Narrative Essay on Childhood Memory

Running head: CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE
Childhood Narrative
Student’s name
University
Author’s note

CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE
1
The Purpose of the present essay is to construct a childhood narrative, constructing a
descriptive account of the childhood memories of a person who was interviewed for this very
purpose. The rationale underlying this undertaking is to identify to which extent one can recall
the events of their early years, and how consistent they are. Additionally, the essay also attempts
to comprehend how childhood memories influence one’s personality and behaviours. To this
end, an interview has been conducted with Archbishop Kwaku Frimpong Manso, a 69-year old
clergy hailing from Ghana. Further, the essay will try to contextualize his memories in the post-
war era and examine how far his memories shape his current personality. For example, in
Archbishop Manso’s case, the factor of punishment in school played a crucial role in shaping his
worldview and personality.
Early childhood memory refers to the recollection of events occurred during one’s
childhood. These memories are formed during early years and very likely to influence an
individual’s behaviours throughout his life. However, most of the people are unable to recall
their early years’ episodic memory. Psychologists maintain that the first memory can belong to
the age of 3 to 4 years, although it can range from two to eight years. Nevertheless, it is evident
that the memories from the early stages of life are usually limited and fragmentary. In most
probability, it is a visual memory in color and not a continuous description of events. No adult
can ever represent a continuous account of early childhood memory without reconstructing the
events (Nelson 2017).
In this regard, Sigmund Freud’s theory of childhood amnesia is an instrumental
perspective to explain this phenomenon. According to Freud, adults are unable to retrieve the
episodic memories from the year two to year four, even some of the episodic memories up to
year ten. And the offset of childhood amnesia is described differently by different psychologists.

CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE
2
Freud explained the inability of recalling with connection to repression of memories due to their
strong aggressive or sexual contents (Freud 2017). Discarding Freudian explanation,
psychologists in later periods held that the three stages of memory, i.e. encoding, storage and
retrieval are different in early childhood than the adolescence or adulthood, and this difference of
the process is largely responsible for explaining childhood amnesia (Bauer 2015)
In the light of the previous discussion, it could be argued that childhood memory is
nonetheless important to analyze the personality development and behaviours of an individual.
Notable psychoanalyst Alfred Adler also opined that it is important to analyze human nature. He
suggests that the first memory of an individual essentially reveals the fundamental worldview of
the person concerned (Lundin 2015). In this regard, it is also interesting to explore how the
intimate groups such as family and peer groups as well as the social environment such as school
and community influence the development of the person.
Archbishop Manso, as reported to the interviewer, grew up in the Colonial Ghana, known
as Gold Coast at that time. He was born in 1949, a time when World War II was raging in its full
wrath. Born in 1949, Archbishop Manso essentially grew up in the Post War era. In his
childhood, he experienced the transition of his country from a British colony to a sovereign
nation, and the subsequent changes that took place in the social and economic life. However, he
was very young to realize or remember all these things. When interviewed, he stated that the
earliest memories he had of his childhood was that of his school days. He started school at the
age of six, although he had no particular memory of that age. This establishes the phenomenon of
childhood amnesia, where we can only recollects episodic memories since the age of 6 years.
Also, the narration of his childhood seems to be a reconstruction, influenced by his adult
experiences and values.