There is no such thing as the ‘ real you’

Our identity is largely shaped by our memories — but according to one scientist, that is only part of the picture.

As human beings, we inadvertently select and manipulate our memories to suit themselves almost constantly, research shows, the Daily Mail reports.

This means we are almost always reshaping our own idea of who we really are.

In an article for the Conversation, psychologist Professor Giuliana Mazzoni, of the University of Hull, investigated what really makes up our identity, and whether our tendency to alter our own memories means there is no “real you” at all.

We all want other people to “get us” and appreciate us for who we really are.

In striving to achieve such relationships, we typically assume that there is a “real me”.

But how do we actually know who we are?

It may seem simple — we are a product of our life experiences, which we can easily access through our memories of the past.

Indeed, substantial research has shown that memories shape a person’s identity.

People with profound forms of amnesia typically also lose their identity — as beautifully described by the late writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks in his case study of 49- yearold Jimmy G, the “lost mariner”, who struggles to find meaning as he cannot remember anything that's happened after his late adolescence.

But it turns out that identity is often not a truthful representation of who we are anyway — even if we have an intact memory.

Research shows that we don't actually access and use all available memories when creating personal narratives.

It is becoming increasingly clear that, at any

given moment, we tend to choose and pick what to remember.

When we create personal narratives, we rely on a psychological screening mechanism, dubbed the monitoring system, which labels certain mental concepts as memories, but not others.

Concepts that are rather vivid and rich in detail and emotion — episodes we can re- experience — are more likely to be marked as memories.

These then pass a “plausibility test” carried out by a similar monitoring system which tells whether the events fit within the general personal history.