IDENTITY CRISIS
This one is long. Since no one is reading anyway…
The other day, Melody Gutierrez, a reporter for The LA Times, visited her original childhood home, a place in the middle of the Mojave Desert she had not seen in more than thirty years. It was, for her, an overwhelming emotional experience and one she discussed with a psychologist afterwards while doing research for a feature she wrote. He explained that attachments to childhood homes for those between the ages of five and twelve, especially, remained deep in their memories forever.
Research into how our memories work—research involving the mechanism of the hippocampus—has shown that memory is a function of spatial orientation among other sensory capacities. Sights, smells, and knowledge of where you are not only enhance but fix memories in your mind. Beyond that, during these particular childhood years, sense of place can, for many people, develop their personal sense of identity forever, a process that crosses over from the hippocampus to the hypothalamus.
For reasons too lengthy to discuss here—long enough already!—the central character in my books has a biography that shares many elements with my own. At one early point so many that I felt the need to write under a pseudonym. After alterations, I was able to write under my own name again, understanding that “he” and I did not share the same identity at all. Keep it simple.
Aspects of childhood and home are shared between this character and myself. His family is not mine. Most of their behaviors are not the behaviors of my family members (although some are; they are common behaviors). Places are at some points the same and sometimes similar. Timing is often not.
This was always the case.
Inherently—one might even have cause to say “instinctively”—no matter what else I happened to be doing to “confuse” identities at first, I was always splitting my native identity—the identity established as a child based upon my actual experiences of time and place—from the experiences I was creating for this character despite the overlapping of biographical detail I was choosing.
Other reasons, either conscious or not, may exist for these choices. I never hesitated to expose the nightmares of my childhood, as best I recall them (because I do not recall them all). Nor the pleasant moments. None of the twists, none of the breaks are left unrecorded, even if they were altered to fit a particular narrative. Many, naturally, are excised for their lack of entertainment value or usefulness. Some created out of whole cloth for the same purpose.
It is FICTION, people. And, at points, either comedy or pathos. All leading to a subjective purpose.
But…
Does it create an alternative memory? Can it? Some psychologists, lately, are of the opinion that it can, it does, and even that it should.
In this last book I am writing, this is precisely the concern the character is dealing with while attempting to solve the several “real world” problems at hand.
So… Just a thought.
The other day, Melody Gutierrez, a reporter for The LA Times, visited her original childhood home, a place in the middle of the Mojave Desert she had not seen in more than thirty years. It was, for her, an overwhelming emotional experience and one she discussed with a psychologist afterwards while doing research for a feature she wrote. He explained that attachments to childhood homes for those between the ages of five and twelve, especially, remained deep in their memories forever.
Research into how our memories work—research involving the mechanism of the hippocampus—has shown that memory is a function of spatial orientation among other sensory capacities. Sights, smells, and knowledge of where you are not only enhance but fix memories in your mind. Beyond that, during these particular childhood years, sense of place can, for many people, develop their personal sense of identity forever, a process that crosses over from the hippocampus to the hypothalamus.
For reasons too lengthy to discuss here—long enough already!—the central character in my books has a biography that shares many elements with my own. At one early point so many that I felt the need to write under a pseudonym. After alterations, I was able to write under my own name again, understanding that “he” and I did not share the same identity at all. Keep it simple.
Aspects of childhood and home are shared between this character and myself. His family is not mine. Most of their behaviors are not the behaviors of my family members (although some are; they are common behaviors). Places are at some points the same and sometimes similar. Timing is often not.
This was always the case.
Inherently—one might even have cause to say “instinctively”—no matter what else I happened to be doing to “confuse” identities at first, I was always splitting my native identity—the identity established as a child based upon my actual experiences of time and place—from the experiences I was creating for this character despite the overlapping of biographical detail I was choosing.
Other reasons, either conscious or not, may exist for these choices. I never hesitated to expose the nightmares of my childhood, as best I recall them (because I do not recall them all). Nor the pleasant moments. None of the twists, none of the breaks are left unrecorded, even if they were altered to fit a particular narrative. Many, naturally, are excised for their lack of entertainment value or usefulness. Some created out of whole cloth for the same purpose.
It is FICTION, people. And, at points, either comedy or pathos. All leading to a subjective purpose.
But…
Does it create an alternative memory? Can it? Some psychologists, lately, are of the opinion that it can, it does, and even that it should.
In this last book I am writing, this is precisely the concern the character is dealing with while attempting to solve the several “real world” problems at hand.
So… Just a thought.
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