Forgetting and remembering in psychology: Commentary on Paul Connerton's 'Seven Types of Forgetting' (2008)

In this commentary, I compare psychology's treatment of forgetting, especially the works of Ebbinghaus, Bartlett, Ballard, Freud, and modern researchers, to Connerton's approach. I suggest that as the stimuli have become more complex (moving from nonsense syllables and lists of words to stories and real-life events, as found, for example, in clinical and forensic settings), memory theory in psychology becomes increasingly constructivist and motivational, and converges in significant respects with historical-sociological formulations of forgetting, such as Connerton's.