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When the author had found that the known theories could not explain the significant memory disturbances of senile and arteriosclerotic patients, he started out to develop a more consistent, more comprehensive and nore valid theory of remembering and forgetting. In this monograph (which includes a concise survey of pertinent facts) the author faces many recent and new clinical facts and tries to fit them into his theory of remembering. He discusses such problems as, e.g., why in electroconvulsive and other forms of modern therapy, difficulties of remembering begin at the same time when clinical improvement sets in. He introduces several new concepts or redefines some old ones.
The basic concept on which the author's theory of remembering rests is that both forgetting and remembering are aspects of behavior of the total organism. Memory is recognized as a primary function which can not be explained as a special aspect of some other function or functions (e.g., emotion) but it is shown that its role both in health and in pathology can not be understood without continuous reference to the behavior of an individual's total organism. “Remembering is a function of the reactivity of the individual.” This view of the close association between remembering and motor behavior is supported by well established facts: “As the capacity to react becomes more highly differentiated and organized with the growingup of the child, the potentiality of the individual to remember day to day events increases. As his reactivity declines as he passes into the senium, his ability to remember the events of the day grows less. The more intensely an individual reacts to a situation, the