Memory and Accuracy

Abstract

This chapter will develop a case about the usefulness of autobiographical writing for the discipline of cultural history, by examining the perennial problem of the reliability of memory, of the accuracy of its recall, and the problematic manner of its rendering in language. I shall use some of the recent work on memory produced by David C. Rubin, Daniel L. Schacter, and David B. Pillemer as psychology practitioners and theorists of memory.¹ My reasons for doing this are two-fold. One is that the use of scientific findings in the structure of recall will help us to deal with the problem of memory and ‘accuracy’. The second is that in the conflation of two different disciplines (textual analysis and psychology), new insights may be uncovered. The question of style needs to be addressed as this does, in part, exacerbate the notion that autobiographies are creative acts rather than reflections of actual experience.