Thursday 9 October was psychology day at the The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. A day of sessions sponsored by the British Psychological Society and hosted by Professor Dany Nobus brought psychology to an audience that might not otherwise encounter it.
Psychological science was to the fore in the days’ first session, ‘What is Memory?’, which featured Society Fellow Professor Alan Baddeley from the University of York, Dr Charles Fernyhough from Durham University and Dr Michaela Dewar from the University of Edinburgh.
The format of the sessions saw Dany Nobus asking the panellists questions and then encouraging debate between them. A consensus emerged that memory is a complex process – ‘a machine with many moving parts,’ in Charles Fernyhough’s words. It is heavily dependent upon context and there is no one place in the brain where all memories are stored.
Alan Baddeley also suggested that autobiographical memory a coherent sense of self, which may explain childhood amnesia.
The audience’s questions included the effect of fear on memory, whether there is a physical limit to how much we can remember and whether soduku and crossword really can limit the effects of ageing on memory.
Michaela Ward replied to this last, saying that while there is no evidence that crosswords can do us harm, the evidence for any positive effects is weak.
The second session of the day asked ‘How do we Grieve?’ and featured Barbara Want, who has written a book about her grief at the death of her husband, the radio journalist Nick Clarke. She was joined by Professor Tony Walter, a sociologists and director of the Centre for Death Society at the University of Bath, and the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz (a late substitute for Darian Leader).
This proved quite an emotional session, with a good deal of audience participation. The discussion took in the modern unease at discussing death (though Tony Little pointed out that the session had drawn a large audience), with Barbara Want saying that she envied Queen Victoria, who was able to wear black for the rest of her life to show she was grieving.
A view emerged that grief is an intensely individual process and is surrounded by far too many musts and oughts. A member of the audience won applause for saying that we should do away with the concept of ‘closure’.
Later in the day there was a third session - ‘Are all memories fiction?’- which featured the novelist Lisa Appignanesi, who has a long-standing interest in psychiatry and recently hosted a series on 'The Brain and the Mind' ,Stephen Grosz and the memory specialist Professor Giuliana Mazzoni from Hull University.
Other events on 9 October included a ‘psychology café’ for more informal discussions and a talk by the comedian and mental health campaigner Ruby Wax.