Such childhood memories can really distort life.
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And such recollections of oneself in childhood are pulling, but sometimes they can correct a crooked life. May there be more such memories!
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Childhood memories are images and plots that a person relates to his childhood.
Someone imprinted a huge blue sky, a kind warm sun and many, many yellow sunflowers around. Someone had screaming parents, slaps in the face, sharp insults and other less optimistic images.
Do you believe what people remember as the events of their childhood? If you are a lawyer, no. If you are a psychologist, yes.
The situation is really difficult. As numerous studies have shown, people tend to distort, compose and paint in any color what they saw or thought that happened to them, and the more years have passed since the incident, the more “creative” memories turn out to be.
In 1935, Americans conducted a study: 252 women had to talk about such an important event as pregnancy and childbirth. When the stories of these mothers were compared with their medical records, it turned out that the memories were extremely unreliable. Mothers underestimated or overestimated the weight of their own children by almost 20%, could not say exactly how much time they spent every day caring for them, here the error generally reached 41%.
Childhood was a long time ago, a child is a creative being, and there is no reason to seriously trust childhood memories.
A case from judicial practice: a girl described in detail how her father regularly raped her for seven years. However, a medical examination conducted after her application to the court showed that the plaintiff was a virgin.
Similarly, writes a psychotherapist (McMullin R. Workshop on Cognitive Therapy: Translated from English — St. Petersburg: Rech, 2001. — 560 pp. ISBN 5-9268-0036-6): “Clients’ reproduction of events can be so inaccurate that sometimes they remember things that never happened. One client spent many hours discussing how her uncle had seduced her when she was ten. But when we did a detailed recall, it turned out that her uncle died when she was not even six. She had never actually been sexually assaulted, but it happened to her best friend, and she became so sympathetic for her that she later imagined it was her.
Other clients have recalled events they read in a book or saw in a movie that they thought happened to them because they forgot the source. Here is a famous case of this kind by Briddy Murphy (Bernstein & Barker, 1989). Under hypnosis, she remembered that in a past life she lived in Ireland. Some people checked her description of the Irish village and found that it was surprisingly accurate. This case has been used as evidence in favor of reincarnation. Reporters later revealed that she had heard these stories from an elderly woman who, as a child, lived in the Irish countryside. When Briddy was five, she sat on the old woman’s veranda and listened to her stories about Ireland.
Even if the problem situations experienced by the child in childhood really took place, they do not have a direct effect on today’s life of an adult. Experiments conducted in the field of social psychology have shown the insignificance of the long-term consequences of sexual or physical abuse experienced in childhood, the extremely insignificant influence of the family situation during childhood on the behavior and life of an adult, etc.
“It turns out, for example, that in most cases the long-term effects of childhood physical or sexual abuse are relatively minor (Widom, 1989). The same is true of the long-term effects of teenage pregnancy in the lives of young women (Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, Morgan, 1987) and even the long-term effects of psychological treatment in POW camps (Schein, 1956)» (Ross L., Nisbet R. Person and situation : lessons of social psychology. M., 1999).
However, people themselves usually tend to trust their childhood memories, and if a person takes their childhood memories seriously, then it doesn’t matter if it’s true or fantasy: it affects a person in almost the same way.
Vladimir Kucherenko told MSU students about an experiment in which positive memories of her childhood were instilled under hypnosis in a troubled patient. The result was a steady improvement in her mental status and personal health: the problematic peaks in her MMPI test results disappeared, and her authorial position (subjectivity) strengthened. It is curious that she began to demonstrate a male type of socialization: the position “here, I will get married, my husband will support me” changed to “I will become a specialist, I will support myself.”
At the same time, in order to change childhood memories, it is not necessary to look for a hypnotist: creative people with a good imagination can do everything they need on their own.
One of the participants of the Distance, working with soul on the exercises, in the direction of «Status and Influence» constantly slowed down, as if something was holding her back. And one amazing day she came, as if transformed: smooth gestures and movements, royal posture, soft, but imperious intonations … What happened? What did she do to herself? She spoke about it this way: “I spent all my childhood running with the boys through the yards and through the garbage dumps, and we always looked at adults and beautifully dressed people as something alien, garbage dogs were closer to us. Even when I grew up and changed the company, deep down I still felt like some kind of mongrel, I didn’t believe that I was a beautiful and status woman — where did I come from? I decided to change it, I closed my eyes and began to remember my other childhood. Create a new childhood for yourself. I realized that I was the Countess of Suzdal, and I began to construct this image for myself, this legend. And soon, as if in reality, I saw our large and beautiful estate with large meadows and a park, a wide staircase, along which I ran in a light white dress towards my father and mother. I remembered a beautiful hall with large paintings and transparent curtains, where I loved to play the piano, I remembered our dinners at a large table with candles and a huge mirror in front of which I admired myself when I was going to the first ball «…
It’s never too late to relive your happy childhood…
You don’t need to keep in your head something that does not help you in life and development, and, on the contrary, it makes sense to load into your head something that will help – even if it’s just fairy tales and fantasies. A memory is only an image marked in our minds as associated with some events, and our memories can be created by ourselves — for tasks that are important to us. In your head, as well as in your home, there should be only what works for your values and interests, what works for your future.