Review of Charles Fernyhough's new book Pieces of Light: The New Science of Memory:
When it comes to the big questions about the nature of autobiographical memory, Charles Fernyhough is as informed as he is enchanted. But Pieces of Light does not dwell on the molecular mechanics of memory, or take the reader on a didactic trudge through the enchanted loom of connections between cells in a brain.
Instead, the Durham University psychologist tells stories to explore the deepest nature of memory, and does it beautifully. His exploration of how our minds are shaped by the past ranges from Andy Warhol’s “scent museum” – the artist switched colognes on a routine basis and kept the part-used bottles, so that one whiff could transport him back to a given time – to flashbulb memories that can be as wrong as they are vivid.
His aim is to shatter the widespread idea of human memory as being like the film of an old-fashioned camera, the chip in a computer, or mental DVDs stashed in the library of the mind. Instead, he argues for memory as a storyteller, as a habit and a reconstruction, citing research from the Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter and others which suggests elements of our experiences are seasoned with beliefs and even knowledge at the time of recalling and reconstructing the experience.
Remembering is an act of narration as much as it is the product of a neurological process and it most likely evolved not to keep a faithful record of the past but to help predict what will happen next: that is why amnesiacs can’t imagine the future.
In his hybrid of autobiography, journalism and pop psychology, Fernyhough lets the stories speak for themselves to highlight memory’s personal, subjective and fragile qualities. Fernyhough takes us on a captivating journey into the mind. And he does so with great style.
When it comes to the big questions about the nature of autobiographical memory, Charles Fernyhough is as informed as he is enchanted. But Pieces of Light does not dwell on the molecular mechanics of memory, or take the reader on a didactic trudge through the enchanted loom of connections between cells in a brain.
Instead, the Durham University psychologist tells stories to explore the deepest nature of memory, and does it beautifully. His exploration of how our minds are shaped by the past ranges from Andy Warhol’s “scent museum” – the artist switched colognes on a routine basis and kept the part-used bottles, so that one whiff could transport him back to a given time – to flashbulb memories that can be as wrong as they are vivid.
His aim is to shatter the widespread idea of human memory as being like the film of an old-fashioned camera, the chip in a computer, or mental DVDs stashed in the library of the mind. Instead, he argues for memory as a storyteller, as a habit and a reconstruction, citing research from the Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter and others which suggests elements of our experiences are seasoned with beliefs and even knowledge at the time of recalling and reconstructing the experience.
Remembering is an act of narration as much as it is the product of a neurological process and it most likely evolved not to keep a faithful record of the past but to help predict what will happen next: that is why amnesiacs can’t imagine the future.
In his hybrid of autobiography, journalism and pop psychology, Fernyhough lets the stories speak for themselves to highlight memory’s personal, subjective and fragile qualities. Fernyhough takes us on a captivating journey into the mind. And he does so with great style.
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