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Personal Memories (personal + memory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Psychology	33%

Selected Abstracts

Archival note: An inquiry into the relationshp between Alfred Binet and Cyril Burt

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 3 2003
Diana Faber Ph.D. honorary research fellowship
Two recent archival items offer material for analysis of Alfred Binet's (1857,1911) and Cyril Burt's (1883,1971) relationship in the early twentieth century. Burt's letter to Binet's biographer Theta Wolf was an answer to her request for information about his contact with Binet. An analysis of Burt's account prompts more questions than it answers. His statements in the letter are compared with previous ones and are put into the context of the activities of the two men, but these do not enlighten us about his actual relations with Binet. The problem arises because of Burt's desciptive vagueness and lack of supporting evidence. Despite attacks against Burt's integrity made from 1976 onward, we found no conclusive evidence of false claims. The negative outcome of this analysis probably results from Burt's faulty memory, and herein lies the caveat that personal memories make unreliable material for historical accounts. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

Managing memories in post-war Sarajevo: individuals, bad memories, and new wars

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 1 2006
Cornelia Sorabji
In the wake of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia a number of anthropologists have written about the role of memory in creating and sustaining hostility in the region. One trend focuses on the authenticity and power of personal memories of Second World War violence and on the possibility of transmitting such memories down the generations to the 1990s. Another focuses less on memory as a phenomenon which determines human action than on the ,politics of memory': the political dynamics which play on and channel individuals' memories. In this article I use the example of three Sarajevo Bosniacs whom I have known since the pre-war 1980s in order to propose the merit of a third, additional, focus on the individual as an active manager of his or her own memories. I briefly consider whether work by Maurice Bloch on the nature of semantic and of autobiographic memory supports a strong version of the first interpretative trend, or whether, as I suggest, the conclusions of this work instead leave room for individual memory management and for change down the generations. [source]

Splintered memories or vivid landmarks?

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2003
Qualities, organization of traumatic memories with, without PTSD
One hundred and eighty-one students answered a standardized questionnaire on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): 25 reported trauma(s) and indicated a pattern of after-effects that matched a PTSD symptom profile, whereas 88 indicated trauma(s) but no PTSD symptom profile. Both groups answered a questionnaire addressing the recollective quality, integration and coherence of the traumatic memory that currently affected them most. Participants with a PTSD symptom profile reported more vivid recollection of emotion and sensory impressions. They reported more observer perspective in the memory (seeing themselves ,from the outside'), but no more fragmentation. They also agreed more with the statement that the trauma had become part of their identity, and perceived more thematic connections between the trauma and current events in their lives. The two groups showed different patterns of correlations which indicated different coping styles. Overall, the findings suggest that traumas form dysfunctional reference points for the organization of other personal memories in people with PTSD symptoms, leading to fluctuations between vivid intrusions and avoidance. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Remembering White Detroit:Whiteness in the Mix of History and Memory

CITY & SOCIETY, Issue 2 2000
John Hartigan Jr.
Detroit provides a unique perspective on issues of whiteness because it grounds many situations where whites are racially objectified,in settings where the nor-motive status of their racial position cannot be assumed, and where whiteness is not often an unmarked identity. The distinct class texture of their objectifications are evident in comments by white Detroiters grappling with the city's history, either through their personal memories or their current experiences. The heterogeneity of their versions of Detroit's history suggests that whites contend with die continuing cultural significance of race and of whiteness from a range of uneven social positions. [Whiteness, urban underclass, social memory, race, Detroit] [source]

Life Stories, War, and Veterans: On the Social Distribution of Memories

ETHOS, Issue 1 2004
Edna Lomsky-Feder
On the basis of examining life stories narrated by 63 Israeli male veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this article delves into the social construction of personal memory. Focusing on the remembering subject will allow us to study this process by highlighting the agent who creates his or her world, but at the same time it will disclose how society frames and channels the agent's choices. My contention is that personal memory (traumatic or normalizing, conforming or critical) is embedded within, designed by, and derives its meaning from, a memory field that offers different interpretations of war. Yet this memory field is not an open space, and the remembering subject is not free to choose any interpretation he wishes. Cultural criteria "distribute" accessibility to different collective memories according to social entitlement. These "distributive criteria" dictate who is entitled to remember and what is to be remembered, thereby controlling the extent of trauma and criticism of personal memory. [source]

OTHER SIGHTS: Reflections on the Movement

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 3 2003
ROBERT ALLEN MOHR
These days,when tourists run from one memorial to the next, checking them off a sightseeing list, displaying appropriate grief,one has to ask: What is the purpose of the memorial? What is its effect when the historical events it memorializes lie beyond personal memory? Does the memorial serve to make history present and alive or does it seal off the past? What if "history" is still the present? How can we make the experience of reviewing history fresh and powerful both intellectually and emotionally, and in a way that might have lasting effect? How can we turn the viewer into a participant and,the ultimate ambition of memorializing projects,effect change within that person?OTHER SIGHTS began as a conversation between myself and Karen Bermann, my faculty adviser, on these issues. [source]