Another question.. haha :)

[raphy]

Muahaha..

Okay - Is it feasible for an amnesiac to not have any recollection of what they look like and thus be very surprised the first time they see themselves in a mirror?

A related question is: Is your memory of what you look like counted as memory, or knowledge? And is there a difference between memory and knowledge? What's the distinction?

(yup, this is about as close to research as I get when writing a novel... That said, I find the discussions that my questions spark a lot more informative than just going out on the internet and googling what I want to know)

 

[minsue]

Originally posted by raphy
Muahaha..

Okay - Is it feasible for an amnesiac to not have any recollection of what they look like and thus be very surprised the first time they see themselves in a mirror?

Sure, why not? No idea, but if well-written I could keep up suspension of disbelief.

A related question is: Is your memory of what you look like counted as memory, or knowledge?

I would say memory. None of us really knows what we look like. We know what our reflections look like and we know what our photos look like, but at times the two are quite different. At least for me they are. I'm warped, though.

And is there a difference between memory and knowledge?

Yes.

What's the distinction?

Perception. Both memory and knowledge are colored by experience, but memory far more so. Consider the multiple studies done showing how easy it is for a trained professional to 'plant' false memories. Not to mention, my mother has an amazing capacity to alter her memories of my brother's and my childhoods.

(yup, this is about as close to research as I get when writing a novel... That said, I find the discussions that my questions spark a lot more informative than just going out on the internet and googling what I want to know)

I like it. I find these sort of odd threads fascinating.

 

[MathGirl]

this is about as close to research as I get when writing a novel

Dear Ra,
In this case, I believe a serious session of thinking might serve your purposes better than flailing around trying to research such nebulous (but self evident) matters.
Sic hihil sebum,
MG
Ps. Does anyone know where I can buy a deck of Cripple Mister Onion cards? Toys R Us has never heard of them.

 

[cantdog]

I don't know about amnesiacs in the sci-fi and Hollywood sense. I know many people who have lost blocks of their lives due to amnesiac drugs, such as the ones dentists use during oral surgery. They have no direct memory of anything that happened between the countdown backward from a hundred and their waking up in the middle of a sentence thay hadn't heard the first few words of.

They knew immediately who they were, but for the time they "lost" they have a complete blank.

My brother has lost (to MS) the ability to form new memories. To ask him what he had for lunch is meaningless. To ask him whether he's had lunch or whether his mother visited him, same thing. His long-term memories have also suffered some truncation and scrambling, to judge from his endless pathetic monologues. We have had to convince him many times he was no longer in the airborne and no longer in Texas and no longer married, but he returns to these ideas, because they are the only memories he has left but those of childhood. For some bizarre reason, he knows his father has died pretty consistently. He knows his name, but whether he knows who he is or not, he's not who he was.

I'm not sure there really are amnesiacs, in the way that so many plots of screenplays and novels paint the condition. You are therefore free to invent the conditions ad libitum.

As an author writing about a plot device, you may do what suits your plot.

I kind of like the idea of having little things trigger partial recollections, but starting out with total mystification in the mirror and having to check your wallet and your mailbox to find out what your name is. It seems clean and total. It's cool to include some wisps of tantalizing memory with no sure referent, as a clue from which to begin the search, but I like to see a writer make the environment provide all the clues. I like it pure and total to start with. I like to see the nameless character derive the whole thing.

I know, that's merely my taste as a reader; but really, I think the whole thing is a comic book fantasy and you might as well suit your taste in the matter.


cantdog

 

[raphy]

I kind of like the idea of having little things trigger partial recollections, but starting out with total mystification in the mirror and having to check your wallet and your mailbox to find out what your name is. It seems clean and total. It's cool to include some wisps of tantalizing memory with no sure referent, as a clue from which to begin the search, but I like to see a writer make the environment provide all the clues. I like it pure and total to start with. I like to see the nameless character derive the whole thing.

I know, that's merely my taste as a reader; but really, I think the whole thing is a comic book fantasy and you might as well suit your taste in the matter.


cantdog

You'll get some of that, for sure. I also like that sort of thing. We'll have to see how the whole thing pans out, 70,000 words from now.

 

[damppanties]

Raph,

Based on my knowledge of amnesiacs (I know a few ), they are not shocked or surprised when they see themselves in a mirror for the first time. The adjustment is really amazing after they get to know that they have lost their memory. The reaction of seeing themselves in a mirror is - like you're seeing someone you know but can't exactly place, vaguely familiar - according to one person who lost his memory. They seem to recognise themselves.

