ling. The problem is more than likely not an inherent one but could arise from a misunderstanding of how the mind works. Much of what we forget, we have never really taken in. this is mostly because we have not been concentrating. Many of us have considerable difficulty remembering names of the people we meet for instance. As a result of this we experience mild fear when meeting new people and will likely rehearse an introduction situation. This will cause us to avoid eye contact and give those people only a fleeting glance. As this behaviour is the opposite of what we need to recall, we tend to forget anything that is associated with fear.There are many reasons why we forget, and there have been several explanations put forward by psychologists as to why we forget the things we used to know. Some of them are: Amnesia - the loss of the ability to memorise information and/or recall information stored in the memory. Many people with amnesia have a memory gap that extends back for sometime from the onset of the illness. This condition is known as retrograde amnesia. The other type of amnesia is anterograde and this is where those with this form of amnesia are unable to store new information in the period following the onset of the illness. The resultant gap extends from the moment of onset to the time when LTM resumes, if at all. This memory gap is usually permanent. Amnesia through brain damage is an extreme form of forgetting, but in everyday life we all forget things too.When psychologists have tried to explain exactly why we forget things, they have come up with several explanations.Freud, (1901) believed we forgot things because we are motivated to forget things. If we didn't, they would remind us of the things that were deeply traumatic and emotional. As this situation would be threatening to the conscious mind it is repressed, resulting in the individual to 'forget' it and be unable to bring it to mind.Another way to forget is inter...
