Another visit to the remainder shelf at Bourne Hall Library resulted in another two books. What with one thing and another, the stock of books is climbing again, despite continuing, but clearly desultory, action to keep it down.
One of them was an easy and interesting read called 'The Woman Who Can't Forget', a memoir by Jill Price from Simon & Schuster. I had never heard of it before so I don't know how it came to Surrey Libraries - although Bourne Hall Remainders do have a particularly strong line in this sort of psychiatric social worker/shrinky sort of stuff. Maybe someone in the area is requesting the stuff, maybe a chuck out from the asylums of the Epsom Cluster spending more time with his or her family.
A lady with an unusual complaint, a complaint which on the one hand might be thought to be a gift, on the other as a disability. The gift being that she remembers pretty much everything that has happened to her. Certainly after the age of ten or so, and much stronger than usual prior to that. If you give her a date, she can say what day of the week that was and what happened. If you give her what happened, she can say the date, including the day of the week. Memories are popping into her mind, complete with the original emotions and smells, all the time, triggered by all sorts of chance events - or smells. Memories of, for example, childish rage at some childish check, stuff which is quite scary to experience as an adult and which most of us have forgotten.
The complaint was sufficiently unusual to be given the name hyperthymestic syndrome. Oddly, having an exceptional memory in this way does not mean that one is necessarily any good at the sort of memory needed to pass examinations at school or college. And in the case of this lady at least, a disability rather than a gift in the sense that there was plenty of difficulty & trouble in the first 40 years or so of her life.
Prompted to turn up my copy of 'Memory' by Mary Warnock from back in 1987, a book which is not into shrinkery or neurons at all, Warnock being of a more philosophical bent. More in the Mary Beard mould. I shall take a peek to see what it can still tell me after my recent diet of said shrinkery and neurons.
PS: and from the remainder shelf of Epsom Library, I have a memoir of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by his niece (the gent. one of whose pictures I admired on 9th January). I was reminded that he was into chloral and his wife was into laudanum - prompting the niece to talk of grandmotherly legislation to prevent people from indulging in such convenient palliatives. So maybe in 1949 - when this book was published - one talked of the grandmother state, a locution which has since morphed into the nanny state. Yet another topic for my MPhil in semiotics?
Learned today about another strange brain, this one belonging to a blind girl from South Korea who is about five years old. When about three, she quite suddenly learned to play the piano and can now replay music she hears just once. Appears to spend her time appearing in shows - not exactly freak shows - and hopes to become a great pianist. Full support from her adoptive parents. Which all goes to show that a collection of a hundred billion neurons can clearly throw the odd turn from time to time.
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