The Woman Who Can't Forget
The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Jill Price has the first diagnosed case of a memory condition called "hyperthymestic syndrome" -- the continuous, automatic, autobiographical recall of every day of her life since she was fourteen. Give her any date from that year on, and she can almost instantly tell you what day of the week it was, what she did on that day, and any major world event or cultural happening that took place, as long as she heard about it that day. Her memories are like scenes from home movies, constantly playing in her head, backward and forward, through the years; not only does she make no effort to call her memories to mind, she cannot stop them.
The Woman Who Can't Forget is the beautifully written and moving story of Jill's quest to come to terms with her extraordinary memory, living with a condition that no one understood, including her, until the scientific team who studied her finally charted the extraordinary terrain of her abilities. Her fascinating journey speaks volumes about the delicate dance of remembering and forgetting in all of our lives and the many mysteries about how our memories shape us.
As we learn of Jill's struggles first to realize how unusual her memory is and then to contend, as she grows up, with the unique challenges of not being able to forget -- remembering both the good times and the bad, the joyous and the devastating, in such vivid and insistent detail -- the way her memory works is contrasted to a wealth of discoveries about the workings of normal human memory and normal human forgetting. Intriguing light is shed on the vital role of what's called "motivated forgetting"; as well as theories about childhood amnesia, the loss of memory for the first two to three years of our lives; the emotional content of memories; and the way in which autobiographical memories are normally crafted into an ever-evolving and empowering life story.
Would we want to remember so much more of our lives if we could? Which memories do our minds privilege over others? Do we truly relive the times we remember most vividly, feeling the emotions that coursed through us then? Why do we forget so much, and in what ways do the workings of memory tailor the reality of what's actually happened to us in our lives?
In The Woman Who Can't Forget, Jill Price welcomes us into her remarkable life and takes us on a mind-opening voyage into what life would be like if we didn't forget -- a voyage after which no reader will think of the magical role of memory in our lives in the same way again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jill Price outs herself as the scientific phenomena known as "AJ."The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science A MemoirJill Price with Bart Davis. Free Press, (256p) Price has been known to scientists only as "AJ," a woman with a memory so unprecedented they had to coin a term for it: "hyperthymestic syndrome."With this book, she is coming out publicly for the first time to discuss her condition. Not only is Price powerless to stop remembering, but each memory brings with it an emotion "every bit as potent as it was the first day I had it." That means constantly reliving not just the good times hanging out at the Ed Sullivan Show with her father, a William Morris agent, or having her cheeks pinched by Milton Berle but the painful times as well. Tormented by her total recall, at age 34 Price contacted memory expert James McGaugh and finally began the process of controlling her memory. Not all the details of Price's life are so compelling, but her insights into the nature of memory, forgetting and the formation of our sense of self will resonate with a wide audience. Appearances on 20/20 May 9 and Good Morning America May 12.