“That’s how it happened!”: why we remember something that never happened

What kind of person has no memories? Absolutely every person has a past that happened to him, is imprinted in his memory, and now he can reproduce it. A person can recall some memories in his memory, while others go deep into the subconscious, sometimes influencing a person’s decisions and views. Often these “subconscious” memories are childhood images. The online magazine psytheater.com will talk about the concept of memories and their significance in psychology.

Memories are usually called figurative ideas about what happened to a person. What a person saw in the past, he can restore in his memory. However, often memories are also sensory sensations: smells, tastes, sounds that a person felt in a certain period of time.

It should be understood that a person’s memories are not always authentic or true. Human memory has protective functions that can embellish or modify events or a person’s attitude towards what happened in order to reduce the level of mental stress. In other words, a person may incorrectly remember certain events because his mental defense has slightly modified or distorted them so that he does not suffer or fear too much.

Memories can be selective: a person does not remember everything and only remembers what was important and valuable to him, what he paid his attention to.
Memories are often formed based on how a person interprets events that happened. In other words, a person often remembers not pictures of the world around him, but his own attitude, internal experiences, emotional sensations and interpretation of a specific situation that happened to him. If, for example, you ask two people to describe the same event in which they took part, they will describe it in different words. It may seem as if they are talking about different events.

Every person has a past. If you are alive, continue to live and have already reached a fairly mature age, it means that you have behind you stories that you regret, that you rejoice about, and some of which you would even like to return. Everyone has their own past. The ability to sometimes return thoughts to the past is a natural phenomenon. If you do not suffer from amnesia, then you remember what happened to you.

But the question is: what do memories of the past give you? Returning to those events that have already happened to you, how useful is this pastime of yours?

All people remember the past. But there are also those who devote most of their time to immersing themselves in their own memories. And when do they live? How are they building their future? It would be logical to say that the more you remember about the past, the less time you devote to your present life and creating the future. Accordingly, time passes you by, and your future becomes similar to the present, where you only remember and remember.

There is nothing wrong with the past except two things:

It has already passed, that is, you are devoting time to something that no longer makes sense.
It can be both good and bad.

Not only are you wasting your time on something that cannot be returned and has no meaning, but you may also remember bad events rather than good ones. A person often spoils his own mood only because he remembers his negative experiences from the past. Why is he doing this? This question needs to be asked of everyone who returns memories to the past.

When you remember what has already happened to you, what exactly do you remember? Is it a good experience or a bad one? What benefits do you get from an activity when you reminisce about the past?

A person is engaged in a useless activity if he does not take anything good for himself from his past experience. You can remember the bad, but draw conclusions and see your mistakes. Or you can remember unpleasant things, while suffering and grieving. In what cases does returning to the past benefit a person, and in what cases does it cause harm?

If you remember the past, then let it be good for you. If you have nothing to remember or you suffer from your memories, then you should not do things that only take up your time.

Why you shouldn't rely unconditionally on your own memory

Human memory is often perceived as a reliable storage of data. For example, with the light hand of Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented Sherlock Holmes, they present it as an attic filled with necessary and unnecessary information, or palaces of the mind in a more modern interpretation. And to get to the desired memory, you just need to carefully clear away the “junk” around it.

Polls show D. J. Simons, C. F. Chabris. What people believe about how memory works: A representative survey of the US population / PloS One that most people do not doubt the accuracy of information extracted from memory. Memorizing, in their opinion, is the same as recording data on a video camera. Many people believe that memories are immutable and permanent and believe that hypnosis helps to retrieve them more effectively. Therefore, for example, 37% of respondents believe that the testimony of one person is enough to bring charges of a criminal offense.

However, here is a real case. In the early 1980s, a woman was attacked and raped by four black men she did not know. Police later detained two suspects. One of them was Michael Green. During the identification parade, the victim did not recognize him. But when police showed her photographs some time later, including a photograph of Michael Green, she marked him as her attacker. When the photo was shown again, the victim confirmed that he was the criminal. Michael Green was convicted and served 27 of his sentence of 75 years in prison. It was possible to prove his innocence Cleared, and Pondering the Value of 27 Years / The New York Times only in 2010 with the help of a DNA test.

