Our first memories are often
fractured and obscure. I myself have a dim (but vivid) memory of lying over my
mother’s shoulder and being rocked. I was looking toward the kitchen, in which
one yellowish light was burning. She was rocking too fast, and it bothered me.
Is it a real memory? I think so. I
can’t imagine how I would have made it up.
Piaget was one of the first and
best developmental psychologists. He had a vivid memory of having been
kidnapped when very young:
“I
was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Élysées, when
a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my
nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various
scratches, and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd
gathered, a policeman with a short cloak and a white baton came up and the man
took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near
the tube station. When I was about fifteen my parents received a letter from my
former nurse saying that she had been converted to the Salvation Army. She
wanted to confess past faults, and in particular to return the watch she had
been given on this occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking the scratches.
I, therefore, must have heard, as a child, the account of the story, which my
parents believed, and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory.”
Does this make you wonder about your early memories?
It makes me wonder about mine.
And maybe it makes me wonder about how accurate our memories are
in general.
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