WHY WE FORGET.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4668, 29 February 1924, Page 4

WHY WE FORGET.

(By a Physician in the Overseas Daily Mail). According, to the statistics of the Proper Office we are yearly becoming more and more forgetful. It is computed that in London alone the yearly value of. lost articles about £10(1,000, so that if we take the whole country the loss must be very considerable indeed. In face of this pecuniary loss, and the many other inconveniences lapse of memory entails, it would, at first sight, seem that forgetting is a particulaily useless mental process. Careful investigation shows that not only is forgetting pratcically as common as remembering, bui that it is also a normal and very useful function. Until quite recently forgetting was looked upon as a passive process due to lack of interest on our part. According to this view we largely forget those things which are uninteresting or unimportant. We are now coming to realise that forgetting is an active process or protective mechanism by which we aie unwittingly protected from painful and uncomfortable influences.

It works spontaneously, and totally without our conscious knowledge. If we try to forget something unpleasant we only succeed in fixing it more firiniy in our memory.

Tlie question, “Why do we forget ?” is perhaps best answered by considering what wc forget. Systematic analysis shows that things forgotten, although they may be valuable, are always associated in our unconscious minds with some painful or unpleasant memory. The unpleasant associations may bo only indirectly connected with the thing-itsqlf, as when we leave some article of value behind us in the train owing to a conscious, or even unconscious, objection to carrying paper parcels. Unfortunately, the protective mechanism of forgetting works for the comfort and pleasure of the present, taking no account of ultimate consequences. Hence, although it protects us for the time being, it may in the long run cause trouble and inconvenience, or maybe pecuniary loss. But although forgetting leads to the loss of our property, at times it undoubt; edly shields us from many painful memories and makes life more endurable. We never forget the loss of a dear relative or friend, but we do forget a thousand and one incidents that occurred at the same time, which, if remembered, would unremittingly insist upon our grief.