Recently, I was asked to contribute to a family history compilation on my father’s side. To write a story about him from my memories. I had already written pieces about my memories at the family cabin, stories that included my parents. When I reread those and thought about this new task, I wondered: Are my memories accurate, or am I making them up to suit the needs of my life’s narrative?
There are two sides to thinking about the accuracy of our childhood memories. One: People are unlikely to accurately remember events from their childhood. Two: Accurate memories can go as far back as two years old.
A U.K. study concluded that 40% of our first memories are fictional because they happened too early in life, and that reliable memories start about age three.
There is something called “childhood amnesia”, which is the inability to remember our earliest experiences. Most memories, it was thought, are formed from stories told by relatives, from photographs, or completely made up.
As far as children remembering, it had always been assumed their memories were not valid, or accurate. Newfoundland psychologist Carole Peterson, says it is important to take memories told by a child (even at age three) seriously.
There is the notion that because children are constantly learning and experiencing, there is a circuit overload in the area of the brain that stores events in long-term memory. This is within two to three years of life.
So, this question has been raised: In the eyes of the law, can a three-year-old’s memory of earlier abuse or other traumatic events be reliable? This is a contentious area. Children’s testimonies in this matter are thought not to be credible.
For adults, psychologists think our memories are reconstructions, flexible, malleable – fictitious. There are two classifications of memories: Observer memories, a third-person perspective in which we see ourselves as an actor in the event, and Field memories, a first-person perspective in which we view the event with our own eyes.
When I wrote about dumping a wheelbarrow full of wet cement while helping my father when I was young, I described in detail the scene, and my emotion at the time it happened. This was a field memory. Was everything accurate? I like to think so.
In other ‘memory events’, I included specific details. I described things to the best of my recollection. Was I fictionalizing what I remembered to make it sound more real and exciting? Maybe yes, maybe no.
Remembrance of Things Past is a 20th-century novel by Marcel Proust, originally titled In Search of Lost Time. It is described as a recollection of childhood experiences into adulthood. Recollection suggests there was an effort to bring back to mind past events. Remembering implies an effortless keeping of something in memory.
I’d like to think memories are not recollections. Fictitious or not, our memories shape who we are as adults.