University of Virginia Library

Section 55. (d) Illusions of Memory.

Memory illusion, or paramnesia, consists in the illusory opinion of having experienced, seen, or heard something, although there has been no such experience, vision, or sound. It is the more important in criminal law because it enters unobtrusively and unnoticed into the circle of observation, and not directly by means of a demonstrated mistake. Hence, it is the more difficult to discover and has a disturbing influence which makes it very hard to perceive the mistakes that have occurred in consequence of it.

It may be that Leibnitz meant paramnesia with his "perceptiones insensibiles." Later, Lichtenberg must have had it in mind when he repeatedly asserted that he must have been in the world once before, inasmuch as many things seemed to him so familiar, although, at the time, he had not yet experienced them. Later on, Jessen concerned himself with the question, and Sander[1] asserts him to have been the first. According to Jessen, everybody is familiar with the phenomenon in which the sudden impression occurs, that

what is experienced has already been met with before so that the future might be predicted. Langwieser asserts that one always has the sensation that the event occurred a long time ago, and Dr. Karl Neuhoff finds that his sensation is accompanied with unrest and contraction. The same thing is discussed by many other authors.[2]

Various explanations have been offered. Wigand and Maudsley think they see in paramnesia a simultaneous functioning of both relations. Anje believes that illusory memory depends on the differentiation which sometimes occurs between perception and coming-into-consciousness. According to Külpe, these are the things that Plato interpreted in his doctrine of pre-existence.

Sully,[3] in his book on illusions, has examined the problem most thoroughly and he draws simple conclusions. He finds that vivacious children often think they have experienced what is told them. This, however, is retained in the memory of the adult, who continues to think that he has actually experienced it. The same thing is true when children have intensely desired anything. Thus the child-stories given us by Rousseau, Goethe, and De Quincey, must come from the airy regions of the dream life or from waking revery, and Dickens has dealt with this dream life in "David Copperfield." Sully adds, that we also generate illusions of memory when we assign to experiences false dates, and believe ourselves to have felt, as children, something we experienced later and merely set back into our childhood.

So again, he reduces much supposed to have been heard, to things that have been read. Novels may make such an impression that what has been read or described there appears to have been really experienced. A name or region then seems to be familiar because we have read of something similar.

It will perhaps be proper not to reduce all the phenomena of paramnesia to the same conditions. Only a limited number of them seem to be so reducible. Impressions often occur which one is inclined to attribute to illusory memory, merely to discover later that they were real but unconscious memory; the things had been actually experienced and the events had been forgotten. So, for example, I visit some region for the first time and get the impression that I have seen it before, and since this, as a matter of fact, is not the case, I believe myself to have suffered from an illusion of memory.

Later, I perceive that perhaps in early childhood I had really been in a country that resembled this one. Thus my memory was really correct; I had merely forgotten the experience to which it referred.

Aside from these unreal illusions of memory, many, if not all others, are explicable, as Sully indicates, by the fact that something similar to what has been experienced, has been read or heard, while the fact that it has been read or heard is half forgotten or has sunk into the subconsciousness. Only the sensation has remained, not the recollection that it was read, etc. Another part of this phenomenon may possibly be explained by vivid dreams, which also leave strong impressions without leaving the memory of their having been dreams. Whoever is in the habit of dreaming vividly will know how it is possible to have for days a clear or cloudy feeling of the discovery of something excellent or disturbing, only to find out later that there has been no real experience, only a dream. Such a feeling, especially the memory of things seen or heard in dreams, may remain in consciousness. If, later, some similar matter is really met with, the sensation may appear as a past event.[4] This is all the easier since dreams are never completely rigid, but easily modeled and adaptable, so that if there is the slightest approximation to similarity, memory of a dream lightly attaches itself to real experience.

All this may happen to anybody, well or ill, nervous or stolid. Indeed, Kräpelin asserts that paramnesia occurs only under normal circumstances. It may also be generally assumed that a certain fatigued condition of the mind or of the body renders this occurrence more likely, if it does not altogether determine it. So far as self-observation throws any light on the matter, this statement appears to be correct. I had such illusions of memory most numerously during the Bosnian war of occupation of 1878, when we made our terrible forced marches from Esseg to Sarajevo. The illusions appeared regularly after dinner, when we were quite tired. Then the region which all my preceding life I had not seen, appeared to be pleasantly familiar, and when once, at the very beginning, I received the order to storm a village occupied by Turks, I thought it would not be much trouble, I had done it so frequently and nothing had ever happened. At that time we were quite exhausted. Even when we had entered the otherwise empty village this extraordinary circumstance did not impress me, and I thought that the inside of

a village always looked like that—although I had never before seen such a Turkish street-hotel "in nature" or pictured.

Another mode of explanation may be mentioned, i. e., explanation by heredity. Hering[5] and Sully have dealt with it. According to the latter, especially, we may think that we have undergone some experience that really belongs to some ancestor. Sully believes that this contention can not be generically contradicted because a group of skilled activities (nest-building, food-seeking, hiding from the enemy, migration, etc.) have been indubitably inherited from the animals, but on the other hand, that paramnesia is inherited memory can be proved only with, e. g., a child which had been brought up far from the sea but whose parents and grandparents had been coast-dwellers. If that child should at first sight have the feeling that he is familiar with the sea, the inheritance of memory would be proved. So long as we have not a larger number of such instances the assumption of hereditary influence is very suggestive but only probable.

With regard to the bearing of memory-illusions on criminal cases I shall cite only one possible instance. Somebody just waking from sleep has perceived that his servant is handling his purse which is lying on the night-table, and in consequence of the memory-illusion he believes that he has already observed this many times before. The action of the servant was perhaps harmless and in no way directed toward theft. Now the evidence of the master is supposed to demonstrate that this has repeatedly occurred, then perhaps no doubt arises that the servant has committed theft frequently and has had the intention of doing so this time.

To generalize this situation would be to indicate that illusions of memory are always likely to have doubtful results when they have occurred only once and when the witness in consequence of paramnesia believes the event to have been repeatedly observed. It is not difficult to think of numbers of such cases but it will hardly be possible to say how the presence of illusions of memory is to be discovered without the knowledge that they exist.

When we consider all the qualities and idiosyncrasies of memory, this so varied function of the mind, we must wonder that its estimation in special cases is frequently different, although proceeding from a second person or from the very owner of the questionable memory. Sully finds rightly, that one of the keenest tricks in fighting deep-rooted

convictions is to attack the memory of another with regard to its reliability. Memory is the private domain of the individual. From the secret council-chamber of his own consciousness, into which no other may enter, it draws all its values.

The case is altered, however, when a man speaks of his personal memory. It must then assume all the deficiencies which belong to other mental powers. We lawyers, especially, hear frequently from witnesses: "My memory is too weak to answer this question," "Since receiving the wound in question my memory has failed," "I am already too old, my memory is leaving me," etc. In each of these cases, however, it is not the memory that is at fault. As a matter of fact the witness ought to have said "I am too stupid to answer this question," "Since the wound in question, my intellectual powers have failed," "I am already old, I am growing silly," etc. But of course no one will, save very rarely, underestimate his good sense, and it is more comfortable to assign its deficiencies to the memory. This occurs not only in words but also in construction. If a man has incorrectly reproduced any matter, whether a false observation, or a deficient combination, or an unskilled interpretation of facts, he will not blame these things but will assign the fault to memory. If he is believed, absolutely incorrect conclusions may result.