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According to leading psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, of the University of California, believes our childhood memories are more little more than dream-like reconstructions of stories told to us by our parents and those who cared for us during this formative period in our lives.

If this is true, then all those treasured childhood memories of events that shaped our early lives may be barely more real than fairytales.

As she points out and, from my own personal experience, I would have to agree, no-one really has a clear recollection of events or experiences that happened in our dim and distant past. Some of us don’t have much recollection of what happened to us just five minutes ago!

Even when we think we are remembering something, chances are we are simply “rewriting” our memory of it to match what we want it to be, subconsciously and quite innocently of course.

Her research seems to claim that our memory really does play tricks on us. As she points out, how many of us, even as adults, can easily remember more than six or seven numbers of, say, a telephone number: I know I find it difficult!

Professor of Psychiatry at the Texas School of Medicine, Dr Jaime Quintanilla, agrees with her that our earliest memories are far from accurate and may even be complete distortions or figments of our imagination. He says: “It’s a proven fact that young children take fragments of experience and build them into distorted memories”.

The Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, once recounted an early childhood memory; in which he described being pushed in his pram along the Champs Elysée by his nurse. He vividly recalled that a man tried to kidnap him and was even able to give a vivid description of how the nurse had stood between him and the attacker and of how she had received several scratches for her efforts. He was even able to describe the exact location where it had happened together with a description of the policeman who had come to their aid.

Although his memory of the event was very clear, even precise, it seems it was all fabricated. Not by Jean though! The whole event had been fabricated by his nurse who much later, when Piaget was about fifteen, confessed as much. Apparently she had invented the entire incident, though why we don’t know. And yet his later memory and recounting of it, together with its repeated re-telling over the years of his early childhood had served to impress it upon his mind as if it were in fact real and led to his parents strongly believing that it had in fact occurred.

Do childhood memories affect our adult personality?

It would seem they do. Even something we remember without consciously being aware that we have remembered it, something only captured in our subconscious, can have a profound effect on our present state of mind and being.

For instance, being told throughout your childhood that you were no good, even though the memories of it had been repressed or simply forgotten, would almost certainly result in feelings of inadequacy and failure in later life unless recognised and properly dealt with.

Where are our childhood memories stored?

Child memories are stored in our subconscious mind. According to Sigmund Freud in his theory ‘The Mind is an Iceberg’ our mind is just like an iceberg. And as with an iceberg where its greatest mass is below seal level, so it is with our mind. The conscious part of it is like the top of the iceberg, above the water, but far the greater part of it, our subconscious, is below the ‘waves’ as it were. The tip of the ‘iceberg’ is the only part we are normally aware of.

Just how accurate are childhood memories?

Memories are created out of images, tit bits of overheard conversations, dreams, suggestions, and even our imagination as well as out of events that actually happened. And, like our bodies, our memories change as we get older. Each time we remember something more gaps appear in our memory of it and, quite subconsciously, we tend to fill in those gaps. And so, every time a memory is brought to mind we tend to recreate it.

So, how reliable are childhood memories?

It seems that very much depends what we are remembering. When asked about an actual incident each member of a family remembered the incident differently. Our interpretation of an incident can be affected by such things as our age, the context in which it happened and even our life experiences up to that point.

Although it depends on our age at the time of the original event it seems the younger we were at the time has a greater bearing on what we later remember and what we construct to fill in the gaps.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the memory being recalled is incorrect, just possibly not quite what actually happened.

Are childhood memories of sexual abuse necessarily also fake?

Dealing with child sexual abuse allegations in the courts presents its own special difficulties, due in large part to the nature of sexual abuse: rarely are there any witnesses; and the victim has usually been coerced into keeping the event secret until much later, by which time any medical or forensic evidence will no longer be available.

Sad as I am to say it after agreeing with most of the above findings, I can only conclude that these findings will only play into the hands of child molesters and paedophiles, already only too eager to latch on to any loophole in the very laws that are supposed to protect those most vulnerable in our society.

We must not let these findings cloud our judgement. Yes, defendants do deserve a fair trial but so do our kids!

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

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