Painful memories

Abstract

One of the defining features of episodic memory is autonoesis, a sense of being present in the experience. Some memory theorists have argued that autonoesis is an instance of the general phenomenon of “mineness” of experience annexed to mnemonic content. In support of this view and to help understand the nature of “mineness” they discuss the neuropsychological case of R.B. whose “impairment selectively targeted autonoesis while leaving stored content unscathed.” I offer a different account of R.B.‘s deficit to Stanley Klein and Jordi Fernandez. I suggest that R.B. has a form of depersonalization for memory experience. I support this idea via a discussion of neural correlates of depersonalization disorders, including pain asymbolia (developing a suggestion of Colin Klein) and their role as part of a system that supports so called Mental Time Travel. I argue that this approach has several advantages to the purely phenomenological/conceptual one suggested by Stanley Klein in his discussion of R.B.