Memory In General - Part III

 Odds and Ends

Trauma makes memory more unreliable. This can get painful, because people feel like you aren't believing them, or are dismissive of their suffering if you don't accept their story as told. Time is frequently disrupted in trauma, especially chronology. Bias is a great disrupter, whether to a narrative, they were all against me but I succeeded anyway, or to categories of expectation, women are more likely to start arguments in public. Our memory for attitudes is more malleable, subject to hindsight bias, than actual events. "We had great camaraderie at that job."  "Our relationship was already in trouble by then." Sometimes these contradict actual documents from that time or test information. Also, people who have suffered trauma have a reduced ability to actively suppress all unpleasant memories, not just the traumatic ones.

It does happen that people invent events and believe them, often because they have been convinced by others that "he probably was unsupportive around you having a sick child all spring and even criticised you in front of others." But reinterpretation of actual events past recognition is more common.

How do we know whose version of a story is correct, absent hard evidence? We don't, and should be cautious. However, there are clues. Some people have a record of accuracy. Me, for example. Others have shown a willingness to swallow hard and accept hard things about themselves rather than always reporting how right they always are. Be alert to noticing who routinely destroys information quickly, such as emails or text threads. We would certainly notice in confidentiality situations people who were always trying to control the flow of information. "You aren't allowed to talk to my sister." Some people like clean files or a clen desk and routinely move things on, and this is fine.  But those who go the next step and quickly delete them permanently may not be covering up anything today, but just be in the habit of removing hard evidence. There have been attempts to show that people who talk too much or too little, who give too many details or too few, are more likely to be deceiving. Mostly, these simply reflect the initial bias of the writer (or even the researcher!) They don't like people who talk too much and suspect them of fabricating. But the evidence for such things tends to be very narrow.

Related to Grim's comment under my last Nostalgia Destruction Tour post* : When people, especially those known to be intelligent, are quiet ones, we expect them to be introspective. Isn't that how it is in the movies and books? I learned from recontact with people, and also with contemplating many of the others, that this is emphatically not true. Many intelligent people, even quiet ones, are not at all introspective. I confess this is frankly amazing to me, but "it's nae use sayin' pigs conner fly when ye see 'em sproutin' wings." (Welsh, I believe) This is not to say that they aren't thoughtful - just not introspective, and thus not very aware of their own motivations and with a reduced ability to assess those of others.

There are many strategies for attempting to forget the unpleasant. Some are not only ineffective but can create a rebound effect. I have tried to make the visual outlines of something progressively fuzzier with less distinct colors, and this has some effect. But it doesn't touch the rest of the memory - its description, its impact, its sounds. Exposure therapies, which bring back the memory and then in some way undermine its reconsolidation, has some good effect. Telling others about an unpleasant event is a mixed bag.  The worst plan is to tell no one about it. The second worst plan is to tell everyone. Telling a small connected group such as a family, or even telling only a single individual tends to be optimal.

*I may have to make that a series