Salvador Dali believed he could remember back to being a fetus or embryo. I don't buy that, but how far back can an adult possibly remember?

Verity

I remember my first step.

PhotonX

<I don't buy that> Neither do I. As great an artist as Dali was, he wasn't the most stable personality around. Thinking one can remember the womb is just fantasy. . <how far back can an adult possibly remember?> I have a single memory from when I was nine months old. A bear stuck its head in the passenger window of the car. My mother never believed I had this early memory, thinking that I had constructed it from stories I heard told about it. Now that I have lived long enough to know what a fickle mistress memory is, I can't be entirely sure it's not, but the memory is there anyway. I remember my sister, who was holding me in the back seat, was wearing a red sweater--I can see her left arm in front of me--and that's nothing that is told in stories. But that was a traumatic event; little else would cause memory to be imprinted on a nine month old. . My second memory, a certain one, I must have been around two or three, sitting on the grass next to the sidewalk watching feet go by. . .

Anonymous

Typically about 4. According to a psychologist friend of mine.

Your Word is a light to my roadway

I still have some vague memories from before I was 5 but not sure of the age I was at the time. They are of when we lived in a house that we moved out of when I was five, so before that. I'm 63 now so, that was long ago.

bluebellbkk

'Possibly' is a very big word. 'Normally' our first clear memories are from the age of about 3 or 4. My first memory that I KNOW is my own and not re-created from hearing things from other people, is from when I was three.

Jimmy C

Normally most people can remember vaguely back to about 4. But under hypnosis people can remember back as far as birth. I own a book called Mind-Body Therapy by Rossi and Cheek, with numerous examples of this.

Pearl L

depends on the person, the youngest i could rennennber stuff is when i was 3

Jen

I was a year old in my earliest memory. My daughter remembers fairly clearly a traumatic incident from when she was 7 months old. I don't buy remembering being a fetus, but certain things can imprint pretty young.

bay

but the thing is... how can you prove it isn't a false "memory"? and today we have too many ways of introducing those "memories" into our consciousness. stories, pictures, films, etc. that can make us feel like we were really there when we weren't!!!

Nessa

There are some people who can apparently, and can recall memories that goes all the way back to the beginnings of their lives.

John P

At the age of 72 I have faint memories of one or two particular things from times when I was about 18 months or so (green pyjamas and pillowcase with white lambs and yellow flowers!). Rather more definite memories, but again not many, from times around 3 years. Seeing that Dali's vision of the world was eclectic, you can chose, or not, to believe in his version of his memories from extreme youth!

Forty Licks

He sells books what else would he say

John

I remember swimming around with the other sperm in my dad's sac, we had so much fun!!!