THE TREACHEROUS MEMORY

What if the most essential part of your identity is also its biggest lie?

The human self is built entirely from memory, yet memory is the least trustworthy part of the mind. It is not a vault of truth but a restless, selective, and profoundly creative storyteller—a constant editor of our past. We rely on it for meaning, but we can only survive because of its beautiful imperfections.

In The Treacherous Memory, philosopher Boris Kriger investigates this defining paradox of the human condition. Drawing on cognitive science, existentialism, and social theory, Kriger argues that the failure of memory is not a flaw to be overcome, but the engine of human freedom, growth, and moral life.

This book will challenge everything you think you know about your past and your future by exploring:

• The Necessity of Imperfection: How our capacity to forget, revise, or misremember is essential for survival, renewal, and conscience.
• The Self as a Fiction: The dynamic process by which we continually construct and reconstruct our identity through narrative, balancing the demand for continuity with the need for change.
• The Digital Threat: The crisis of memory in the age of omnipresent, externalized digital recording—what happens when memory becomes perfect, immutable, and owned by technology rather than by the self?
• Case Studies in Extremis: Psychological and neurological accounts of individuals who remember too much, too little, or what never happened at all.

A profound and timely work of interdisciplinarity, The Treacherous Memory is a manifesto for embracing the fragile, fluid architecture of who you are. It is an essential listen for anyone seeking to understand the deep connections between neuroscience, ethics, and the absurdity of being human.