Memories from deep childhood are inaccessible to people, as is the memory of the moment they were born. What is the reason for this? Why don't we remember how we were born? Indeed, some vivid impressions seem to be imprinted in the subconscious and afterwards remain there forever, and such a mentally and physically important moment as birth is simply erased from the “subcortex”. Numerous theories from psychology, human physiology, as well as ideas gleaned from religion, will help to understand such a mysterious phenomenon.
Mystical Theories
World beliefs in the secrets of the universe and the Higher Mind offer their idea of why a person does not remember how he was born. The whole thing is in the soul - it is in it that all the information about the days, emotions, successes and failures that the human brain, like its physical body, cannot accept and, therefore, decipher, is stored. On the 10th day of the existence of the embryo, the soul is settled in it, but only for a while, and 30-40 days before it is born, it is completely introduced into the mortal body. Why don't we remember how we were born? Because the body cannot access the perception of information that the soul possesses. The energy clot as if protects all data from the brain, thereby preventing the possibility of solving the mysteries of the creation of man. The soul is immortal, the body is just a shell.
Scientific explanations
Why don't we remember how we were born? From the point of view of science, this phenomenon is explained by severe stress that accompanies the birth process. Pain, changes in body parts, advancement through the birth canal - all this is a difficult transition for a child from a warm, reliable mother’s womb to an unfamiliar world.
The formation of memory is directly related to the growth of the human body. The adult's subconscious mind captures moments from life and stores them, and in children everything happens a little differently. Emotions and experiences, as well as moments associated with them, are stored in the “subcortex”, but their previous memories are erased, because the children's brain, due to its insufficient development, is simply not able to store an abundance of information. That is why we do not remember our childhood and how we were born. From about six months to a year and a half, a child has a memory: long-term and short-term. At this age, he begins to recognize his parents and close circle, finds objects at the request, navigates in his house.
So why don't we remember how we were born? Another interpretation of the lack of early childhood memories is explained by the fact that the infant cannot yet associate certain events with words, since it does not know how to speak and does not yet know about the existence of the words themselves. The absence of childhood memories in psychology is called infantile amnesia.
According to many scholars, the problem of children's memory, rather, is not that they do not know how to create memories, but that the child’s subconscious mind retains everything experienced by it in short-term memory. This also explains why a person does not remember the moment of his birth, and the fact that some even the brightest moments of life are erased over time.
According to Freud
The world celebrity, thanks to which significant advances in medicine and psychology were made, created his own interpretation of why we remember childhood so poorly. According to Freud’s theory, a person blocks information about life events when the age has not yet reached three to five years, due to sexual attachment to one of the parents of the opposite sex of the child, and aggression to the other. For example, a boy at a young age has a strong unconscious connection with his mother, while he is jealous of her father and, as a result, hates him. Therefore, in a more conscious age, memories are blocked by the subconscious as negative and unnatural. However, the theory of Sigmund Freud did not find recognition in scientific circles, it remained only a one-sided look of the Austrian psychologist at the lack of memories of childhood.
Hark Hone Theory
The fact that a person does not remember his birth, according to the research of this doctor, is directly related to the following: the child does not yet identify himself as a separate person. Therefore, memory cannot be preserved, since children do not know what exactly from what is happening around them is their personal experience, emotions and feelings, and what are the results of the life of strangers. For a small child, everything is one.
Why do children determine where mom and dad, if they still do not know how to speak and do not remember moments from childhood well
The child is easily guided in his home and is not confused when asked to show which of his parents is a mother and who is a dad, thanks to semantic memory. It is there that memories of the world around him are important for a person’s survival. Due to the information contained in the long-term “storehouse”, the child quickly finds where his favorite treat lies, in which of the rooms he will be fed and drunk, who is his mother or father. Why don't we remember how we were born? This moment can be explained by the fact that the subconscious mind interprets this event from life as an unnecessary and dangerous phenomenon for the psyche, storing it in a short-term rather than long-term memory.
A study by Canadian psychologists of the phenomenon of infantile amnesia
Participating in a survey conducted by doctors from Toronto, took 140 children, whose age was from three to thirteen years. The essence of the experiment was that all participants were interviewed, offering to talk about the three earliest memories. The results of the study proved that young children more clearly remember the moments from early childhood, and people whose age is older than 7-8 years old cannot remember the details of life situations that they previously spoke about.
Paul Frankland Hippocampus study
The hippocampus is part of the limbic system of the brain. Its main function is the transportation and archiving of human memories. Canadian scientist P. Frankland became interested in his activities and role in preserving the memory of what is happening around. Having examined this brain archiver in more detail, the scientist came to the conclusion that why we do not remember how we were born, as well as how our childhood was up to 2-3 years old, is interpreted as follows: each person is born with an underdeveloped hippocampus , which prevents the normal storage of information received. In order for the hippocampus to begin to function normally, it takes years - a person grows, and he develops. Up to this point, childhood memories are scattered throughout the back streets of the cerebral cortex.
Even when the hippocampus begins to work, it is not able to collect all the information on the back streets of the memory and build a kind of bridge to it. Therefore, there are so many people who do not remember their childhood before the age of three, and so few who remember themselves younger than 2-3 years. This study explains why we do not remember how we were born and grew up to a conscious age.
The influence of the environment on preserving the memory of the child
Scientists have discovered that, in addition to educational factors and genetic inheritance, the place where a person lives influences memories of childhood. During the experiment, in which children from Canada and China from 8 to 14 years old participated, a four-minute survey was conducted about their lives. As a result, the little inhabitants of the Celestial Empire were able to tell less in the time allotted to them than the Canadian guys.
What memories are most strongly imprinted in the childhood subconscious?
Children are less susceptible to moments in life associated with sounds, more important for them are those events in which they were able to see and feel something. However, fear and pain experienced by a person at a young age are more often replaced with other, more positive memories over time. But it also happens that some individuals remember pain, suffering and sadness better than happiness and joy.
It is worth noting that in infancy, the child remembers more sounds than the outlines of objects. For example, hearing a mother’s voice, a crying baby instantly calms down.
Are there ways to draw memories of childhood from the depths of the subconscious?
Psychologists often resort to immersing their patients in a trance state in order to resolve a particular problem, as they say, all our fears come from childhood. Getting into the past, a person during a hypnosis session, without suspecting it, can tell about the most hidden, deep-seated memories. However, not everyone succeeds in glancing at the earliest moments of life - according to numerous experiments, the subconscious as if constructs an insurmountable wall that protects the emotions experienced from prying eyes.
Many esotericists also use hypnosis to help people learn about their past lives, childhood memories, and even infancy. But this method of obtaining information is not scientifically confirmed, so the stories of some "lucky" who knew the moment of their birth often turn out to be fiction and a professional advertising move.