Forgetting Ourselves: Reflections On Memory And Identity

Professor Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, explores the myriad ways in which are our memories can fail us. Together we’ll consider the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and its consequences, as well as our tendency to create entirely false memories, either spontaneously or as a result of dubious forms of psychotherapy or manipulations by devious experimental psychologists. We’ll also explore the phenomenon of “non-believed memories”; that is, that strange phenomenon whereby we have a clear recollection of an event that we know for a fact never actually happened at all. Given the importance of our autobiographical memories for our sense of identity, this ultimately raises the question: do any of us really know who we really are?