There were many questions about this case as a whole, they concerned not only the quality of witness testimony - for example, racism could have played a role. But this is an eloquent illustration of the fact that the statements of one person are clearly not enough if there is a risk that an innocent person will spend more than half his life in prison. Michael Green was imprisoned at 18 and released at 45.

Galina Sokolova, mother of the late Archpriest Fyodor Sokolov, about her parents

Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk

My mother always taught me kindness. We had a large family - there were only 10 children, we lived poorly. But mom always shared even the last. It used to be that we would slaughter a pig, my mother would cut off a piece of lard or meat and tell me: “Bring it to such and such people, they are poorer than us, they need to be helped.” This was a blind couple who lived in our village, in Belarus. Mom taught you to share what you have. Our house was always open - almost every evening guests or neighbors came to us, and my mother treated them.

My memories of my parents are always associated with their kind attitude towards people. This was a living role model, a personal example for children. Mom always said that you need to live in peace with your neighbors. No one had ever quarreled with her in the area. It used to be like this: we were finishing work in our garden, and if my mother saw that the neighbors had not done everything yet, she would send us to help.

Vera Andreevna and Philip Minovich, parents of Mother Galina Sokolova

Dad was respected by all the men in the village. They always came to him for advice on various business issues. The men liked to gather near the store in the evening, talk or drink. Father came out to them only once a year - on Easter. And then only to beat the colored eggs and congratulate everyone. And when he appeared, all the men took off their hats in front of him and only then greeted him. My father never sat idle and was always busy with his own farming, from which we fed; he was very respected for this. When the late Archpriest Fyodor Sokolov performed his father’s funeral service, he said this about him: “He fully fulfilled the commandment of the Lord to earn bread by the sweat of his brow .

Where do false memories come from?

One of the most famous modern memory researchers, Elizabeth Loftus, tested E. F. Loftus. Make-believe memories / American Psychologist, how accurate eyewitness accounts are and what factors will influence their memories. She showed people recordings of accidents, and then asked about the details of the accident. And it turned out that some wording of questions causes people to mistake false memories for real ones.

For example, if you ask a person about a broken headlight, he will most likely in the future talk about it as something he saw. Although, of course, everything was in order with the headlights. And if you ask about the van parked near the barn, and not “Did you see the barn?”, the witness, when asked again, will begin to remember the building. She wasn't there either, of course.

Let’s say that the testimony of witnesses to incidents can be considered unreliable: after all, we are usually talking about a stressful situation. But here's another experience. F. Loftus, J. E. Pickrell. The formation of false memories / Psychiatric Annals of the same Elizabeth Loftus. She sent experiment participants four stories from their childhood, which were allegedly written down from the words of older relatives. Three stories were true, but one was not. It described in detail how a man got lost in a store as a child.

As a result, a quarter of the experiment participants “remembered” something that did not happen. In some cases, during repeated interviews, people not only spoke with confidence about fictitious events, but also began to add details to them.

Getting lost in a shopping center is also stressful. But in this case, anxiety should seem to play into the person’s hands: he will definitely remember something like this if it happened. However, experimental results show that confronting false memories is easier than it seems.

Remember that you are a traveler, not a miner

Frances Densmore records the account of a Siksiki chief for the Bureau of American Ethnology. 1916 Library of Congress
The Scandinavian psychologist Steinar Kvale, who wrote one of the most useful books on research interviews, used the metaphor of the miner and the traveler. When we set out to record oral histories, we sometimes think that the most important thing is to get to the facts. Like miners, we choose a place to mine, and then we begin to dig, discarding the unnecessary, trying to get to the valuable rock. This strategy is not suitable for recording memories. It is much more productive to feel like a traveler who, together with another person, sets off on a journey full of surprises and surprises. The traveler does not know for sure where this road will lead him, but he is ready to follow it, rejoicing at what opens up around the bend.

How false memories become collective

Memory can fail not only one individual person. It happens that false memories become collective.

For example, many people know the phrase of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, which he said during his famous New Year's address on the eve of 2000. “Dear Russians! I’m tired, I’m leaving,” this is what the politician said about his resignation, right?

If you immediately realized that it was wrong, then most likely you have already specifically clarified this question before. And you know what New Year’s addresses by Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin (1999) / Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center / YouTube Yeltsin said: “I made a decision. I thought about it long and painfully. Today, on the last day of the passing century, I resign.” The words “I’m leaving” are heard several times in the address, but they are never adjacent to the statement “I’m tired” - there’s simply nothing like that in it.

