128 Elizabeth Deligio
INTRODUCTION
Memory inhabits a central role in life. It is how we know whom we
are, where we have come from, and it influences where our lives might be
headed. Memory maps our world, identifying whom we may know (Ms.
Thompson is my neighbor), where we are (home not school), and what we
know and do not know (I play the piano but I do not know Spanish). It is
how we navigate our cultural world (wear black to a funeral) and place
ourselves in history (I was born after Word War II), and it informs identity
(my early memories of the farm made me a naturalist). It is a foundational
skill, and when it is disrupted, as may be observed with conditions like
Alzheimer’s disease, it is clear how damaging the absence of a functioning
memory can be.
The quotes at the beginning of the chapter reflect differing views of
what memory is and how it operates. Memory is a force drawing the world
together, and it is a hub in the mind for managing information.
Understanding memory as a force that links a plurality of elements to
ensure the knowability of the world is very different from understanding
memory as a function of the mind. Understanding memory, as a cognitive
function alone, stems in part from the medical model developed in the
nineteenth century. The medical model sought to prevent conditions of
mental illness from being understood through stigma-based narratives that
named mental illness as a social deviance rather than a health concern.
Advocates called for mental illness to be seen as a medical problem in
need of a medical solution, meaning it would be treated as a disease and
not a moral failing. This was an important transition at the time for
psychology. However, long term, the focus on illness in isolation
prevented psychologists from understanding, and responding to, a range of
factors that were impacting people with mental illness. This included
socio-political structures that provided varying assistance to people in
response to race, class, or gender identities, producing different outcomes
for people even when they had the same medical diagnosis (Nelson &
Prilleltensky, 2010).