ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how inherited memory mechanisms are modified and individualised during development, and how our personal experiences are organised into predetermined categories of knowledge and behaviour (some conscious and some unconscious) to shape our everyday lives. These links enable individuals to fine-tune their need-satisfying activities in relation to the idiosyncrasies of the specific environment that they are born into. The survival value of such memory systems is obvious, for their content adapts the individual to the specific world that he or she inhabits. However, while the content of the memory systems is unique to each individual, memories are organised according to a regular, standard pattern. This ‘standard’ pattern of organisation of human memory, across a number of subsystems, will be the main theme of this chapter. We begin with an introductory tour of these subsystems, before moving on to some related topics of special interest to psychoanalysis.
