cryptomnesia
/ˌkɹɪp.təmˈni.ʒi.ə/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The phenomenon of the reappearance of a long-forgotten memory as if it were a new experience; (countable) an instance of this. Contrast cryptaesthesia.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "All the witnesses of Mlle. [Hélène] Smith's Hindoo somnambulisms who are of the same opinion on that subject (several refrain from having any) unite in seeing in it a curious phenomenon of cryptomnesia, of reappearances of memories profoundly buried beneath the normal waking state, together with an indeterminate amount of imaginative exaggeration upon the canvas of actual facts. But by this name of cryptomnesia or resurrection of latent memories, two singularly different things are understood."
- "How much is cryptamnesia-confabulation, how much frontal-lobe indifference-equalisation, how much some strange schizophrenic disintegration and shattering-flattening?"
- "The path analysis suggests that cryptomnesia is rooted in a lack of trusting relationships. […] This lack of trust leads to feelings of anomie and anxiety that make the individual more likely to construct false memories out of information stored in the unconscious mind. People who think in this way are susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories, since these theories help them to make sense of an otherwise incoherent world."
- "And although [Sigmund] Freud claimed that others’ ideas were of no use to him unless they came at a time when he was ready for them, he proved enormously susceptible to their influence and even noted his own tendency to ‘cryptamnesia’, by which he ‘unconsciously’ contrived to forget his intellectual debts."
- "Apparently lacking the time or patience to reveal a comprehensive system of cryptomnesias in his medium, Fräulein SW, [Carl] Jung strenuously asserts the importance of this unconscious device […]"
- "While apparent regressions into past lives can often easily be shown to be constructions based on cryptamnesia[…], this is by no means always the case. In 1987, one hypnotherapy client experienced an apparent 'past life' as a submariner who died with his ship in 1942; he provided detailed names and dates that could be confirmed from the records of the naval base where he was supposed to have served[…]. If we insist on a Darwinian account, these phenomena must be examples of cryptamnesia, suggestion or fraud."
Etymology
From crypto- (prefix meaning ‘hidden’) + (a)mnesia, modelled after French cryptomnésie, which was coined by Swiss psychologist and parapsychologist Théodore Flournoy (1854–1920) in his work Des Indes à la planète Mars (From India to the Planet Mars, 1899 or 1900). The English word was probably first used in the 1900 translation of Flournoy’s work: see the quotation.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌkɹɪp.təmˈni.ʒi.ə/
- British English: /ˌkɹɪp.tə(ʊ)mˈniː.zi.ə/