The Self And Memory

How we think of ourselves depends largely on what we remember from our lives, and what we remember is biased in many ways by how we think of ourselves. The complex interplay of the self and memory is the topic of this volume.

Noted scholars from a broad range of sub-disciplines in psychology discuss the ways in which the memories of our lives come to influence who we are, our personalities, and our emotional functioning. Other topics covered include how our personalities and self-concepts influence what we remember from our lives, and the notion of memory and the self as interdependent psychological phenomena.

Our memories, many believe, make us who we are. But most of our experiences have been forgotten, and the memories that remain are often wildly inaccurate. How, then, can memories play this person-making role? The answer lies in a largely unrecognized type of memory: Rilkean memory.

How do our brains store—and then conjure up—past experiences to make us who we are? A twinge of sadness, a rush of love, a knot of loss, a whiff of regret. Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. This process shapes us: filtering the world around us, informing our behavior and feeding our imagination. Psychiatrist Veronica O’Keane has spent many years observing how memory and experience are interwoven. In this rich, fascinating exploration, she asks, among other things: Why can memories feel so real? How are our sensations and perceptions connected with them? Why is place so important in memory? Are there such things as “true” and “false” memories? And, above all, what happens when the process of memory is disrupted by mental illness? O’Keane uses the broken memories of psychosis to illuminate the integrated human brain, offering a new way of thinking about our own personal experiences. Drawing on poignant accounts that include her own experiences, as well as what we can learn from insights in literature and fairytales and the latest neuroscientific research, O’Keane reframes our understanding of the extraordinary puzzle that is the human brain and how it changes during its growth from birth to adolescence and old age. By elucidating this process, she exposes the way that the formation of memory in the brain is vital to the creation of our sense of self.

Jordi Fern�ndez here offers a philosophical investigation of memory, one which engages with memory's philosophically puzzling characteristics in order to clarify what memory is. Memories interact with mental states of other types in a particular way, and they also have associated feelings that these other mental states lack. They are special in terms of their representational capacity too, since one can have memories of objective events as well as memories of one's own past experiences. Finally, memories are epistemically unique, in that beliefs formed on the basis of memories are protected from certain errors of misidentification, and are justified in a way which does not rely on any cognitive capacity other than memory. To explain these unique features, Fern�ndez proposes that memories have a particular functional role which involves past perceptual experiences and beliefs about the past. He suggests that memories have a particular content as well, namely that they represent themselves as having a certain causal origin. Fern�ndez then explains the feelings associated with our memories as the experience of some of the things that our memories represent, things such as our own past experiences, or the fact that memories originate in those experiences. He also accounts for the special justification for belief afforded by our memories in terms of the content that memories have. The resulting picture is a unified account of several philosophically interesting aspects of memory, one that will appeal to philosophers of mind, metaphysicians, and epistemologists alike.

Divided into three parts, this volume discusses: the development of autobiographical memory and self-understanding; cross-cultural variation in narrative environments and self-construal; and the construction of gender and identity concepts in developmental and situational contexts.

Autobiographical memory shapes our understanding of ourselves, guides our behaviour, and helps us to develop and maintain relationships with others. The ways in which we interpret and narrate our memories have important implications for our psychological well-being, and can sometimes contribute to the onset and maintenance of a variety of psychological disorders. Autobiographical Memory and the Self: Relationship and Implications for Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy synthesises the growing cognitive, social, personality, and clinical psychological literature on the memory-self relationship. It creates an interdisciplinary dialogue which explores autobiographical memory and its relevance for clinical practice, especially cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). The authors propose a model for understanding the mechanisms of change involved in therapeutic interventions targeting negative or traumatic memories whilst providing insights into recent debates and avenues for future research. Autobiographical Memory and the Self will be useful to clinicians and clinical trainees, researchers, and psychology postgraduate students.

Originally published in 1993. This book explores the process by which individuals reconstruct the meaning and significance of past experience. Drawing on the lives of such notable figures as St Augustine, Helen Keller and Philip Roth as well as on the combined insights of psychology, philosophy and literary theory, the book sheds light on the intricacies and dilemmas of self-interpretation in particular and interpretive psychological enquiry more generally. The author draws upon selected, mainly autobiographical, literary texts in order to examine concretely the process of rewriting the self. Among the issues addressed are the relationship of rewriting the self to the concept of development, the place of language in the construction of selfhood, the difference between living and telling about it, the problem of facts in life history narrative, the significance of the unconscious in interpreting the personal past, and the freedom of the narrative imagination. Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award winner in 1994