ABSTRACT
It can seem that the only question about memory worth asking these days is how much you have in your computer. At least this makes the point that a computer without a memory is just a piece of junk. Russell Jacoby (1974) made the same point about people without a memory. Drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacoby argued that people who cannot remember their past are unable to think or act rationally in the present. Just as the accident victim with amnesia is totally disoriented, so too people without a memory are disoriented and unsure about what to do or where to go. As Harald Weinrich (2004: 136) notes, Freud’s point was that the capacity to think well, and so to live well, depends on us having a good memory.
