False memories: Can we trust our memory?
If there is one thing we seem to be convinced of, it is the memory of our past experiences, the adventures and misadventures that have taken place, especially those that come from far away. Yet even the clearest memories often raise doubts as to whether they have actually happened or at least exactly as we remember them.
How many times has it happened to talk with a childhood friend and realize that the events that are remembered differ, even a lot, from each other? Yet he had come together at the time when that episode of life was happening.
Well, our memory (or rather "memories") is not as infallible as we perceive it.
By now several studies have verified how the brain tends to "cover" the unavoidable memory gaps linked to an event with images and acts that have never actually happened. This is because there is a tendency to have to reconnect our experiences in a unique and coherent story, even at the expense of objective reality.
The phenomenon of false memories is a very well studied phenomenon, especially at a young age.
Children have the tendency and the ease to believe that life episodes that have never existed, simply by listening to the reports of adults, or by translating their imaginative activity into real life if they grasp elements related to it in the everyday context.
False memories can be generated by the combination of experienced episodes and the suggestions of others on that same episode. For this reason, especially in criminology, the topic can take a rather dangerous turn: witnesses of a crime, for example, even if completely in good faith, often fill the gaps dictated by an often short and unexpected exhibition of an event, with false details.
Or, one remembers traumatic events that have never actually happened: the American case of a woman who began to remember a series of abuses in therapy that were then totally unfounded.
Certainly the more emotionally charged the episode is related to emotionally charged facts, the more it will be subject to distortion and therefore the more attention will have to be paid to handling this material in all fields where it is required, including therapy.
Of course, it is good not to panic. Certainly, what your mind remembers is reliable in a good percentage and above all, it is worth the affective reach of that experience that remains impressed in the mind, rather than the truthfulness of its details.
On the other hand, it is true that sometimes our memories are not as clear as they seem and that false memories are part of the mnemonic baggage of each one of us.