By this I'd say that your memory of what you look like is counted as knowledge. You've seen yourself so many times that its engraved into your subconscious and you just 'know' it's you. Does that make sense?

The psychological difference between memory and knowledge is that your memory is something stored in your brain which you might lose in case of amnesia, and knowledge is something which you build upon and it is basically something you learn, the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning, as opposed to remembrances or recollections in case of memory. Knowledge is information whereas memories are incidents. Knowledge is more intellectual and memory is somewhat emotional i.e. related to emotions. I'm floundering here... sigh. Hope you can make something out of that.

Good Qs.

 

[raphy]

As always, Dampy, you are most helpful

I like to post questions about things that are plaguing me when I write to these lit boards, not only to find out what other writers think and how they'd handle the subject, but also because y'all are intelligent people and it sparks intelligent discussion (and because it's usually non-political, it's pretty friendly discussion, hehe)

Just like I did when I asked all those questions about emotion for my NaNo novel....

 

[raphy]

I have to comment on this though

The reaction of seeing themselves in a mirror is - like you're seeing someone you know but can't exactly place, vaguely familiar - according to one person who lost his memory. They seem to recognise themselves.

By this I'd say that your memory of what you look like is counted as knowledge. You've seen yourself so many times that its engraved into your subconscious and you just 'know' it's you. Does that make sense?

It's vaguely familiar - Like it's someone who you know, but you can't place.. But at the same time you 'know' it's you? That's not necessarily a contradiction, but it could be seen as such. Of course, I suppose it varies from case to case, and in this case her amnesia is artificially induced, and not resulting from 'natural causes' (whatever they might be) .. And so I suppose all bets are off.

 

[damppanties]

Hmmm... let's see. It would also depend on the atmosphere around her. I mean, if others all around her think she's a freak, she might react differently than if they accepted it. She might feel more discomfitted/embarrassed/godknowswhat looking at herself in the mirror for the first time and botch up the whole thing. A lot of how we react is how we want to be perceived and also a direct result of how others around us are behaving.

I wanted to write this in the first post but forgot.

Of course what I mentioned was an indirect quote from someone I know. I had asked him how he felt when he had seen himself for the first time after he had lost his memory. I guess you can compare it to something like an out of body experience, you know what I mean? You're this person but you don't remember being that person.

But when you look into yourself in a mirror and recognise yourself, i.e, the face looks familiar, you know it's you.

 

[Black Tulip]

Raphy,

For me the difference between memory and knowledge is, that you can use knowledge, apply it to new circumstances. Memory is a static event, it can be distorted by time but you can't make it into a tool for other purposes.

Does that make sense?

I'm not suffering from amnesia, but I sometimes look at my own face as if it is someone else's. Like standing a pace or two behind your self. I know, crazy.

 

[cantdog]

Standing a pace or two behind...

Mystical states are even more interesting than amnesia, but I'm not sure there's a lot of potential in erotica for exploring mystical states.

Once you start having them, you know they're important. For an atheist like myself, they are a little mystifying, as well.


cantdog

 

[Black Tulip]

Getting outside your body is a mystical state?

I know uses of that in erotica, except I never called it a mystical state!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm not sure there really are amnesiacs, in the way that so many plots of screenplays and novels paint the condition. You are therefore free to invent the conditions ad libitum.

As an author writing about a plot device, you may do what suits your plot.

Dog is right. Our ideas of amnesia are mostly takes from books and movies, and those authors mostly made that stuff up. Same is true of 'split personalities' where there are two characters in one body. According to what I've read, that condition is so rare as to be virtually unknown in real life, but still it's a staple of fiction.

Your question reminds me of a couple of things though:

You know that spooky and bewildering feeling you get when you receive a piece of mail that's addressed to you in your own handwriting? My eye doctor has his patients address cards to themselves and mails them when it's time for their next check-up. It's the creepiest thing when you get one before you remember what's going on.

Have you ever caught sight of your own face when you were looking for someone else, and had a split second where you knew the face was familiar but couldn't recognize it? I remember being in a room somewhere where one of the walls by the door was mirrored and people were coming in and going out. I looked over and seemed to see myself as part of a crowd over there, and had a sudden surge of adrenalin and confusion like my soul had been stolen. Very weird.

---dr.M.

