The Unbidden Past

Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal experiences that come to mind spontaneously—that is, with no preceding attempt at retrieval. They were one of Ebbinghaus’s (1885/1964) three basic kinds of memory but have been ignored by modern cognitive psychology. Recent work suggests that involuntary memories are a basic mode of remembering that operates on the same episodic memory system as voluntary (strategic) remembering and thus follows the same rules of encoding and maintenance. Due to their associative and unplanned retrieval, involuntary memories differ from voluntary memories by being more specific, by being less relevant to one’s life story and identity, and by involving more emotional reaction at the time of recall. Research on involuntary autobiographical memories has important implications for the understanding of intrusive memories in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).