First memory

Right so firstly we have to remove linguistic memories from what would have been remembered at the time, or at least those we wouldn’t have known then. My memory is visual and conceptual, so I assume visual memories are superseded ~ because we cant possibly remember all the visuals we see over time, hence this may be one of the reasons why we loose so much from our early lives?

I expect concepts gain depth [and the relationships of them to other memories may change] and take on linguistic form in due course too.

Yeah I think it is an iterative process over time. Why exactly I would remember that I am not sure, but I do remember being in some distress at the time, I was upset, and a vague memory of bathing is involved in that I think. As you say the emotional context may of made me re-remember it and add language to the images over time, culminating in my mother explaining what was happening and where and the age therefore.

I’ll never forgive my mother for making me have baths. :wink: :slight_smile:

Haha yea I always hated baths too. Come to think of it I remember being distressed at not being able to communicate, even though I could understand what she was saying. So yes, distress reinforces memory, though its strange that many potential other possibly stronger memories have been overwritten. I guess it’s a case of where there’s a gap in synapses or base [long term] memories, then the odd memory remains.

Anyone wonder what happened to the OP?

I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember I was in a crib in my room at night. I recall nothing but the fact of me looking at what I saw as three figures. I say “figures” because they felt alive, but as far as what “they” looked like I can’t recall. The whole thing might have been a hallucination; I don’t know. It’s all very vague.

I spent most of my really early years with fevers. I recall my first day in kindergarten because all the other kids were allowed to go play on slides and swings and such, I had never seen such things before. I was never allowed out except to go to a Doctors office. I presume illness causes my memories to be only after 5 years old and then fairly sporadic until about 8 years old.

Nope. OPs who needs 'em. :stuck_out_tongue:

One of the significant factors in causing the first memory to be the “first” that a person can recall is the emotional gestalt engrams set at the time which tend to overshadow prior less significant memories.

In my case, I have trouble remembering anything before this image of a stream of pee shooting up into the air and then something being thrown over me. In the sudden darkness I could first hear a rather disapproving voice quickly followed by a more, “it’s okay” type of voice.

I am sure that I remember the event so well and not much before it due to the later embarrassment and seriously long bouts of concentrated flirting I had to do afterward before I was ever invited to another sorority kegger. But I made up for it in the long run. :mrgreen:

lol, I think. What are you talking about?

Every parent knows, when changing a baby boy’s diaper, his little penis, on suddenly being taken out of the warm, moist environment of his diaper, will become erect and pee. The adult’s choice is to either let him pee openly or waste a diaper taking up the flow by whapping a clean diaper over it. (Take your choice–the penis or the pee.) Let the little guy pee, clean him, and provide him with a clean diaper.

After all, he has no more control over his penis as an infant that he has as an adult. :smiley:

:-$ :wink:

Pain is my first memory. I can’t have been more than two years old, and my mom had taken me to a friend’s house to visit. I remember walking slowly and carefully up the steps behind my mom, and then reaching for the screen door that she was holding open. It was one of those old-fashioned metal screen doors that more SNAP!!! shut than swing, and for whatever reason, my mom let go of it just as my little fingers reached for it, and the door snapped close on my hand. I remember a piercing scream, but I don’t remember screaming, and then my mom had whisked me up and run with me to the kitchen where she proceeded to run my bruised fingers under cold water while I tried to pull my hand away because the combination of temperature and water pressure on my freshly battered hand was excruciating.

Hence men have been known to get hard before and after they are hung, and stiffies when bored. Apparently the muscles that maintain a soft penis are in use and they relax naturally when we die or take our eye off the balls. It’s AKA Angel lust. :laughing:

The most annoying hard on is the full bladder hard on, having an erection makes it very difficult to pee, and hence relive the pressure from your bladder on your prostate that’s supposedly the cause of it.

My dog get’s an erection when he’s excited by anything, (there’s never any sexual context). I envy him as he always looks kinda proud, where as if I got a stiffy in public I would be rather shy about it. Dogs: natures shameless animals. :slight_smile:

My first memory was of me being hit in the back of the head by a rock thrown by one of my friends. I remember facing the grassy circle that the semicircle of mobile homes when it happened, and I turned around and ran back crying across the gravel drive that divided the homes from the grass to where my parents were inside one of the homes. I remember the wooden steps that lead up to the door and that my parents were with the parents of my friend. I even remember who they were, both the friend and his parents. I was around 2 years old when this happened.

In 1947 I was 5. Mom was ironing clothes while listening to radio “soaps”. I was playing battle with my toy soldiers on the floor. The distinct odor of heated starch and “A certain slant of Light” (see Emily Dickenson’s poem about this.) gave me a feeling of being unreal. That was the beginning of my sense of being different from most other people.
When he was five or six, my son claimed to remember that he existed before he was born. Years later I considered what fetal memory might include and what aspects of religion and psychology could come from that source.

I love this. I seem stuck in a similar area. The other night I teetered on the threshold of dream and consciousness and the bizarre memories I experienced were not from my own life, but they contained immense contextual depth of something I had no previous conscious knowledge of. Things like these keep me up at night sometimes. I find it fascinating your son remembered that he existed before he was born. What did he mean by that?

Welcome to ILP! Read Wordsworth’s “Ode On Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood”. I think that poem explains the feeling my son and many others have. My own experience was more about an early recognition of difference. Your experience of hovering between being awake and dreaming is interesting. In my dreams i meet, and am familiar with, persons and places I never knew when awake. These are places in the human mind left mostly unexplored.

My husband constantly talked to my stomach as did I from the time we found out that I was pregnant til birth, my husband did it ,even while I was asleep. The boy knew his Dad and I. when he was put into our arms he stopped crying

Thanks, Lady K., and good to see you if only in type script. I’ve been trying for some time to explore memory of being a fetus. Not much about it in the net. Yet, the idea does explain Eden, Gaia, the Golden Age, Heaven, etc. as innocence prior to experience (Blake). I think that if Freud were alive now, he’d probably make much more of womb security than he did back when. First memory for anyone is probably floating in a bubble of warmth, being given nutrients without exertion or toil and existing in an intimacy we spend our lives attempting to restore.

HI my friend! it is always good to read you. I would think that being carried around in a liquid for 9 months the sounds the fetus hears would create some memories. Contact and connection, My mother ate PBJs all through her pregnancy with me, I know I love that particular simple sandwich as a favorite food. Sound though i think would affect a fetus more than anything. as I said the boy knew us both but no other person, he cried in the arms of even family. His Dad’s heartbeat as my husband cuddled with me could have become familiar , the sound of the voice, Creating memories of sorts, its the imaging that is interesting . what images could be formed?

We’re getting into ontological memory here. Although such an idea has many opponents, it has few who have not experienced it. A warm bath in a tub full of water can put one in a state of “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” Perhaps we should consider the womb experience a precusory memory, a recollection of experiences that occur before some mind can call it a memory. I believe you about your son’s preference and where it came from. Imaging may exist as touch and sound vibrations in a fetus as you express well here.