 

[cantdog]

all bets off

I have to comment on this though



It's vaguely familiar - Like it's someone who you know, but you can't place.. But at the same time you 'know' it's you? That's not necessarily a contradiction, but it could be seen as such. Of course, I suppose it varies from case to case, and in this case her amnesia is artificially induced, and not resulting from 'natural causes' (whatever they might be) .. And so I suppose all bets are off.

I believe there are categories in the natural arrangement of the storage in the brain. They showed us the image of my brother's lesions, and said, "Here is where new memories are formed; here is longterm storage"-- and the two were fairly separate-- "Here is the abstact functioning of the brain," and so on.

Memories are intimately linked with the limbic and emotional, and also with smells. I smoke a pipe, and frequently people tell me stories-- their grandfather, an older man they respected-- the memory came on them unbidden at the smell of the tobacco.

Abstractions really do seem to be different. My brother's got no losses I've seen having to do with what to do with coffee, whether or not someone's sexy looking. what a shoe is and how to operate it, how to read.

But he doesn't read stories or articles, because he loses the thread right away (he doesn't form new memories well) even though he reads constantly from magazine covers, cereal boxes, or whatnot.

An image or some written words will set him to abstracting, talking about the generalities behind the particular object in front of him, all in the light of his long-term memories and his store of knowledge. By knowledge, I understand his derivations from his experiences, his generalizations. The experiences themselves are elsewhere.

So I think there must be a real distinction, based in brain physiology. Some of these are split in strange and unexpected ways. People with damage to speech centers are taught to sing when they want speech, because singing is handled in another part of the organ.

cantdog

 

[oggbashan]

New short story

I had just written a story for my writing class. The first sentence was set and we had to continue from there. It covers amnesia. Does it work?

Og



It was a hot peaceful sort of day in September and I was walking down the street when suddenly…

I couldn’t remember my name.

I didn’t know who I was, why I was here, where ‘here’ was. The street was completely new to me. There was nothing familiar anywhere.

I tried to think. What had happened? Where did I live? A blank. What did I do? Another blank. How old was I? I don’t know. What should I do? Ask a policeman, I thought.

I asked for directions to the Police Station from a passing postwoman. She looked puzzled but gave me clear instructions. Soon I was standing at the counter facing a Police Sergeant. He looked up.

“Yes sir?” he said.

“I can’t remember my name,” I said.

“Have you any identification, sir?”

I handed my wallet to the Sergeant. He looked at me as if I was trying to hoax him.

“You are Paul Smith,” he announced flatly. “I knew that when you walked in. You don’t know?”

“What shall I do?”

“Sit down over there, Mr Smith. I’ll ring your wife…”

Wife? I had a wife? I remembered nothing of a wife.

“…and ask her to collect you. Then I think you should see your doctor. He may be able to help.”

The Sergeant phoned my wife without looking for her number. She seemed to have difficulty understanding the situation. I could sympathise. I didn’t understand it either. He put the phone down.

“She will be here in ten minutes, Mr Smith.”

I watched the minutes tick away. Twenty minutes after the phone call an elegantly dressed woman hurried in and kissed me.

“Poor Paul,” she said. “This is a shock, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied. What could I say? I didn’t recognise her. She could be anyone’s wife. If she was mine I liked what I saw.

“It’s OK, Sergeant Jones,” she said. “I’ll take him home. I’ve spoken to his doctor. This will pass in a few hours. It is a rare reaction to his new medicine. He’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. “We need him.”

She led me to the car. As we were driving off I asked.

“What is your name? I can’t remember my own.”

“I’m Marion. Your wife, Marion Smith. Don’t worry. You can call me ‘Hey you’ until your memory returns. I’ll answer.”

Marion behaved brilliantly. Even though I didn’t know who she was, she treated me gently and with love. She anticipated my difficulties. At last she led me to bed. I went to sleep with her head against my shoulder.

The next morning I knew who I was. I looked at Marion, still sleeping beside me. How could I have forgotten how much she loved me, and how much I loved her? I had taken her for granted until that peaceful day.

On Monday I would be back at work as the Mayor. No wonder the postwoman had looked puzzled.

 

[gauchecritic]

I'd say it's probably not possible to not recognise yourself in the mirror, from a photograph perhaps, but not likely if you 'know' what a mirror does.

So while ever you know what a mirror does, then you know who the person on the other side must be and can see that it corresponds with your self-image.

