Read Online The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self by Anil Ananthaswamy - Free Book Online
Authors: Anil Ananthaswamy
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out of school three times for smoking cigarettes. The school counselor suggested he join the Air Force, and Allan did. He was sent to a base near Munich, Germany, where he learned to be an airplane mechanic. He came back to San Francisco at the age of twenty-two and began working for United Airlines and attending community college. He wanted to become a radio broadcaster, but one of his teachers said he didn’t have the voice to become a broadcaster, and encouraged him to take classes in philosophy. The advice turned out well—Allan loved philosophy, soon began teaching philosophy, and became a beloved teacher.
When I talked with Allan, he did not quite get the details or the sequence right (I could tell because Michaele had already filled me in).
For instance, when talking about the teacher who suggested he study philosophy, Allan said, “He was the one who said, ‘Since you got kicked out . . . cigarettes, why don’t you go join the Air Force.’” Actually, by the time he’d met the teacher, Allan had already been in theAir Force, and the teacher had suggested that he take up philosophy classes.
If Michaele hadn’t previously told me about Allan’s past, I’d not have been able to temporally order his recollections. Toward the end of our meeting that day, Michaele left Allan and me alone to talk some more. I asked him again about his life. Here’s a fragment of the conversation verbatim, when he talked of the Air Force again, after already having mentioned it a few times.
“We joined the Air Force here, and we continued to make up situations . . . you do. Everybody wanted to be an airplane flight, but then somebody said no, you have to have algebra. Some people said I don’t have algebra. That’s what I said. OK, we’ll do something else. We got on the train in San Francisco, we went over up to Boston, got on a boat, a boat which is not much bigger than this room, and it was about twelve to fifteen people, and one of the finest things of all is that . . . many of those people . . . fallen sick. I’m one of the ones that didn’t. We had to go out and puke. I had a picture of that once, yeah.
“Then we got off the train. About two and a half days to get to Munich. Munich is the center of Germany, that’s where the place was. Making . . . Americans and Germans were together. We were there for . . . OK . . . two years . . . then we came back. I went to work for United Airlines, for years. Then everybody said, ‘Why don’t you go to college, because you are always reading books?’ Which were detective books.”
One vivid incident Allan mentioned several times during our conversation was the sight of farmers waving at the soldiers as their train sped through their fields. Allan would have been all of eighteen when he saw those farmers framed in the train window. But he couldn’t correctly recollect whether he saw these farmers in Texas or inGermany. While Alzheimer’s disease hadn’t yet destroyed Allan’s most vivid memories, it had scrambled his narrative.
In his office in London, Robin Morris pointed out two key changes that are happening in patients with Alzheimer’s. One, as we saw earlier, is that they are not able to acquire new knowledge about themselves, and so are unable to update their narrative self. The other is that there are probably brain structures responsible for supporting our self that are under attack by Alzheimer’s, and so the person is falling back on the most resilient parts of his or her narrative. These resilient notions of oneself form during late adolescence and early adulthood—much like the version of himself that Allan was recalling during his rambling recollections.
Even healthy people, when they are asked to recall life events, will remember more events from when they were between the ages of ten and thirty, compared with their recall of events from before and after this time. Psychologists have a name for this: thereminiscence
When I talked with Allan, he did not quite get the details or the sequence right (I could tell because Michaele had already filled me in).
For instance, when talking about the teacher who suggested he study philosophy, Allan said, “He was the one who said, ‘Since you got kicked out . . . cigarettes, why don’t you go join the Air Force.’” Actually, by the time he’d met the teacher, Allan had already been in theAir Force, and the teacher had suggested that he take up philosophy classes.
If Michaele hadn’t previously told me about Allan’s past, I’d not have been able to temporally order his recollections. Toward the end of our meeting that day, Michaele left Allan and me alone to talk some more. I asked him again about his life. Here’s a fragment of the conversation verbatim, when he talked of the Air Force again, after already having mentioned it a few times.
“We joined the Air Force here, and we continued to make up situations . . . you do. Everybody wanted to be an airplane flight, but then somebody said no, you have to have algebra. Some people said I don’t have algebra. That’s what I said. OK, we’ll do something else. We got on the train in San Francisco, we went over up to Boston, got on a boat, a boat which is not much bigger than this room, and it was about twelve to fifteen people, and one of the finest things of all is that . . . many of those people . . . fallen sick. I’m one of the ones that didn’t. We had to go out and puke. I had a picture of that once, yeah.
“Then we got off the train. About two and a half days to get to Munich. Munich is the center of Germany, that’s where the place was. Making . . . Americans and Germans were together. We were there for . . . OK . . . two years . . . then we came back. I went to work for United Airlines, for years. Then everybody said, ‘Why don’t you go to college, because you are always reading books?’ Which were detective books.”
One vivid incident Allan mentioned several times during our conversation was the sight of farmers waving at the soldiers as their train sped through their fields. Allan would have been all of eighteen when he saw those farmers framed in the train window. But he couldn’t correctly recollect whether he saw these farmers in Texas or inGermany. While Alzheimer’s disease hadn’t yet destroyed Allan’s most vivid memories, it had scrambled his narrative.
In his office in London, Robin Morris pointed out two key changes that are happening in patients with Alzheimer’s. One, as we saw earlier, is that they are not able to acquire new knowledge about themselves, and so are unable to update their narrative self. The other is that there are probably brain structures responsible for supporting our self that are under attack by Alzheimer’s, and so the person is falling back on the most resilient parts of his or her narrative. These resilient notions of oneself form during late adolescence and early adulthood—much like the version of himself that Allan was recalling during his rambling recollections.
Even healthy people, when they are asked to recall life events, will remember more events from when they were between the ages of ten and thirty, compared with their recall of events from before and after this time. Psychologists have a name for this: thereminiscence
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