Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes our Past

by Douwe Draaisma , Translated by Arnold Pomerans , Erica Pomerans

• ISBN13: 9780521834247
• ISBN10: 0521834244
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Is it true, as the novelist Cees Nooteboom once wrote, that 'Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases'? Where do the long, lazy summers of our childhood go? Why is it that as we grow older time seems to condense, speed up, elude us, while in old age significant events from our distant past can seem as vivid and real as what happened yesterday? In this enchanting and thoughtful book, Douwe Draaisma, author of the internationally acclaimed Metaphors of Memory, explores the nature of autobiographical memory. Applying a unique blend of scholarship, poetic sensibility and keen observation he tackles such extraordinary phenomena as dèjá-vu, near-death experiences, the memory feats of idiot-savants and the effects of extreme trauma on memory recall. Raising almost as many questions as it answers, this fascinating book will not fail to touch you at the same time as it educates and entertains.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vi
Acknowledgments	ix
1 'Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases'	1	(14)
2 Flashes in the dark: first memories	15	(16)
3 Smell and memory	31	(14)
4 Yesterday's record	45	(4)
5 The inner flashbulb	49	(6)
6 'Why do we remember forwards and not backwards"?'	55	(6)
7 The absolute memories of Funes and Sherashevsky	61	(12)
8 The advantages of a defect: the savant syndrome	73	(25)
9 The memory of a grandmaster: a conversation with Ton Sijbrands	98	(9)
10 Trauma and memory: the Demjanjuk case	107	(24)
11 Richard and Anna Wagner: forty-five years of married life	131	(10)
12 'In oval mirrors we drive around': on experiencing a sense of déjà vu	141	(31)
13 Reminiscences	172	(29)
14 Why life speeds up as you get older	201	(25)
15 Forgetting	226	(13)
16 'I saw my life flash before me'	239	(30)
17 From memory - Portrait with Still Life	269	(5)
Index of names	274