Working with the elderly I've noticed quite often that Alzheimers sufferers do not recognise the person in the mirror. This isn't because they don't recognise themselves as such, it's because they don't know what a mirror does. The same thing with photographs of themselves.

This isn't a (dis)function of memory but an inability to maintain a self-image. They can often be surprised that they are touching their own nose.

As for the difference between memory and knowledge I'd have to say that they are indivisible. Is 4X2=8 knowledge or memory? If it were knowledge then every time you asked yourself what is four times two? you would have to work out the answer by adding 4 together twice. We clearly don't do that, we 'know' that it's eight which is memory. To be picky I'd say that knowledge is an application of memory.

Going back to the first point, it is possible to be surprised when looking in the mirror, for instance if you wake up with a bright red rash or a bogey hanging from your nose, but that's noticing the 'difference' from what you expect. Now that I've said that I suppose it would be possible to not see what you expect because you're only expecting two eyes, a nose and a mouth and are dependant upon memory to fill the rest in.

If you know what a mirror does then what you see will always be a surprise until your memory fills in the distinctive parts.

Gauche

 

[cantdog]

This is eschatology!

When you say, "I know something," what do you mean by that? And how do you know?

Hume and Kant! I loved this sort of thing when I was in my thirties.

I think it's a useful distinction, about the knowledge of what a mirror does, by the way, raphy.

The knowledge puts the mirror experience in context, rationally. You could see, as this character, a photo of yourself, but have to compare it to the mirror to know it was of you.

For that reason, gauche, although the knowledges we accumulate are all derived from our experiences, and so are our memories, the very distinction you make about the knowledge of a mirror shows that memory and knowledge are different. The experiences are unitary, but the two resultants in your head are of a different character from one another.

That is entirely the fun of the literary amnesiac, for me, to explore what you'd have and what you wouldn't have, if you lost just your memory.

The tabula rasa idea is a cool thought experiment. Hume does one. Sensory deprivation until maturity. Now remove the constraints, the person can see the world, smell it, touch it, hear it. Would such a person have a thought in her head? Hume said no. For him, all we have is from the senses. Therefore we could have nothing if we'd had no sensory input. I love eschatology.

 

[cantdog]

Re: New short story

I had just written a story for my writing class. The first sentence was set and we had to continue from there. It covers amnesia. Does it work?

Og

It hits all the places I want not to see bungled, if you follow me. I have a real hard time with stories when the author doesn't know enough about it to have opened his mouth. Some erotica is like that, with even some physiological errors. Very off-putting! But yours does the thing right, for me.

Was there a strict word limit on the piece?


cantdog

 

[gauchecritic]

I don't deny that memory and knowledge are discrete parts but I'd argue that neither could function independantly, and to all intents and purposes comprise the same thing.

So to make a leap: Experience teaches us nothing. Knowledge and memory create the world new everyday.

Gauche

 

[cantdog]

I've certainly known people whom experience has taught nothing !

Experience in that sense is not what I was using, but only the sense of "one's experiences." What on earth would you have memories of, if not of your experiences?

Experience in the other sense is indeed fairly meaningless, as you suggest. The pre-Cambrian rocks would be running the planet if all one needed was experience. You have to apply some effort to gain anything from your longevity on the planet and the things which you witness and participate in, or nothing of knowledge results, to speak of.

That effort is done by the part of mind or of brain which is the seat of reason. The rational brain takes the flow of raw sense data and applies its categories to it, starting with time, space, and causality.

These three things, among others, as Kant pointed out in response to Hume, have no reality except for the observing mind. Lightning may be followed by thunder forever, but it doesn't prove causality. Spring follows winter, too. All notions of causality are in the mind of the beholder, and the framework of time and space is imposed upon the perceptions of the senses in order to make sense of the rush of impressions.

There is consequently a time lag between receiving the sense data, seeing, that is, in the raw sense of it, and actually recognizing what's there and what's happened. The mind takes a little time to process. This is what you try to extend in mystical meditation, that time lag.

The rational mind demands attention all the time and makes trance difficult if you let it. The trick is to insert yourself into that space where your experience of the world just flows by without being fucked with.

This processing mind stores its memories here and there in the brain, and does its abstractions in other places. My MS affected brother's brain had a "flare" as they call it, only in some portions and not in others. The degeneration is different and less general than in Alzheimer's patients.

