Remembering Infancy: Adult memories of the first months of life

One’s memory is one’s history. What does it mean that Western culture believes that the earliest moments of life cannot be recovered? Is society invested in the forgetting of childhood? This phenomenological investigation focuses on the deep history of infancy: the time from before one can walk or talk. The recollections of 25 people with very early memory are explored, along with accounts of very early memories from 44 literary sources. Hundreds of memories from the first months of life reveal a developing sense of time, the beginnings of language, access to the powerful emotions of infancy, and an early awareness of self. The results of this research present a coherent and consistent array of information about the subjective experience of infancy: what is noticed and how that is responded to. The data of overlooked information from very early memories may stretch the understanding of what it means to be human to include the first 18 months of life, and earlier. It may be that the medium of adult memory can access the infant mind.