Vital memory and affect : living with a difficult past

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Vital memory and affect : living with a difficult past

Steven D. Brown and Paula Reavey

Routledge, 2015

  • : pbk

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [226]-237) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Vital Memory and Affect takes as its subject the autobiographical memories of 'vulnerable' groups, including survivors of child sexual abuse, adopted children and their families, forensic mental health service users, and elderly persons in care home settings. In particular the focus is on a particular class of memory within this group: recollected episodes that are difficult and painful, sometimes contested, but always with enormous significance for a current and past sense of self. These 'vital memories', integral and irreversible, can come to appear as a defining feature of a person's life. In Vital Memory and Affect, authors Steve Brown and Paula Reavey explore the highly productive way in which individuals make sense of a difficult past, situated as they are within a highly specific cultural and social landscape. Via an exploration of their vital memories, the book combines insights from social and cognitive psychology to open up the possibility of a new approach to memory, one that pays full attention to the contextual conditions of all acts of remembering. This path-breaking study brings together a unique set of empirical material and maps out an agenda for research into memory and affect that will be important reading for students and scholars of social psychology, memory studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and other related fields.

Table of Contents

1. Preface 2. The seven virtues of vital memory 3. The expanded view of memory 4. Memory and life space: affect, forgetting and ethics 5. Feeling an ambivalent past: Survivors of child sexual abuse 6. Managing the memories of others: Adoptive parents and their children 7. Remembering with, through and for others: Surviving the 2005 London Bombings 8. Forgetting who you were: The forensic psychiatric unit 9. Recollection in later life: The reminiscence museum 10. Ordinary people living with a difficult past

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Details

  • NCID
    BB23196081
  • ISBN
    • 9780415684019
  • LCCN
    2014049466
  • Country Code
    uk
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    London
  • Pages/Volumes
    xiv, 244 p
  • Size
    24 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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