On Memory

Memory is not accurate at all. That's the conclusion I get from the book I just finished which is titled "Truth in Memory" and is edited by Steven Jay Lynn and Kevin M. McConkey. I was always a strong believer in repression but it sounds like there is scant evidence for it for the more extreme forms of repression. I always believed in repression because I had seen it in my own life. I had had trauma that I had dealt with and for a long time I stuffed it in the back of my head and did my best not to think about what had happened. In a sense, that is repression. But it was always there and finally I was able to talk about it. So that was not the "extreme" view of repression that is often advocated by therapists. It was always there - I just chose not to think about it.

Memory is tremendously flexible. Our life experiences are constantly changing our "schemas", or internal representations of what we know. Thus the old memory can be re-interpreted. We may discover that what we always thought was tremendously shameful is not so shameful at all. Perhaps we did something as a teenager that we thought was terribly wrong. Maybe ten years later, in our twenties, we found out that our shameful experience is a common experience. The shame and guilt seems much less then, doesn't it? And God forgives us.

By the way, if you want it right now, it's on sale at Guilford Press for $5 plus shipping, but not for much longer...