Image: Photoillustration by Aaron Goodman
In Brief
- We can will ourselves to forget; a neural circuit like the one that inhibits actions governs the ability to reject memories we neither want nor need.
- Emerging data provide support for Sigmund Freud’s controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious.
- The inability to forget can impede emotional recovery in trauma victims; it is also associated with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
- If you practice rebuffing recollections, you are likely to get better at it.
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Memory in the Brain [Interactive]
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8 Ways To Forget Your Troubles
Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist.
But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words got in the way. “No,” [S] would say. “This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can’t make anything out of this.” When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details. He made a living performing feats of recollection.
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2 Comments
Add CommentSt. Augustine wrote that it is incorrect to think of time as past, present, and future. What we call the past is actually the "present of things past." In other words, we don't know the past, but rather our present day interpretation of the past; our memories. We tell ourselves a story about the past and that story then becomes the past as we remember it. The more we tell ourselves this story, the more real it becomes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe past which we create in turn becomes the template for the way we see the present and anticipate the future. We select events and interpret them in such a way as to fit into a plot, setting, and narrative we have already created. In essence, we tell ourselves a story about reality and that story becomes our reality.
It is only through the act of forgetting that we have the opportunity to reset the story, change the plot, and give ourselves the chance to escape from the past we ourselves created.
I am so relieved after reading this article. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I could easily, consciously, will myself to forget traumatic experiences. My friends always thought that my memory is very bad or that I am very strong. I believe both statements are incorrect. I always believed that you can decide for yourself what it is you want to remember, how you want to remember it, and what is beneficial for you or unbeneficial to you to remember. Perhaps for some it is very difficult to forget things, or perhaps they can do this subconsciously, however, for myself I know that i have always been in control consciously of what I choose to forget. If there is a way to participate in this study, I would gladly sign up. Perhaps I can help the researchers by telling them how I do this "forgetting thing". By the way, I am 30 years old, and as the study sais, it is easier for 25 year olds and under to forget. I believe that is incorrect.
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