Or here are some more recognizable examples. The cartoon lion cub never spoke. How the lion cub and the turtle sang the song / Cartoons Online / YouTube “Ride me, big turtle.” In the film “Love and Doves” there is no— What kind of love??? - Such love!!! “Love and Doves” / Ok Video / YouTube cut of the phrase “What is love?”, and there is a verbal “shootout”: “What is love? - Such love!

If we knew these quotes from the words of others, we could shift the blame to the unscrupulous reteller. But often we ourselves review the source a million times and continue to believe that everything in it happens exactly as we remember. Sometimes it is even easier for people who come across the original to believe that someone insidious made corrections to it than to believe that memory can fail.

Screenshot: YouTube

For such cases of distortion of collective memory, there is a special term “Mandela effect”. It is named after the President of South Africa. When the death of the politician became known in 2013, it turned out that many were sure that he had died in prison back in the 1980s. People even claimed to have seen news reports about it. In fact, Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 and in 23 years managed to take the presidency, receive the Nobel Peace Prize and do much more.

The term “Mandela effect” was coined by researcher Fiona Broome, who became interested in the phenomenon of mass delusion. She was never able to explain it, but other researchers are in no hurry to make an exact verdict. Unless, of course, you take theories about time travel and alternative universes seriously.

Memories in psychology.

In psychology, we refer to the term “reminiscence ,” which means the reproduction of information stored in memory.

Reminiscence is a delayed memory of perceived or memorized material. This phenomenon is common and occurs at any age.

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It is difficult to distinguish reminiscence from other phenomena , because we are talking about the brain’s ability to reproduce information. But reminiscence is the most accurate and detailed phenomenon.

Psychology will pay a lot of attention to childhood memories. The process of memorization in children involves figurative memory. In the initial years of his life, a child remembers the images that surround him, but they remain in consciousness for a rather short time.

Over the period of three years, memories acquire a strong emotional coloring , become stronger and are remembered for a long time.

In the process of growing up, positive results are brought by parents' leading questions when the child tries to remember something. This develops attention and the general level of intelligence.

At preschool and school ages, children use their imagination and begin to memorize information. During this period, memories become consistent, continuous and directly depend on the child’s emotional perception.

The benefits of pleasant memories.

After a study conducted at the University of San Francisco, it was determined that the quality of memories reflects the level of life satisfaction.

Over time, even negative memories are perceived as experiences and can become neutral or even positive.

Conclusion:

You need to focus less on the negative and perceive everything as an experience gained not in vain.
Events from the past that make you smile are the work of the brain, and therefore an element that improves memory.
Pleasant memories are good motivation. The results of the past push for future achievements, and negative lessons will always tell you what not to do.

Some studies have found that extroverts tend to focus more on positive moments from the past, while introverts tend to remember more touching and sad events.

Take the test: introvert or extrovert?

Why memories fail us

Memory is flexible

Of course, the brain can be thought of as a data store. Just not like an archive room with a bunch of boxes in which information is gathering dust in the form in which it was put there. A more accurate comparison would be with an electronic database, where the elements are interconnected and constantly updated. The fiction of memory: Elizabeth Loftus at TEDGlobal 2013 / TED Blog.

Let's say you have a new experience. But this information is sent to the archive not only on its own shelf. Data is overwritten in all files that are associated with the impressions and experiences received. And if some details are missing or contradict each other, then the brain can fill them in with logically appropriate ones, but those that are absent in reality.

Memories can change under the influence of others

This is proven not only by the experiments of Elizabeth Loftus. In another small study, scientists showed K. A. Wade, M. Garry, et al. A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories / Psychonomic Bulletin & Review participants took photographs from their childhood, and the photographs contained truly memorable events like a hot air balloon flight. And among the three real images, there was one fake one. As a result, by the end of the series of interviews, about half of the subjects “remembered” the unreal situations.

During the experiments, memories were influenced on purpose, but this can also happen unintentionally. For example, leading questions about an event can direct a person’s story in a different direction.

Memory is distorted by the psyche

You've probably heard about how traumatic events are repressed from the brain's archives. And a person, for example, forgets an episode of abuse that he encountered in childhood.

