anotheroxymoron @ 2006-06-28T18:24:00
People tend to think of memory as being like a tape recorder or a camera, capturing what's out there. That doesn't match with the current thinking of most memory researchers. Their research implies that your memory of an event is something you construct from bits and pieces: from what you saw and heard and experienced and felt at the time; from things people told you afterward; from suggestions and thoughts and implications, all filtered by your attitude, by who you are
Happening-truth is the bare facts--what happened at such and such a time. Story-truth is the story you tell yourself about that truth, the details that you fill in, the Technicolor version that helps you make sense of the world. In story-truth, you may unconsciously fill in a little bit here, adjust things a little bit there--in the same way that a fiction writer consciously edits and recasts a narrative.
Elizabeth Loftus writes about some of the reasons that people are disturbed by her research: "Human beings feel attached to their remembered past, for the people, places, and events that we enshrine in memory give structure and definition to the person we think of as our 'self.' " If we accept that memory spills over into dreams and imagination, then how do we know what's real and what's not?
It is easy to think of yourself as the sum of your memories--the end product of all that you've ever experienced. But after doing research into memory, we find that it makes sense to reverse that statement. Your memories are the end product of all you've ever thought and done, filtered through your perceptions and opinions. Who you are is shaped by your memories, and your memories are shaped by who you are. The perceived time
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