to cable boxes.
Besides, don’t get down. It’s a fine day in February and still a mountain of snow to shovel. Remember to bend those knees!
THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF MEMORY
As I should have expected but didn’t, no one understood my comment, “Memory, the foundation of personal identity.” It was an ontological point, meaning that memory is that which constitutes the essence of one’s reality. One’s self, in other words, is co-extensive with one’s memory. To speak, therefore, of personal identity as” the filter of memory” is incoherent since memory and personal identity are identical concepts. In the same way it has nothing to do with short-term memory or conflicting memories of two people over the same event. These are empirical but irrelevant observations having nothing to do with the ontological status of memory.
The only difficulty I have with the identification of memory and personal identity is that it appears passive, seemingly leaving no room for agency, the reasons or motives for one’s actions. Put differently, it is “foundational” or “essentialist” rather than activity-oriented or “existential.” We may be shaped but are not the products of our memory. But I won’t go there on that one here as it would blow the roof off.
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
I found myself grasping at the fog of memories as well and basically always end up concluding that, things end up the way they’re meant to and I remember only that which was accompanied by a strong emotional charge of some kind.
I’m sure someone somewhere remembers you, probably more so than you think, or less than. I think that’s one of the beauties of Life; it keeps us guessing… nail-biting suspense and wondering, sometimes till the end…
Here is the hautning sound of ghosts and nostalgia for you. This music will bring you back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yamp0fuBR0…
Nice comment Fox–one of my favorite flicks, and great rendition of a classic tune. Thanks for posting–I was feeling bummed out, you made me smile.
There is a “reconstructive” view of memory that believes that our current situation (our own needs and interests, external expectations, etc.) influence our memory so our recollections of the past are often distorted. For example, our nostalgia will often causes us to remember the past in a way that is different from how we experienced it at the time. So, is this a false memory or just a reinterpreted memory?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-…
Yes ohhappyday. There was a period when therapists were prompting patients to “recover” repressed memories and those recovered memories were even used to prosecute bewildered people who had done nothing wrong. Subsequent research showed how suggestible our memory is and, as indicated in the article you referenced, how totally false memories can be created.
People can choose not to dwell on traumatic memories and can find ways to push them aside to some degree, when they pop up, but they can’t completely erase or even temporarily repress them.
“The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for “recovered memory therapy” — the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era. ”
Richard J. McNally, Ph.D.
Professor, Director of Clinical Training, Department of Psychology at Harvard University
I was once proofreading a paper for an aspiring psychology student who wrote about the subject of “repressed memories.” He was convinced that any person could unknowingly be harbouring “repressed” memories of terrible crimes or experiences.
When I asked him “So, what repressed memories might YOU have?” he was shocked– “Oh no,” he tried to explain, “Only the PATIENTS have repressed memories, not NORMAL people.”
So I said, “But if the memory has been repressed, how do you KNOW? Maybe you HAVE had these kinds of experiences in your past, you just don’t REMEMBER. Yet.”
Thus ended our proofreader/student relationship.
The idea of repressed memory would be laughable if it wasn’t so terrible. Ask ANY person who has gone through a painful event, and they will recall the incident in vivid, often excruciating detail, even decades later.
“Repressed Memory” is a phrase that can’t disappear from our language soon enough.
ON THE FATUITY & DISHONESTY OF PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology, the so-called “science of the mind,” is fatuous. It is empty. It is meaningless. It is fatuous, empty and meaningless because it presupposes that the operations of the mind can be revealed by means of the scientific methods of observation and measurement. But such observation and measurement pre-suppose that there is that which can be observed and measured, much in the same way that atmospheric pressure can be observed and measured. But the mind is not like atmospheric pressure. It resides at another order of being. It resides at another level of reality. That is why the efforts of psychology are fatuous. The analytical “tools” of psychological analysis are inappropriate for the object of its scrutiny.
That is also why the relationship between the proof-reader and the psychology student above ended. Psychology, by its nature, can never apply its own criteria to itself. Put differently, the psychologist is immune from the ministrations of his own psychological analysis. That is why, in addition to being fatuous, psychology is also dishonest.
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
Freud knew he was not ‘immune from the ministrations of his own analysis’, but it took him a very long time to realize this and he followed that realization with 6 years of self-analysis. Great comment MM–I do agree with you in regards to contemporary psych–the most hilarious example so far, IMO, was ‘Brief Therapy’, which I seem to recall had a very brief life.
ON THE FATUITY & DISHONESTY OF PSYCHOLOGY (II)
RSVP
SS (10:18PM)
It took him 6 years to realize that he was not immune from the ministrations of his own self-analysis (whatever that might mean)? How did he come to realize this? Did he observe, measure and experiment with himself? If so, who was doing the “observing?” Who was doing the “measuring?” Who was doing “experimenting?” It must have been someone else since, in conformity with the procedures of proper scientific investigation, the observer, measurer and the experimenter is always detached, always separate from the object of his investigation. But, of course, there is “no one else” and so his “self-analysis” was incoherent. The old fraud.
My favourite, which encapsulates the fatuity of psychology in general, is their take on “intelligence.” What is intelligence? Well, with hand to the brow, psychologists can now report that intelligence is that which intelligence tests measure. That is fatuity on stilts.
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!