Dr. Dan P. McAdams

The Archaeology of the Self: Are the Stories We Tell About Our Childhoods True — or Are We Writing Fiction About the Past to Justify the Present?

We treat our childhood memories as the raw material of who we are — but cognitive science keeps finding that memory is reconstructive, not recorded. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Dr. Dan McAdams, and Dr. Julia Shaw debate whether the stories we tell about our pasts are genuinely true, strategically revised, or necessary fictions we need to keep moving forward.