The process of remembering: recovery and discovery.

Abstract

Experiences of gradually recovering lost memories may shed some light on the cognitive mechanism underlying remembering. We (1) easily remember the external frame (the context) of the lost memory; (2) experience the emergence of its internal frame (category or genre); (3) recall its configuration, its rhythmic skeleton or its dynamic structure; (4) and even sketch it by a gesture; (5) recall our evaluation of the person or our impression of the event we cannot remember; (6) find the central object may emerge in a disguised (symbolic) form; (7) find the abortive first attempt to reconstruct the lost memory may contain an unconscious interpretation of the hidden event or the forgotten dream. Gradual remembering follows on the whole the path of verbal evolution. Trying to recapture lost memories we are compelled to make use of preverbal forms of mental elaboration and expression (visual thinking, gesture language, symbols). At the same time, recovery of lost memories has much in common with the procedure of scientific discovery. Discovery could be considered as a paradoxical form of remembering: recovering the unknown. Scientific metaphors uncover ('remember') preconscious and unconscious knowledge. In his studies on Farkas Bólyai, Imre Hermann made an attempt to interpret scientific theories much in the same way that Freud, Jones, Rank, Reik, Hanns Sachs, Róheim analysed myths, rituals, literary and artistic works. He traces back some essential features of Bólyai's discovery to repressed early memories and fantasies of the great mathematician.