Distortions also work in the other direction, and memory brings a one-sided “truth” to the surface. For example, those nostalgic for the times of the USSR can talk about ice cream for 19 kopecks and that supposedly everyone was given apartments for free. But they no longer remember the details: they didn’t give it, but they gave it away, not to everyone, but only to those who were standing in line, and so on.

What are memories?

Memories are the brain's ability to recall images and situations experienced in the past. The moments in life that evoke the most emotions are remembered best. They are much easier to remember even in the smallest details. Memories can be voluntary or involuntary.

Arbitrary are those that we try to evoke on our own. For example, names, dates, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
Involuntary are spontaneous and appear when we encounter images or smells that we have observed in the past. Involuntary ones are associated with emotions and therefore remain in consciousness longer.

The main difference between voluntary ones is that they constitute conscious memory, while involuntary ones constitute unconscious, unintentional memory.

Memories are:

nostalgic;
pleasant;
painful;
joyful;
fragmentary;
sad;
nightmarish;
romantic, etc.

Forming in our subconscious, they necessarily pass through conscious emotions, which means they carry their imprint.

Take a personality type test

How are memories formed and what are they for?

Memories are formed through the perception and memorization of information from the past, but the processes of their emergence depend on the individual characteristics of the psyche, emotional state, and memory capabilities.

They appear when we are ready to perceive them and change our attitude towards our past life.

Such moments can be compared to audio recordings. Playing them over and over again each time, a rethinking occurs with the acquisition of new details and episodes.

How to live if you know that you can’t even trust yourself

Memory is not the most reliable source of information, and in most cases this is not such a big problem. But only as long as there is no need to accurately reproduce certain events. Therefore, you should not rush to conclusions based on testimony and someone’s memories, if they are presented in a single copy.

If you are concerned about recording events as accurately as possible, it is better to use more reliable formats for this: a piece of paper and a pen, a video camera or a voice recorder. And for detailed life stories, a good old diary is suitable.

Think about your goal

Before you pick up a voice recorder, try to formulate why you need to record a memory. Maybe you want to know about the life of your grandparents in Stalin's camps. Or how they survived the blockade, went through the war, survived the Holocaust, and studied in a late Soviet school. Or maybe you just want to learn something about family history that you won’t find in any archive.

In addition, recording a memory is an opportunity to have a leisurely, thoughtful conversation with your loved ones and is a convenient format for slow communication. An interview allows you to create an atmosphere of trust and, at least for a while, forget about possible conflicts and contradictions.

Literature[ | ]

Memoirs // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts / Ed. A. N. Nikolyukina. - Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Intelvac, 2001. - Stb. 524—525—1596 p. — ISBN 5-93264-026-X.
Memoirs // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg, 1890-1907.
Memoir literature in the Literary Encyclopedia (inaccessible link) (inaccessible link from 06/14/2016 [2064 days])
Kolesnikova L. A.
Historical and revolutionary memoirs (1917-1935) as a mass source on the history of Russian revolutions. Author's abstract. dis. ... doc. ist. Sci. - M., 2005. (inaccessible link)

Editions of Russian memoirs[ | ]

Awareness of the historical value of the memoirs of private individuals, including descriptions of the daily life of the Russian nobility of the Catherine and Pushkin eras, did not occur immediately. A collection of Russian memoirs was first published by the Ukrainian F. O. Tumansky; then I.P. Sakharov published “Notes of Russian People. Collection of the times of Peter the Great" (St. Petersburg, 1841).

In the second half of the 19th century, the magazines “Russian Antiquity” by M. Semevsky, “Russian Archive” by P. Bartenev and “Historical Messenger” by S. Shubinsky devoted themselves to the task of systematic publication of memoirs. Semevsky personally convinced many eyewitnesses of historical events to believe their memories on paper. The bulk of the notes that appeared on the pages of these historical magazines were not reprinted during Soviet times and became a bibliographic rarity.

Since 1948, Soviet readers have been introduced to the memories of the classics of Russian literature by the specialized “Series of Literary Memoirs” (Khudozhestvennaya Literatura publishing house). The first to be published, with an introduction by K. Chukovsky, were the memoirs of A. Ya. Panaeva. In 1959, Voenizdat launched the “Military Memoirs” series. Memoirs of Soviet figures were published by Politizdat in the series “About Life and About Oneself.”