Neither condition would be anything I'd want. Wo. Anyway, it is observation of my brother; and books like The Man Who Tasted Shapes; and other more scientific brain references for people who have to deal with aphasics and head injuries and stroke victims; it is these upon which I base my conclusion that memory and knowledge might be lost separately. "Independently" would be misleading, for the loss of either would affect the usefulness of the other. But separately, yes. Oh, yes.

cantdog

 

[oggbashan]

Re: Re: New short story

Was there a strict word limit on the piece?


cantdog

Yes. 500 words. That piece, according to Word, is 496 words.

Og

 

[dirtylover]

Muahaha..

Okay - Is it feasible for an amnesiac to not have any recollection of what they look like and thus be very surprised the first time they see themselves in a mirror?

A related question is: Is your memory of what you look like counted as memory, or knowledge? And is there a difference between memory and knowledge? What's the distinction?

If you have not yet come across it, may I recommend The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. This is a book of case studies of some of Sacks' patients and is absolutely incredible to read (and very straight forward too, no jargon). Anybody that has any interest in how the mind works will find this book fascinating, and probably goes someway to answering your questions.

Here's an excerpt I found:

P., a music teacher, whose associates have questioned his perception, is referred by his ophthalmologist to the neurologist Oliver Sacks. During the first office visit, Sacks notices that P. faces him with his ears, not his eyes. His gaze seems unnatural, darting and fixating on the doctor's features one at a time. At the end of the interview, at which his wife is present, P. appears to grasp his wife's head and try to lift it off and put it on his own head. "He had . . . mistaken his wife for a hat!" She gave no sign that anything odd had happened.

During the second interview, at P.'s home, P. is unable to recognize the rose in Sacks' lapel, describing it as "a convoluted red form with a linear green attachment." He is encouraged to speculate on what it might be, and guesses it could be a flower. When he smells it, he comes to life and knows it. The wife explains that P. functions by making little songs about what he is doing--dressing, washing or eating. If the song is interrupted he simply stops, till he finds in his sensorium a clue on how to proceed.

This cantatory method of compensating allows P. to function undetected in his professional and personal life. He remains unaware that he has a problem. Sacks chooses not to disturb his ignorant bliss with a diagnosis. Though his disease (never diagnosed but hypothesized as a tumor or degeneration of the visual cortex) advances, P. lives and works in apparent normalcy to the end of his days.

Commentary P.'s ability to compensate for failing neurological function, and to do so unconsciously, speaks of the awesome capacity we have to heal the rifts that appear between us and our reality due to physical accident. That P. is a cultivated man, immersed in love--of music--which wins him the devotion of wife and students and colleagues, gives a kind of eccentric Belvederian charm to the story. His dependence on song and scent to orient himself to the richness of the world around him shows the living and loving aspect of his humanity.

P.'s deficiency in the visual realm Sacks characterizes as a loss of feeling and judgment around visual data which reduces the concrete, the real, the personal, to mechanical abstractions. Visually, P. functions like a computer. Sacks makes the analogy between P.'s visual agnosia and the current state of cognitive neurology and psychology, which sees the brain as a computer and fails to see what is concrete and real about people. Sacks the clinician avoids this want of feeling when he withholds a diagnosis of the deficiency. Instead he prescribes more music to strengthen P.'s inner music without which his life would come to a stop.

 

[dirtylover]

Muahaha..

Okay - Is it feasible for an amnesiac to not have any recollection of what they look like and thus be very surprised the first time they see themselves in a mirror?

- I would say yes.

A related question is: Is your memory of what you look like counted as memory, or knowledge? And is there a difference between memory and knowledge? What's the distinction?

- As far as I know, memory is usually divided into short-term and long-term, rather than between facts and events. I'd guess there's a continuum between facts and 'memory', eg What colour hair do you have? -you could say you were acessing a memory, or this is just a fact you know...

 

[Black Tulip]

Og,

I think you did a nice job.

Just one part that was a bit fuzzy, to me at least.

“Have you any identification, sir?”

I handed my wallet to the Sergeant. He looked at me as if I was trying to hoax him.

“You are Paul Smith,” he announced flatly. “I knew that when you walked in. You don’t know?”

If the sergeant knows who he is, why ask for his identification?
Something is not right here.

Only trying to help.

 

[oggbashan]

Sorry. The Sergeant was intended to be making a sarcastic remark. He can't believe that it isn't a joke until Paul hands over his wallet.

Og

Edited for PS: I cut out about 50 words in that area. My original draft was 850+ words