Memory and personal identity: implications to psychology

• Grant number: 11/19507-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Jonas Gonçalves Coelho
• Grantee: Celina Adreila da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências (FC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Our goal is to ponder about how memory is important to the constitution of the personal identity and some implications into Psychology, knowing that the theme, which is memory, is important to Psychology for, at least, two reasons. First, it remits to the nature and the object of Psychology, relating to some other knowledge areas, which have a very strong theme interface like Neuroscience, Social Science and Philosophy of Mind. Second, this relation can be considered a constitutive aspect, which is indispensable for comprehension of a standard human and also of yours pathologies, perspective of important approaching of Psychology, for example, Behaviorism, Psychoanalysis and the Social-historic Psychology. Some questions are lifted up during this research, like "What are we, fundamentally?", "Are we the same person during our lifetime?", "What does happen to the person, that he can be himself every day?". For understanding the action of memory inside the construction of personal's identity, we are going to analyze two collected works from a neuropsychologist A. R. Luria "O Homem com um mundo estilhaçado" and "A mente e a memória: um pequeno livro sobre uma vasta memória", where the author describes some important aspects of two patients lives, who have some deep memories alterations, one from deficit and another from hyper-memory. We will discuss, also, the existence and the action of fake memories, therefore, the "real" memories of existed facts, during the constitution of personal's identity. (AU)