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The man who lost his past
The documentary film "Unknown White Male," about a New York stockbroker who loses his memory, is medically implausible. But it offers an important lesson about an overlooked illness.
By Robert Burton [2007-12-11]

  • A dangerous game

    It occurs to me that even if Bruce was faking it, it is still a dangerous game. Might it not be very hard to hold on to some memories when you are consciously devoting almost all your mental energy into convincing everyone that those memories don't exist?

    Imagine trying to pull off that fraud while constantly trying to draw that line between "semantical" memory and the personal memories... at what point do I reveal myself to be a fraud? It seems to me that there is a difference between knowing that a Chevrolet is a kind of car, and knowing that you have extensive mechanical knowledge because you worked on cars as a teen. "Oh, look, a chevy." Vs. "The Chevy isn't starting, and it sounds like a problem with your alternator to me." Well, how would you know the latter unless you had experience with cars?

    So the safest course, in keeping up the fraud, would be to try to blank out as much knowledge as you can. Better to forget way too much than to remember even a little bit more than you should. At what point of rewiring the things you should and shouldn't know do you actually start erasing memories? Is that possible, to actually consciously forget something? Wouldn't that be like trying not to think about an elephant?

    Interesting article.

    -- Tideswimmer
    [Read Tideswimmer's other letters]
    Monday, December 10, 2007 07:30 PM
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