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False memoriews

I had a recent brush with this phenomenon.

I went to a Mets game in 1991 with about 7 of my friends and my cousin - who died in a car crash in 2002. About 4 months ago, one of my friends, who now lives in California scanned a bunch of pictures he took that day and e-mailed them to me. There was not one picture of my cousin. I called my friend and he told me my cousin (who he knew in passing) was never there. And yet I distinctly remember busting my cousins balls because he brought his baseball glove to the game (he was in his late 20's at the time) and joking about eating ice cream with him despite the fact it was night game and on the cool side temperature wise.

Somewhere along the way over the past 22 years I convinced myself my cousin was at that game - it was a jarring experience when I found out he wasn't.
 
babe said:
my idea of "false memories" is a movie called The Way We Were.

I see "false memories" in my daily life, and when I hear about what my ex-wife said to my sister five years ago. . . .

I might even try to argue that the term is an oxymoron, especially when it involves money, or lawyers.

but as for your obvious real topic, let's just say people are fragile, though not as fragile as our grasp of reality. . . . . if people can't stretch things, they break them.

People sometimes find unbelievable ways to cope with huge inconsistencies between their "real" vs. "ideal" takes on things. One way to maintain a healthy mind is talking, or writing. It's a good life skill, with rewards in unexpected areas. . . . like dealing with trauma, major accidents, or other horrific crises in life. . . . .

belief in "authority" is imo a major source of "false memory" phenomena. People who are focused on authority issues sometimes really can't connect reality.
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Memento
 
I get false memories sometimes when I black out from drinkin too much
 
https://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57246509-90/stringfellow-war-utah-says.html.csp

The scandal rocked Utah and U.S. politics. Just days before the 1954 election, disabled Rep. Douglas R. Stringfellow, R-Utah, confessed on TV that his oft-repeated stories of war heroics — which propelled him into Congress and attracted national adulation — were false.

Now, 60 years later, an untold side of the story is emerging from an unpublished autobiography Stringfellow wrote but simply boxed up and left largely forgotten before he died in 1966 at a young age, 44.
The bottom line: He really believed his stories were true when he started telling them.

Stringfellow wrote that he realized they were fabrications only after he was elected to Congress as others began to question them. He did not want to admit that publicly, thinking people would see him as crazy. He preferred that they see him instead as a liar.
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