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Debbie Nguyen Psychology Memento Extra Credit Paper December 2016

Throughout the movie, Leonard says that he has short term memory loss and does not have anterograde amnesia. Are these accurate descriptions of his impairments? Use at least 3 examples from the movie to answer this question

Memento

Memento is a net-noir psychological thriller that was produced in 2000. In this film, we meet Leonard who is suffering from anterograde amnesia and can no longer create any long term memories and has difficulties remember events for more than 15 minutes. However, Leonard insists throughout the film that he does not have amnesia, but rather has short term memories the entire time. Anterograde Amnesia is a condition in which an individual can no longer create long term memories. This means that any memories that Leonard can create in the future can no longer be stored and encoded in his mind because of the damage due to his brain during the attack of his wife and himself. During the film, we see that Leonard is attacked and his wife is raped, he is hit on the head with an object and drifts into unconsciousness with his wife being his last sight. Short term memory, however, is memory that is active and is able to be obtained quickly rather than long term. This allows Leonard to be able to hold conversation with individuals and function normally as long as it does not go on for too long, past 15 minutes. In the film, Leonard says that he does not have anterograde amnesia, but rather have short term memory. In some ways, I believe that Leonard is, to some extent, telling the truth about believing that he has short term memory instead of complete amnesia lost. With anterograde amnesia, Leonard should not be able to remember anything after the blunt force trauma to his head, however, occasionally he’ll remember the attack and he’ll remember small moments that had happened to his wife during the incident. Because of this, after 15 minutes or so, he would forget, but still have been able to recall the moment.

When we take a look at what anterograde amnesia is, we see that the person who has it should not be able to remember any long term event and they can partially or simply not remember anything from their past. However, new information comes to Leonard occasionally. We see in the film that Leonard has 7 tattoos on his body that he starts to get to remind himself of things along the way, however, the tattoos that Leonard gets is essentially the story of the person that ends up killing his wife. However, when Leonard sees the tattoo on his skin, he is triggered by the ink and the ‘reminder’ it gives to him. We find out at the end of the story that Leonard is going to essentially be ‘Sammy’ who is the person that Leonard is chasing for the crime of murder. But, if Leonard had Anterograde Amnesia, he would not remember anything after the attack of his wife. It the movies he says that he is sorry multiple time and that he is unable to recall new memories of his attack with his wife and that the final thing he remembers is that his wife had a bag over her head and is struggling to breathe. This should be the last of his memories, this should have been the last of his thoughts. Yet, we are introduced to Sammy, who to much dismay, is not fictional, but rather a non fictional persona of whatever Leonard sees as his own guilt. Although Sammy’s memories does not match with the real story of what happens to Leonard wife, the memories and the event that occurs are fairly similar to what did happen. We then notice the similarity between the two. This touches upon many ideas that Sammy is Leonard and Sammy’s wife is Leonard’s wife, however, if Leonard had anterograde amnesia, he should not be able to recall anything about his wife after the plastic bag description. We then see in the last chat with Teddy and him that the two of them bickers back and forth and although they are having a conversation with each other, Leonard seems more in denial

than confusion which could be working on his short term memory. With short term memory he is able to still have conversations. In their chat, teddy tells him that he would rather want to forget small details to be happy and that he didn’t want to accept the fact that his wife was alive and that he had tried to kill her. To his distress, Leonard answers back with the argument that it was not him, but Sammy. Ted then continues to say that he “guess that he can only make Leonard remember things that he wants to be true.” In saying this, it indicates that Leonard can still remember things, but remembers them and places them in the persona of Sammy. In doing this, it makes him less guilty about what he had done and makes it seem as though Sammy is the bad person- not him. Leonard then tells Teddy that he will remember and teddy insist that he won’t remember anything after. He then says that he will remember when it's done, but, if he had anterograde amnesia, he wouldn’t be able to remember. He wouldn’t even be able to remember the fact that he tells everyone about Sammy. In the end, I believe that Leonard does have some sort of memory problems. He can still function like a normal individual, however, can simply not remember anything 15 minutes later. Yet, whether or not it’s with his long term or short term memory remains the issue. Because Leonard is able to remember things after the event, it makes it hard to believe that he has anterograde amnesia based on that fact. Instead, having short term memory may be a better description because he continuously is able to pull up new things....