Dr. Loftus concluded her presentation with a statement, “Memory, like liberty, is a fragile thing” because it illustrates the nature of our memories best. Unlike a common belief that memory is like an archive where different happy and sad moments are kept intact and retrieved on request, in reality, it is in the process of constant recreation. Memories are not solid pieces of information stored in our brains.
Conversely, the mind is a soft and malleable thing, which means that its creations – opinions, beliefs, and perceptions –adapt to external factors and can be easily influenced. Considering that memories can be implanted, modified, and negated by others, they are indeed very fragile. The same goes for liberty and, as examples provided by Dr. Loftus in her talk demonstrated, false memories created when people are fed with suggestive information caused many innocent persons throughout history to be accused of crimes they never committed.
Besides the revelation of serious social and legal implications of such a phenomenon as false memories, the part of the talk that interested me most was devoted to the effects of certain types of physiotherapy, including hypnosis and technics with the use of imagination, on patients’ perceptions of self. While therapy is meant to help people solve problems, it turns out that it may create them instead. What is more surprising is that patients start to cherish their implanted memories as an integral part of their identities.
Regardless of how disturbing and sorrowful it may be, and even when pointed out that this certain memory is false, a person may be unable to let it go. I think that in order to change this situation and minimize the negative impacts of false memories on human lives, people should shift from a simplified view of memory and develop a more realistic and evidence-based one.