Actor Ivan Volkov about his father, actor Nikolai Nikolaevich Volkov

Photo by Alexey Nikishin.

Surprisingly, it was interesting not only to talk with dad, but also to remain silent.

With him, one of the most valuable and memorable moments is silence, periods of shared silence.

A couple of phrases, a short smile, withdrawal into oneself and a fascinating thought process. It encouraged me to think about something. Reflect. Watching him think was always infectious, “delicious.”

A large cup of coffee, my dad’s old knitted sweater, a mocking look from under his eyebrows. And then, perhaps, a short and very significant word that launched a new train of thought.

Nikolai Nikolaevich, father of Ivan Volkov

Russian memoirs of the 18th-19th centuries[ | ]

With the spread of fashion for everything French in the Russian Empire, Russian nobles, having retired, began to confide their memories on paper, often in French. The first noble notes were intended exclusively for reading in the home circle. Among the authors of memoirs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. the proportion of women is large. Following Catherine II, court ladies E.R. Dashkova, V.N. Golovina, R.S. Edling and others left notes in French. Among the notes of the 18th century, compiled in Russian, D. S. Mirsky gives the palm to the short, direct memoir of N. B. Dolgorukova, one of the first writers in Russia.

Notes of N. I. Grech with censorship passes

Among the statesmen of the 18th century, cabinet secretaries Ya. P. Shakhovskaya, A. V. Khrapovitsky and A. M. Gribovsky left notes about their careers. In his multi-volume notes, the long-living A. T. Bolotov (1738-1833) presented a genuine encyclopedia of the life of the Russian nobility, both metropolitan and provincial. I. M. Dolgorukov, I. I. Dmitriev and other writers who gravitated toward sentimentalism nostalgically sang “sweet deceptions of the heart” in their memoirs.

The greatest literary interest among the works of the late 18th century are the travel notes of D. I. Fonvizin and N. M. Karamzin, which are close to memoirs. They were presented to readers as direct letters from a foreign land, although in fact they represent the fruit of painstaking literary work. Another specific form of Russian memoir literature is the family chronicles of M. V. Danilov, E. A. Sabaneeva, L. A. Rostopchina, which trace the life of several generations of one family (often provincial).

A separate body of memoir literature is formed by notes on the events of 1812 (D. V. Davydov, S. N. Glinka, N. A. Durova, etc.). Rich material on the social life of the Pushkin era is provided by the memoirs of N. I. Grech and F. V. Bulgarin, and the notebooks of S. P. Zhikharev and P. A. Vyazemsky. The entire first third of the 19th century is covered in the notes of E. F. Komarovsky, A. M. Turgenev and F. F. Vigel. The latter, for their elegance of style and sharpness of characteristics, were once recognized as the best example of memoir literature of their time. P. A. Pletnev certified them as follows:

The notes are very interesting, full of wit, bile, mockery and selfishness. Everything is described very poignantly and cleverly. It's so entertaining that it's hard to describe. He is witty, bilious, knowledgeable and extremely intelligent. You can learn to write from him.

At the end of the 19th century, all of Russia was reading memoirs.
The secular salons of the mid-19th century were described by numerous memoirists, including A. O. Smirnova, E. A. Sushkova, A. F. Tyutcheva. Statesmen from the highest bureaucracy write in a drier language (M. A. Korf, K. I. Fischer). Panorama of literary life in the 1840s. unfolded in the memoirs of V. A. Sollogub, A. V. Nikitenko, P. V. Annenkov, D. V. Grigorovich, A. A. Grigoriev, A. A. Fet, T. P. Passek, P. A. Karatygin , A. Ya. Panaeva and her husband I. I. Panaev.

Numerous writers and public figures (P.A. Kropotkin, P.D. Boborykin, B.N. Chicherin, A.F. Koni), representatives of the artistic intelligentsia (I.E.) left very detailed notes on the events in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Repin, K. S. Stanislavsky, A. N. Benois, M. K. Tenisheva), higher officials (V. P. Meshchersky, S. D. Urusov, V. F. Dzhunkovsky, S. Yu. Witte, A. I. Delvig). Life at the court of the last tsar is described in memoirs compiled in exile by F. Yusupov and A. Vyrubova, as well as by A. A. Ignatiev, who switched to Soviet service.