“Long before cognitive science was a glint in Donald Hebb’s eye, Freud understood that memories do not precisely mirror the past.”
“More recently the idea that memory is dynamic and constructive rather than passive and fixed has gained currency among neurobiologists.”
“Among animals as different as crabs, rats, slugs, and humans, new memories are shaky. If something disruptive, for example systemic drug treatment or a major electric shock, happens shortly after training a rat or a mouse on some task, it can’t remember the training. But let matters settle for a few hours or a day and then give the shock or drug treatment, and the rodent remembers its training. Such experiments—and there have been many of them—define the concept of consolidation: specific memories undergo a period of solidification that renders them stable.”
“In other words when someone remembers something, it is possible that, during recall and before the memory gets tucked back into bed (reconsolidated), something can interfere with its storage.”
“But wait! There’s more. When a retrieved memory reconsolidates, it may incorporate new information and a contemporary context.”
“The fact that many gay men and women score high on childhood gender nonconformity tests reflects how they have integrated memories—via reconsolidation—into narratives of adult identity.”
“Until recently we did not speak of children as being gay because what emerges as sexual desire develops slowly during childhood and youth, and comes intertwined with—both driving and being driven by—an evolving sexual identity.”
“It would therefore be interesting to study the processes by which gendered patterns of play become linked in some children to adult forms of desire.”
“This requires that we understand both adult and childhood behaviors not as essences but as softly assembled patterns that may be stable but are not necessarily fixed.”
“What are the contexts in which play memories are evoked and discussed? How do the memories change and connect to other experiences when a child, youth, or adult revisits them? At what ages do children or youth link their play interests to specific desires? How does the dynamic differ for boys and girls?”