Is What We Remember True?

photo by author

While working with a patient whose spouse had committed infidelity, the patient told me that many of her memories had been “tarnished.” “I look back at what I used to think were happy memories with a different lens,” she said. “Now, knowing what was going on at the time, those memories all seem fake to me. They were based on a shared experience that wasn’t real. They no longer make me smile.” The new information today had changed her memories of the past.

We cherish our memories–our history is so much of what gives our lives meaning and forms our identity. We think of them as existing in a storehouse we can visit whenever we need or want to. However, it turns out memories are not, in fact, immutable records. Instead, they are dynamic reconstructions, revised each time we retrieve them.

“Box-and-Archive” vs Subject to Change

The traditional view of memories is that of a “box-and-archive” model–the memory is created and stored for future use. But in 2013, researchers Alberini and LeDoux discovered that our memories change every time we retrieve them. They found that the very act of recalling a memory destabilizes it and makes it vulnerable to revision–based on our current perspectives, feelings, and influences. This means as it becomes stabilized and integrated, it’s been altered. Each act of remembering, then, is a moment of changing what we remember.

Furthermore, psychologist Daniel Schacter has classified memory errors into seven basic categories: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. Each of these errors provide insights concerning the fundamentally constructive nature of memory, and several highlight suggestibility: how external suggestions, misleading questions, or new narratives can infiltrate memory. We see this most famously when people end up with false memories or when eyewitnesses to a crime are factually disproven. It also aligns with the reconsolidation theory of Alberini and LeDoux in that memory retrieval opens the door to distortion.

Thus memory of the past is subject to our current emotions, attitudes, knowledge, and social inputs. I once worked with a client who was briefly fondled by a neighbor as a child. He said to me, “I was confused by it and didn’t particularly like it, and I avoided the neighbor from then on. But I didn’t find it to be a traumatic experience, even though everyone labels that a trauma. Is there something wrong with me that I don’t feel traumatized by it?” He was struggling with trying to reinterpret his emotions in the light of new beliefs and understanding he had gained as an adult, while at the same time holding the possibility that there could be truth to his original experience. Many times, however, people aren’t so thoughtful or careful. Other peoples’ accounts, interpretation, biases, and beliefs can reshape our memories without us being aware.

Emotional Truth vs Factual Truth

Another layer of memory has to do with emotional truth vs factual truth. Emotional truth is what someone may believe happened because of their feelings about it, regardless of the objective facts. This is often why two people can remember the same event very differently. This can also explain why people feel “made crazy” by someone else’ s account, even if that person isn’t intentionally trying to create this experience. Similarly, emotional arousal during an event can enhance some memory features but can also distort others.

Memory as Evolving Process

The truths about memory are crucial for us to consider in the practice of psychotherapy and the law, where the ramifications can be quite profound. In *Evil at Our Table*, my memoir about my work as a forensic psychologist, I talk about how I interview offenders but my evaluation is based, as much as possible, on facts versus recollections. In psychotherapy, the therapist can play a pivotal role in how someone remembers an experience which, in turn, can have an outsized influence on a person’s recovery. Memories should be revisited with humility about their malleability. It’s important to be mindful when remembering that our memories may shift and change. If possible, we can use journaling, other records, or other accounts to help anchor our memories in factual truth, not just emotional truth (which can be subject to influence as well). It’s also important for us to be aware in conversation with others to be cautious about leading or suggestive questioning. Memory is not a passive recording that becomes fixed, but a living, evolving process. The truth, in other words, when it comes to relying on human memory, may not be as clear-cut as we’d like to believe.