How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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direction we had assumed. The happiest recollection tells how we experienced a single feeling of success or a sense of security. Many of these earliest recollections are not recollections at all. It is quite possible to “ remember ” something that never happened. Memory is a creative faculty, and its artistic and creative function is vitally important. You must remember that the adult was a dependent being at the time whence most of his childhood memories are dated. He was being led and guided through the difficulties of life by his parents. If you are being guided through a strange foreign city by a friendly guide, you do not remember any coherent scheme of your wanderings, but certain sites and certain experiences do stand out clearly when you attempt to recall your adventure. These are the experiences that are vital to your style of life. The first or most vivid recollection of your childhood usually epitomizes the first critical situation in which you discovered yourself as partially independent, faced for the first time with the necessity of making some adjustment to life. For example : the first childhood recollection of a famous night club “ hostess ” is that she was given sweets by a genial bald-headed unde for showing him her knees. A well-known homosexual recalls weeping bitterly on his third birthday because his mother compelled him to put on pants for the first time. A well-known heart specialist remembers the old family doctor coming to the bedside of a younger brother, listening with his stetho¬ scope, and telling the parents that there was no hope for his brother. A patient with dementia praecox recalls a series of memories in which he is being held to his mother’s breast, being protected either from a barking dog or from the attacks of an elder brother. The Importance of Childhood Memories Childhood memories show how our memory reaches into the past to furnish us with dynamic stimuli to N