On human memory and trauma, with Dr. Keith Witt

Human beings are memory machines, for better or for worse. There is an autobiographical narrative that is alive inside all of us, and just as individual memories seem to create me, memories in the morphogenetic field create the collective culture of my family, my society. Most people are familiar with the effects that major trauma like car accidents, sexual abuse and so on, can have on a person. But our sense of self is also formed by the “little 't' traumas”, the small humiliations.