Freddy Purcell covers this week’s colloquium on how personal loss shapes our memories and feeling of pastness.
This week we were joined by Dr Louise Richardson from the University of York, who has historically worked on the philosophy of perception but has more recently turned her attention to grief. This talk represented the beginning of a new project on grief, exploring its impact on memory.
There appears to be strong, if anecdotal, evidence of how losing someone you spent time reminiscing with has a negative effect on memories. In one example employed by Louise, comedian Jason Hazeley described how after the death of his sister, it felt as if “she took the memory of not one but two childhoods with her”. Here, and in other cases drawn from memoirs and surveys, Louise identified a common theme where losing someone close appears to make the past feel disconnected and lacking in detail. The thought is then that through loss, we not only lose a comforting and intimacy forming practice of reminiscing with another, but also that our memories appear to deteriorate in some way.
While Louise only drew on three different testimonies to motivate this investigation, I think those who had lost someone in the room related to a feeling of the past changing in some regard. A particularly enjoyable aspect of this talk was then that everyone wanted to contribute to subsequent discussion. I think engaging with important themes of life like this is therefore where philosophy is at its best.
Before heading into what might underpin loss’ negative impact on memory, Louise offered some conceptual clarity on the object of grief being discussed here. In her account, she suggests that people might grieve both the loss of the practice of reminiscing with another and a negative effect on memory. Other disciplines traditionally refer to this type of grief as secondary to the grief directly associated with the loss of a person. However, Louise pointed to Ratcliffe’s (2022) work on grief where he describes the object of loss as a network of possibilities that includes the projects you sought to complete with the person and the habits you developed with them over the years. Coming to terms with changes in memory is therefore just one aspect of loss that must be adjusted to in the grieving process. With this matter set aside, Louise then moved onto what creates this change in memory, discussing three different ideas.
One aspect Louise discussed that I have already mentioned is a feeling of losing a partner in the practice of reminiscence. Recalling good memories can often be pleasurable and develops intimacy as we remember times shared with a person or share an aspect of ourselves. It then seems natural that we would grieve not being able to do this with someone anymore. Louise affirmed this idea but felt that it didn’t capture all of grief’s impact since it seems like memory itself is affected.
One impact affecting memories themselves is a felt loss of certain facts and detail in memory, much as Jason Hazeley describes above. This idea connects to some theories of memory where it is suggested that in a group, all members tend to remember broad pieces of information, while individuals contribute the details. With the loss of someone, it therefore seems conceivable that important pieces of information that make the past feel livelier could disappear. However, Louise pointed to some psychological literature that suggests our ability to recall details accurately actually decreases in a group setting compared to when we recall as individuals. She therefore argued that while there may be a felt loss of detail in memory, this may not be true. To come to a more concrete idea of loss’ effect on memory, Louise therefore pushed onto her final and favourite point.
Drawing on Debus’ work on the epistemology of memory, Louise suggested that what separates an imagining from a memory is a feeling of pastness. To access this feeling of pastness, we must then be able (in theory if not actuality) to draw an autobiographical line between the time of the memory and the time of recollection in the present. This was all demonstrated with a fantastic, hand-drawn diagram. Losing a feeling of pastness might then explain why people grieving feel like their memories lack detail or feel more disconnected from them. This would interestingly suggest that some people are important for us to comprehend our endurance over time, underpinning our ability to draw a line between the past and present. Louise pointed out that this shows a cruel complication in the grieving process, in that we often try to remember the person we’ve lost to connect with them, but that their loss might limit our ability to do so.
With this conclusion, a great round of questions ensued. My main worry with this account was that it does not seem to give much attention to the interpersonal aspects of reminiscence and how individual relationships affect the process of grief. On Louise’s final point, it seems to me that an important part of separating memory from imagining is that they were experienced by other people (or could have been, or can be told to a person as something that really happened later), and don’t happen in the mind alone. If we lose someone we often reminisced with, then it seems plausible that their contribution to our intersubjective sense of reality and sense of self is also lost. In losing someone that we shared life and stories with, we also lose our ability to understand ourselves alongside them and through their reflections. I think this likely contributes to a feeling of disconnection from the past and shows the deep importance of reminiscing about our lives with another. I also believe the interpersonal loss of important relationships is likely to be important background to all three of the points that Louise raised.
Other questions appeared to be motivated by a similar feeling that variations in relationships could pose a worry to this account. For example, someone might be relieved to lose a person that reminds them of negative memories or a gaslighter that distorted their sense of truth. Of course, it is difficult to account for all variations in relationships and different ways that people grieve, likely putting such considerations out of reach for this project. However, I think that while Louise may have adjust her account, she identifies an underlying structure in how loss affects memory, so this could be utilised differently and interesting in cases where memories or the relationship with the lost person was negative.
While Louise’s title describes grief as its subject, you may have noticed that I often refer to loss’ effect on memory. This is because Nigel Pleasants made the excellent point that loss’ effect on memory would be a more appropriate subject as it appears its impact would endure after the emotional response of grief dissipates. Louise readily accepted this. Who says philosophers cannot make progress?
Overall, I really enjoyed this talk. Louise presented a heavy topic with warmth and humour that made it really engaging. It’s also always great to have everyone engaged in discussion for a good hour, and beyond into the pub. Thank you Louise for the talk!
Bibliography
Ratcliffe, M. (2022) Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience. Cambridge, MIT Press.