The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir |  | Author: Jill Price
Creator: Bart Davis
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 4125908
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
ISBN: 1416561773
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9781416561774
ASIN: 1416561773
Publication Date: May 5, 2009 (In 203 Days)
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Product Description
Jill Price has the first diagnosed case of a memory condition called "hyperthymestic syndrome" -- the continuous, automatic, autobiographical recall of every day of her life since she was fourteen. Give her any date from that year on, and she can almost instantly tell you what day of the week it was, what she did on that day, and any major world event or cultural happening that took place, as long as she heard about it that day. Her memories are like scenes from home movies, constantly playing in her head, backward and forward, through the years; not only does she make no effort to call her memories to mind, she cannot stop them. The Woman Who Can't Forget is the beautifully written and moving story of Jill's quest to come to terms with her extraordinary memory, living with a condition that no one understood, including her, until the scientific team who studied her finally charted the extraordinary terrain of her abilities. Her fascinating journey speaks volumes about the delicate dance of remembering and forgetting in all of our lives and the many mysteries about how our memories shape us. As we learn of Jill's struggles first to realize how unusual her memory is and then to contend, as she grows up, with the unique challenges of not being able to forget -- remembering both the good times and the bad, the joyous and the devastating, in such vivid and insistent detail -- the way her memory works is contrasted to a wealth of discoveries about the workings of normal human memory and normal human forgetting. Intriguing light is shed on the vital role of what's called "motivated forgetting"; as well as theories about childhood amnesia, the loss of memory for the first two to three years of our lives; the emotional content of memories; and the way in which autobiographical memories are normally crafted into an ever-evolving and empowering life story. Would we want to remember so much more of our lives if we could? Which memories do our minds privilege over others? Do we truly relive the times we remember most vividly, feeling the emotions that coursed through us then? Why do we forget so much, and in what ways do the workings of memory tailor the reality of what's actually happened to us in our lives? In The Woman Who Can't Forget, Jill Price welcomes us into her remarkable life and takes us on a mind-opening voyage into what life would be like if we didn't forget -- a voyage after which no reader will think of the magical role of memory in our lives in the same way again.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Interesting but VERY incomplete story on hypermemory, mental/mental health issues of MD's reporrt ignored October 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm perhaps being a little more generous than some of the two-star reviewers. I did find information about her timeline and some other things interesting, but, contra her own accounts, I don't think her obsessive journaling necessarily has anything to do with her hypermemory. Certainly, it's not a direct part of her hypermemory, or the more technical, hyperthymesia.
Now, might it be part of an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder? Certainly. There's other facets of her life, that if you connect the dots, could one wonder, at least, whether Price doesn't have OCD and/or other mental health issues.
But, she and coauthor Bart Davis don't talk about that.
Nor do they talk about the report of the UCI medical and neurological professionals. After all, Price herself wonders if her hypermemory isn't connected to how she has dealt with her childhood.
Nor does she mention that she has taken Prozac and Zoloft as high as 200mg/day, and that she reported having numerous phobias, including phobias about medical professionals, to McGaugh et al. Or having hit her head at age 8.
Given the studies ongoing of links between PTSD and memory, and the fact that the Neurocase study is readily available on the Internet, it's chintzy at the least to not have discussed these issues in the book.
Available here in full: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:n_iEEyk5ROcJ:today.uci.edu/pdf/AJ_2006.pdf+%22A+Case+of+Unusual+Autobiographical+Remembering%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
The full study also mentions some other mental functioning diagnoses; some linguistic problems, including word list problems (hence her memory problems) is one; perseveration is another, and it's linked to brain trauma. Interestingly, Price doesn't mention having had a head injury at age 8, as documented in the professional study, and which is about the time her memory started ramping up.
It's time to quote from that report:
"AJ may have a variant of a neurodevelopmental, fronto-
striatal disorder putting her at risk for her hyperthymestic syn-
drome. Deficits in executive functioning and anomalous lateral-
ization are both found in neurodevelopmental frontostriatal
disorders which include autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourette's syn-
drome and schizophrenia."
I write none of this to put her down or beat her up, but, as I suspected at the start of this review (written before I Googled the Neurocase report), there's more behind the scenes than just a world-record autobiographical memory.
Finally, re her memory itself, and without diminishing her incredible autobiographical memory, it should be noted that she is, in some types of specific episodic memory, nothing better than normal.
In short, we didn't get anywhere near the full Jill Price in this book. And, nobody forced her to write anything at all in the first place so, sorry, it doesn't deserve more than two stars.
Interesting but very poorly written September 3, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ditto to others who complained about the writing. It might have been a far better book had it been written and edited more skillfully. Repetition, poor sentence structure and inconsistent organization made it hard to wade through. As it reads now, it's pretty boring and I didn't even find myself liking her very much.
 Memories are funny things August 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Woman Who Can't Forget introduces Jill Price, the first person diagnosed with the condition "hyperthymestic Syndrome" the continuous, automatic, autobiographical recall of every day of her life since the age of fourteen. Once you get over the parlor trick aspect of this condition ..."what happened Monday, September 25, 1978....the crash of PSA flight over San Diego" and on and on and on. What fascinated me were her feelings of being held hostage by memories that were as fresh on recall as the day they occurred. When a memory arises, she feels the emotions of the event with the same vividness as the day they occurred. Memories from a child's perspective are remembered as such, not tempered through the lens of adult understanding. It wasn't until she contacted Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine, a renowned memory specialist, did she find someone who understood and could explain the condition. She tries to explain to the outside world what she struggles with every day. Her goal is to become the caretaker of her memories, not their hostage. Written with insight and humor Jill recounts a life where she felt imprisoned by her memory, her struggles to understand and cope and the change love brought into her life.
Poorly edited, but engrossing story August 6, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
While the author's autobiographical memory is nothing short of remarkable, she comes across as an easily controlled, whiny woman. The book is also filled with grammatical errors which slow down the story, and the portion about her husband makes this reader wonder why she thought such a self-centered man could be considered a catch. He didn't even think enough of her or her family to take his diabetes meds and stick around to enjoy old age.
Of course, what's engrossing about his story is the author's ability to recall even the must mundane of facts, and is worth reading because of that.
I second the other 2-star reviews July 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having listened to all of the unabridged audio version of this book, I second both of the earlier 2-star reviews.
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