It took me two days to read this article about a psychologist who specializes in memory -- that's how little free time I have.
Elizabeth Loftus believes that memory is malleable and can be manipulated -- especially traumatic memories by authority figures. She has testified for the defense in many trials of prominent sexual abusers (including Harvey Weinstein and Jerry Sandusky) and argued that testimony of the victims is not reliable because traumatic memory is not reliable -- implying that the victims either convince themselves they were abused or have been convinced by others. This has made her quite unpopular in certain circles. (In her most famous experiment she has older family members convince subjects that they had once been lost in a shopping mall as a kid.)
Her professional story is weaved with the story of her own skewed memory of her mother's death. Long story short, her mother died when Loftus was 14 and she convinced herself it was an accidental drowning, when in fact it was probably suicide.
Overall it was an evenhanded snapshot of Loftus that got me thinking about the concept of memory and reminded me a little of this essay from Franzen's book on the same topic. (Kind of crazy that it was the September 10, 2001 issue of the New Yorker -- which I didn't read back then.)
I need to find some good humor to read.
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