- published: 12 Feb 2016
- views: 137622
Reminiscence is the act of recollecting past experiences or events; when a person shares their personal stories with others or allows other people to live vicariously through stories of family, friends, and acquaintances while gaining an authentic meaningful relationship with a person. Grandparents are often ones who reminiscence their stories to their grandchildren, sharing their individual experience of what the past was like.
The study of reminiscence has a long history, which is shortly described in Eysenck and Frith (1977, chapter 1):
Reminiscence is a technical term, coined by Ballard in 1913, denoting improvement in the performance of a partially learned act that occurs while the subject is resting, that is, not performing the act in question. (Eysenck and Frith, 1977, page 3).
The reality of reminiscence was first experimentally demonstrated by Oehrn (1896). In experiments on reminiscence the same task is always administered twice or more. One is mainly interested in the effect of the rest periods between the tasks. Learning might not be apparent within a task but it may be across tasks.
In my sleep convulsive shocks assault my body
I stop and see fragments of a life that doesn't seem mine
In my chest heartbeats rebound like peals of far-away bells
I've tried to forget as if the world might begin today...
...But tomorrow cannot begin over again
Silent ghost surround me and whisper...
All the visions that my mind draws
Desolation and pain
Too tearful eyes that fix on nothing
A cold wind, my flow of tears
My scream echos
In the quiet valley
Among the silent shadows
In my inside
Everything I remember
Every face, every look
Unforgotten suffering
Reminiscence
Disquieting muses, dancing Divinity invites calls me
Continuous images mixed with psychotic cutting confuse me
Ancient seductive sounds reach me shaking my senses
I've tried to forget as if the world might begin today...
...But tomorrow cannot begin over again...
My outline design
In the pouring rain
My bloody hands
My pale face
Millions of voices
Every face, every look
Unforgotten suffering