Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older
How Memory Shapes our Past

In this enchanting book, Douwe Draaisma explores the nature of autobiographical memory and extraordinary phenomena.

Douwe Draaisma (Author), Arnold Pomerans (Translated by), Erica Pomerans (Translated by)

9780521834247, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 November 2004

288 pages, 25 b/w illus.
23.7 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.61 kg

'Draaisma's exploration of how our lives are shaped by the remembered past is a wry and literate investigation of the history of psychology and of the human condition. The result is informative, amusing and moving. Long after you close it, it leaves a good memory.' New Scientist

Is it true, as the novelist Cees Nooteboom once wrote, that 'Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases'? Where do the long, lazy summers of our childhood go? Why is it that as we grow older time seems to condense, speed up, elude us, while in old age significant events from our distant past can seem as vivid and real as what happened yesterday? In this enchanting and thoughtful book, Douwe Draaisma, author of the internationally acclaimed Metaphors of Memory, explores the nature of autobiographical memory. Applying a unique blend of scholarship, poetic sensibility and keen observation he tackles such extraordinary phenomena as déjà-vu, near-death experiences, the memory feats of idiot-savants and the effects of extreme trauma on memory recall. Raising almost as many questions as it answers, this fascinating book will not fail to touch you at the same time as it educates and entertains.

1. 'Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases'
2. Flashes in the dark: first memories
3. Smell and memory
4. Yesterday's record
5. The inner flashbulb
6. 'Why do we remember forwards and not backwards?' 7. The absolute memories of Funes and Sherashevsky
8. The advantages of a defect: the savant syndrome
9. The memory of a grandmaster: a conversation with Ton Sijbrands
10. Trauma and memory: the Demjanjuk case
11. Richard and Anna Wagner: forty-five years of married life
12. 'In oval mirrors we drive around': on experiencing a sense of déjà vu
13. Reminiscences
14. Why life speeds up as you get older
15. Forgetting
16. 'I saw my life flash before me'
17. From memory - Portrait with Still Life.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM]