The confabulation of self

Joanna J. Bryson

pp. 334-337

in: Sebastian Groes (ed), Memory in the twenty-first century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Confabulation is a technical term for a process typically ascribed to patients who have problems with their memory or their self awareness. We ask a patient why they have done something, and they tell us a narrative that sounds like a memory, but that we know to be false. So we say that the patient has confabulated. Their unconscious (but still diseased) mind has drawn together disparate stories in a desperate attempt to make their recent actions—and lives—make sense.