Lars Finsen
Sep 9, 2018 · 2 min read

The science of the mind is very rudimentary yet and it cannot claim that “autobiographical memories are possible only after the age of three”. It’s true that in some cases “we create fictional early memories by building on stories we have heard and photos we have seen”. But I and many others, including some in this comments field, have real memories that cannot have been faked in this manner. I even have recalled two from before I was born. These early memories are not fully-fledged vivid memories, but rather fragments that were associated with strong emotions and therefore stored for later use. Our memory abilities develop as we learn language, because that process involves a lot of logistics for keeping account of our environment. I think that’s the main reason why most people don’t remember things from before they mastered language.

Memory is not a simple process, it’s rather complex and we have different kinds of memory that work together. It can’t be described in simple terms, and bold statements such as the above can easily be misleading. However, I am sure many childhood memories are fake. There are things in my past that I’m not sure if I remember by myself or have only been told, and there are some weird things that I’m not sure if I experienced in a waking state or in a dream.

I have long been impressed by my mother’s memory. She has told me some very detailed stories from the past. But then I noticed that they tended to be slightly, or occasionally widely, different for each retelling, and I came to wonder how much she really was making up on the spot. There are even things from my adolescence that she remembers quite differently from how I recall them, but that’s not too uncommon for mothers and sons, I believe.

Anyhow, memory is a great thing to have for storing information, but it’s good for us that we also have other things.