Is What We Remember True?

"While working with a patient whose spouse had committed infidelity, the patient told me that many of her memories had been "tarnished." "I look back at what I used to think were happy memories with a different lens," she said. "Now, knowing what was going on at the time, those memories all seem fake to me. They were based on a shared experience that wasn't real. They no longer make me smile." The new information today had changed her memories of the past."

"The traditional view of memories is that of a "box-and-archive" model-the memory is created and stored for future use. But in 2013, researchers Alberini and LeDoux discovered that our memories change every time we retrieve them. They found that the very act of recalling a memory destabilizes it and makes it vulnerable to revision based on our current perspectives, feelings, and influences."

Memories function as dynamic reconstructions rather than immutable records, and each act of retrieval can destabilize and alter them. Retrieval makes memories vulnerable to revision by current emotions, beliefs, and social influences, so new information can change the felt authenticity and emotional tone of past events. Clinical examples show cherished recollections can feel "tarnished" after new revelations. Psychological research identifies multiple memory errors—transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence—that reflect the constructive and fallible nature of memory. Revisiting memories requires humility about their malleability.

Read at Psychology Today