the story of the self

The article I have read talks about the memory and how it is related with the identity's formation and how reliable memories can be. First, the writer says that much people think about their memories as though they were material posessions, which could be statics and totally related to the specific events that can be remembered, but it seems that memories are not so reliable as we think they are.

The author says that memories relate the emotions which took part in the moment we're remembering, with the things we're thinking and feeling now, and will not be related only to the real things that happened. Talking about this, there are studies which explain how easy is putting a memory of something that didn't happen on a person. In one of the cases, the researchers shared some photos of children's and convinced some students that these photos were of their childhood. After this, a lot of students "started to remember" these situations that never happened.

But even emotional memories can be distorted, and there's evidence about that. Some people was asked about how they had noticed about the 9/11 terrorist attack. From one year to other, some people changed the story in several points, even when they were talking about a situation strongly related with especific emotions.

For the author, that can happen because when we're remembering, we're not doing else than "re-remembering", and that "re-remembering" could be influenced by others things that can be happening now, so the event we're remembering could "change" depending on what emotions and things are on our mind today.

Finally the author explains that even when the memories are not so reliable as we want it, they're OUR memories, and are very important because when we start to remember, we start writing what's our self, and this  give us coherence and simplifies the relation with the world and the survival.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/13/our-memories-tell-our-story