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The Curse of Pure Memory
Mar. 25th, 2011 07:20 pmThe most recent research on how memory works throws the usual ideas out the window. Memory isn't like a file cabinet or book or a hard drive. The best analogy I could think of would be like a Word document. When something happens, it gets documented as accurately as your perceptual apparatus will allow and then it is saved.
However, every time you bring that file back up, when you remember that memory, you change it. Your current perceptions alter that memory. The more you remember something, the more you mull something over, the more you access that file, the more it changes.
Thus, the most accurate memories you have are the ones you don't think about much. Which means that repressed memories would be your most accurate memories, if you did ever remember them, because those would be the memories that have never been altered. They were locked away as soon as it happened and never touched again.
However, every time you bring that file back up, when you remember that memory, you change it. Your current perceptions alter that memory. The more you remember something, the more you mull something over, the more you access that file, the more it changes.
Thus, the most accurate memories you have are the ones you don't think about much. Which means that repressed memories would be your most accurate memories, if you did ever remember them, because those would be the memories that have never been altered. They were locked away as soon as it happened and never touched again.
