Total Recall, Welcome Oblivion Alison Abbott Enjoys a Collection of Essays on Memory and Forgetting

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relations between the United States and Britain after the American War of Independ- ence (1775–83). As US artists and naturalists such as Alexander Wilson, William Bartram and John James Audubon became popular, the British pioneer — whose pre-Linnean classifications were by then outmoded — was largely forgotten. There were so few copies of Catesby’s volumes in existence by the mid- nineteenth century that his work was rarely seen, further contributing to his obscurity.

The Curious Mister Catesby will stand for TRUST COMMEMORATIVE BACON/CATESBY SYLVIA many years as the best critical analysis of his work, and of the groundbreaking natural science that his curiosity inspired. ■

Linda Lear is a historian of the American environment, an authority on Rachel Carson and author of Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius. Catesby’s rendition of Eretmochelys imbricata, the hawksbill sea turtle. e-mail: [email protected]

NEUROSCIENCE Total recall, welcome oblivion Alison Abbott enjoys a collection of essays on memory and forgetting.

istorian of psychology Douwe were adopted in the another experiment. When Penfield stimu- Draaisma knows well how to weave 1990s by an unlikely lated the temporal lobe, his patients reported science, history and literature into alliance of lawyers and flashes of dream-like sensations such as the Hirresistible tales. Forgetting, his latest collec- some feminists, who sound of a carnival; he interpreted these as tion of essays around the theme of memory, is argued that repressed memory traces. He thought that nothing was — like his successful Nostalgia Factory (Yale memories of childhood truly forgotten, and that buried memories University Press, 2013) — hard to put down. abuse could be recov- could be reactivated. This concept of total His vivid tour through the history of mem- ered with techniques recall resonated for a long time in the public ory-repression theories brings home how such as hypnosis, and imagination. Recent interpretations of his dangerous and wrong, yet persistent, were the Forgetting: used as evidence in work, however, debunk the idea that he had ideas of Sigmund Freud and his intellectual Myths, Perils and court. Many judges picked up true memory traces. Fewer than heirs. Freud thought that traumatic memories Compensations went along with it; the 10% of people experienced any sensation dur- and shameful thoughts could be driven from DOUWE DRAAISMA, rush of claims cast a ing temporal-lobe stimulation, and of those the consciousness, but not forgotten. They TRANSLATED BY LIZ shadow over genuine that did, the actual words recorded in their WATERS would simmer in the unconscious, influenc- Yale Univ. Press: 2015. cases of abuse, Draa- notes rarely corresponded to things that could ing behaviour. He maintained that forcing isma points out. We be real memories. As Draaisma drolly notes, them out with psychoanalysis, and confront- now know from studies of post-traumatic Penfield’s patients reported nothing worthy of ing patients with them, would be curative. stress disorder that traumatic memories are repression anyway. Only “snippets of respect- Draaisma relates the case of an 18-year-old impossible to repress. They flood into the able but humdrum lives … no incestuous whom Freud dubbed Dora, diagnosed in 1900 conscious mind in horrifying flashbacks. desires, no masturbation fantasies”. with ‘hysteria’. Dora’s family refused to believe Still, as Draaisma shows, theories of mem- In another essay, the patient H. M. (Henry that the husband of her father’s mistress had ory repression remain stubbornly attractive. Molaison), who was unable to lay down made sexual advances to her. Among other We learn that revered Canadian neurosurgeon fresh memories after experimental epilepsy absurdities, Freud told Dora that her nervous Wilder Penfield contributed to their longev- surgery, gets a new biography revealing the cough reflected her repressed desire to fellate ity. During surgery for epilepsy, he electrically misdemeanours of his surgeon. Elsewhere, the man. Dora broke off the therapy, which stimulated points on the surface of conscious Draaisma muses on aides-memoires such as Freud saw as proof of his theory. He thought patients’ brains, and asked the patients what photographs, and techniques for forgetting. that patients will naturally resist reawakening they felt. He was one of the first to map the However, one or two essays show the strains painful thoughts. functions of the sensory and motor cortices. of stretching the formula of memory-related What Dora did not NATURE.COM His cartoon of a homunculus with body parts essays to the margin of the theme, where the buy, plenty of others For more on science in proportion to the brain space dedicated to impact is less important or interesting. ■ did. Psychoanalysis in culture, see: them — big lips, for example, and huge hands boomed, becoming nature.com/ on spindly arms — is a neuroscience icon. Alison Abbott is Nature’s senior European lucrative. Its principles booksandarts More controversial was his reading of correspondent.