ABSTRACT
Children are perfectly capable of creating mental images based on their parents' stories, and then believing that these images constitute their own memories - a version of 'false memory syndrome'. Typically, the earliest memories to survive are of places, incidents without context or simply feelings - perhaps associated with a place, an object or a person. Our early memories may well have begun as 'stories in the first person' (seen through our eyes) but our brains later shifted them into the 'third person' - as our ability to imagine ourselves 'from the outside' developed. However, in order to survive, a baby must bond with an attachment figure (usually its mother), and this mammalian arrangement ensures that the 'limbic brain' is also involved from the very beginning of our lives. That means that, alongside rage, fear and 'seeking', an infant soon begins to develop the feelings we regard as more distinctively 'human'.
