Have you ever, in the heat of some deliriously happy moment, said to yourself, “I'll never forget this, never, never, NEVER”? Do you find that you can more clearly remember saying those words than the deliriously happy moment itself? Is it any wonder that most of us have wished, at one time or another, for a perfect “photographic memory”?

Actually, having a perfect memory is not the blessing that you might suppose. Consider Brad Williams and Jill Price, who both have extraordinary memories and have offered scientists the opportunity to study their abilities. When given any date going back for decades, they are able to say instantly what they were doing, what day of the week it was, and whether anything of great importance happened on that date. Mention November 7, 1991, to Williams, and he says (correctly), “Let's see; that would be around when [basketball star] Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. Yes, a Thursday. There was a big snowstorm here the week before.” Neither Williams nor Price can say where their accurate memories come from. Although Williams and his family regard his abilities as a source of amusement, Price describes her nonstop recollections as a mixed blessing (Parker, Cahill, & McGaugh, 2006). The phenomenon of constant, uncontrollable recall, she wrote, is “totally exhausting. Some have called it a gift, but I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!”

Memory refers to the capacity to retain and retrieve information, and also to the structures that account for this capacity. People like Brad Williams and Jill Price have extraordinary memory. Yet even average human beings are capable of astonishing feats of memory. Most of us can easily remember the tune of our national anthem, how to use an ATM, the most embarrassing experience we ever had, and hundreds of thousands of other bits of information. Memory confers competence; without it, we would be as helpless as newborns, unable to carry out even the most trivial of our daily tasks. Memory also gives us our sense of who we are, for if we are not the sum of our recollections, then who are we? Our very identity depends on our memories, which is why we feel so threatened when others challenge them. Individuals and cultures alike rely on a remembered history for a sense of coherence and meaning. Memory gives us our past and guides our future. In this chapter, we examine the many fascinating aspects of memory, as well as the importance of forgetting. But first, to learn more about Jill Price’s extraordinary memory skills, watch the video The Woman Who Cannot Forget.