autobiographical memory

We do more than remember what happened. We organise events into an account that explains who we are, how we became that person and what kind of person we expect ourselves to be next. Identity shapes memory, but memory also helps maintain identity.

Memory feels like retrieval, as though the past has been stored somewhere intact. It is closer to reconstruction. Each act of remembering draws on surviving fragments, later knowledge, emotion and the meaning an event has acquired since it happened.