"Speak Memory" -- Oliver Sacks on the Validity and Shortcomings of Human Memory in The New York Review of Books

In 2001 Oliver Sacks, the great neurologist and author, published a book of memoirs named Uncle Tungston: Memoirs of a Chemical Boyhood. Shortly after its publication he learned from speaking with his brother Michael that he was not present one of the vivid incidents he "recalled" but that it came fro a letter another wrote. With that Sacks sends us on a short and fascinating odyssey on memories that are found from others, on “cryptomnesia.”

We are reminded (if you will) of the famous incident where Ronald Reagan described as historical fact a movie scene he remembered; George Harrison's likely unintentional copyright infringement in My Sweet Lord of Ronnie Mack's He's So Fine; Helen Keller's alleged (and plainly unintentional) plagiarism of a children's author when Keller was 11 (and Mark Twain's very kind letter to Keller about it, describing inadvertently plagiarizing Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.); of charges of plagiarism that were leveled against Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose memory was so prodigious he probably could not have helped but had cryptomnesia; and of Sack's being inadvertently plagiarized himself. Throughout there is a recurrent and compelling narrative that cryptomnesia is very common for all of us. This may present issues when we wonder what is real (it doesn't mean reality doesn't exist or that different memories are equally true, of course), and it presents fascinating questions as to how cryptomnesia occurs and how it can be measured. Sacks, in fact, while writing an article stronger on story than underlying science, cites to several writings worth further review.

Equally significant -- indeed, most significant from my perspective as a lawyer -- is how how unreliable witness memories are. We rely, by necessity it seems in many cases, on what people describe from the stand, and what they say is often very in accurate. Of course, sometimes witnesses lie straight-out (and are rarely prosecuted for this, by the way). But very often a witness convinces himself that an invented story is true. How can that happen? We suspect it is because they feel a need for some story; that the story they offer has some emotional purpose for them; or that perhaps it has been suggested. What we lack are realistic ways to examine their truthfulness. Short of that, witness testimony is accepted too readily, and it leads to real and substantial harm for many people.

I don't think we can abandon witness testimony. What we need are scientific, established criteria to measure its validity.