The Ethics of Memory

A reflection from practice

Since the early 1980s, I have worked with cases involving sexual abuse of children and violence in close relationships. Again and again, I have found myself sitting with people who try to remember.

Not just what happened —
but how it felt,
and what it has done to their lives.

In every case, memory has mattered.

In therapy, something decisive often happens when a person begins to remember — and to find words for what has been carried in silence. I have returned to this many times: What is memory, really? And why does it matter so deeply that we remember?

At times, the question becomes uncomfortable:

Would it not be easier to forget?
To leave painful memories behind and move on?

But experience tells me something else.

We do not remember only to know.

We remember in order to become.

Memory, truth — and uncertainty

We often think of memory as a kind of knowledge. Something that gives us access to the past — and therefore to truth.

But memory is not stable.

I have seen how several people can live through the same event — and remember it very differently. In a courtroom, we ask people to tell the truth. Yet what they can offer is always their memory of the truth.

And sometimes, even careful systems of judgment fail.

This is where the question begins to deepen:

If memory is uncertain,
what does it mean to use it well?

Memory as something we do

Gradually, I have come to think of memory not only as something we have, but as something we do.

We work with memory.
We return to it.
We shape it.

In this sense, memory is a form of action.

And because it is something we do, it can also be done badly.

We can avoid it.
Distort it.
Repeat it in ways that keep us trapped.

Ethical questions arise exactly here — in the space between using and misusing memory.

This is not a new idea. Already in Plato’s Sophist, memory is described as a form of imitation (mimētikē technē). Some forms of imitation bring us closer to truth, others pull us away from it. And much later, Friedrich Nietzsche would argue that we often misuse our historical consciousness — even to the point where it becomes something like an illness (Nietzsche, 1873/1981).

I recognize something of this in practice.

When memory becomes work

In therapy, memory is rarely a simple act of recalling.

It is work.

Sigmund Freud described this in a way that still resonates deeply. In Remembering, Repetition and Working Through, he observed how patients often do not remember directly. Instead, they repeat.

The past returns — not as a clear story,
but as patterns, reactions, symptoms.

And this repetition can block memory.

What is needed is patience. A slow process of working through — what Freud called Erinnerungsarbeit (memory work) (Freud, 1962).

I have seen how true this is.

Memory cannot be forced.
It has to be lived through — again, but differently.

In Mourning and Melancholia, Freud also shows how memory is tied to loss. To remember is often to mourn. And here, Paul Ricoeur offers a powerful insight: memory itself can be understood as a form of mourning (Ricoeur, 1999).

We remember because something mattered.
And because something was lost.

When memory shifts: on false memories

In my work, I have sometimes encountered something that at first feels unsettling:

A memory that does not quite hold.

Not because the person is lying —
but because the memory itself seems to have moved.

Over time, details change.
Events are rearranged.
Sometimes, something deeply painful disappears —
and something else takes its place.

We often call this false memory. But that term can easily mislead us if we hear it as accusation. In many cases, it is not about deception. It is about protection.

Memory is not a recording device. It is shaped by emotion, by fear, by meaning. When an experience becomes overwhelming — especially when it threatens one’s sense of safety, or even life itself — the mind does not simply store it as it is. It works on it.

Fragments may be pushed away.
Other elements may be strengthened.
Connections may be altered.

In this sense, a “false” memory may emerge not as a failure, but as an attempt at survival.

I have seen individuals carry memories that seem to protect them from something even more painful — something that may be too difficult to face directly. The mind does not always say: this is what happened. Sometimes it says: this is what I can bear.

This places us in an ethically complex space.

The question is not only whether a memory is true,
but also what it does for the person who carries it.

Sometimes, moving too quickly toward correcting a memory can break something fragile. At other times, the work is to slowly approach what has been avoided.

Research within cognitive psychology also reminds us how reconstructive memory is — how easily it can be reshaped by suggestion, context, and emotional need (Loftus, 2005).

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that memory is not simply true or false.

It is alive.

Memory and identity

At a deeper level, memory is closely tied to who we are.

Ricoeur suggests that the real question is not “What am I?” but “Who am I?” (Ricoeur, 1992).

Yet we often try to answer the who with a list of whats.

And something essential is lost.

Identity is not fixed. It moves. It changes.

Ricoeur describes this as the tension between sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse) (Ricoeur, 1984–1987).

This is where memory becomes vulnerable.

Closing reflection

In my work, I have seen how memory can wound —
but also how it can heal.

Not by returning us to the past as it was,
but by helping us live with it in a different way.

Perhaps this is where an ethics of memory begins:

Not in perfect truth.
Not in complete understanding.

But in the ongoing work of remembering —
honestly, carefully, and with responsibility
for both past and future.

References

Arendt, H. (1992). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Freud, S. (1962). On metapsychology: The theory of psychoanalysis. Penguin.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. Harper & Row. (Original work published 1926)
Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366.
Nietzsche, F. (1981). Untimely meditations. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1873)
Plato. (1997). Complete works. Hackett.
Ricoeur, P. (1984–1987). Time and narrative (Vol. 1–3). University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as another. University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1999). Memory and forgetting. In R. Kearney & M. Dooley (Eds.), Questioning ethics. Routledge