Prince Harry, and Why Recollections Really Do Vary

When Prince Harry's long-awaited memoir, Spare, hit bookshops on January 10, readers were quick to point out discrepancies in his recollections.

Many have flagged the story he tells of his mother, Princess Diana, leaving him an Xbox for his birthday in 1997 just before she died. However, the console was not released until 2001. In another chapter, he recalls hearing the news of his grandmother's death, the Queen Mother, in 2002 while he was at school, despite photographic evidence that he was in Switzerland skiing with his father and brother at the time.

In his book, Prince Harry readily admits these shortcomings, saying that he believes his memory was affected by his mother's death. "As a defense mechanism, most likely, my memory was no longer recording things quite as it once did," he writes.

"Landscape, geography, architecture, that's how my memory rolls. Dates? Sorry, I'll need to look them up. Dialogue? I'll try my best, but make no verbatim claims, especially when it comes to the nineties," he writes, as shared by J.R. Moehringer.

After an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 in which Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, openly criticized the royal family, Buckingham Palace responded, saying: "Although some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and addressed privately by the family."

Many of us rely on our memories as a factual representation of the past, but how reliable are they really, and how can they be impacted by traumatic life experiences, like grief?

How do memories vary?

Memory is the processing, storage and retrieval of experiences and knowledge. It involves three areas of the brain: the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala, according to University of Queensland Brain Institute. Many of us liken memory to data storage in a computer, but the truth is that human memory is far from perfect.

"Memory is adaptive and flexible," Laura Mickes, a professor in psychology who researches memory at the University of Bristol in the U.K., told Newsweek. "It does not work such that information goes into the brain, stays there at the ready, and when the memory is later retrieved it comes out exactly as it went in. Memories can be altered at any of these three phases."

Our memories are sensitive to our beliefs and biases, as well as external factors. James Bisby, an Associate Professor at University College London's Division of Psychiatry, said that even thinking of a memory can cause it to change. "When we retrieve a memory, research suggests that, for a short period, it enters a labile state in which the memory can be updated or changed," he told Newsweek. "Therefore, information from other people or external sources could influence or alter our own memory of a past event over time."

The three areas of the brain involved in memory processing are particularly sensitive to stress, and high periods of stress over a prolonged period can affect their normal functioning. "One area is the hippocampus—an area of the brain involved in storing new memories," Bisby said. "When this area is impacted by large amounts of stress, memories may become more fragmented and some aspects of an event might not be remembered or remembered inaccurately."

For many, grief and bereavement can be a traumatic and stressful experience. "The chronic stress experienced could disrupt the hippocampus and lead to more fragmented memories of the events and ongoing grieving period," Bisby said. "People therefore might try to fill in the blanks of their memories through other sources—whether accurate or not."

What is happening in the brain when we grieve?

Laura Hankey is a psychology research assistant with over a decade of experience in bereavement support. "From watching Harry's interview, he described not being able to remember his Mom before her death as a 'defense mechanism,' and I'd say that is fairly common," she told Newsweek. "Sometimes our mind will do things to try and protect us and thinking about our loved one, good or bad memories, is just too painful.

"Often when a loved one dies—especially when it is an unexpected, traumatic death—we go into a state of shock. Our body is in fight or flight mode and hormones are flooding our systems. From my experience, this impacts memories one of two ways—either you remember everything very vividly in that moment and certain things will stick out more than others—smells, the feel of clothes, colors, etc.—or you experience a kind of mind blank where you are in a bit of dream-like state and not really 'there.'"

Andy Langford, Clinical Director for the Bereavement Support charity Cruse, told Newsweek that, while there is a scarcity of research into the links between bereavement and memory, we do know that grief can affect cognitive functioning. "It's harder to assimilate and process particularly complex information," he said.

"It's quite usual to experience a low level of mood, and for some people an increased level of anxiety. There can be an experience of feeling overwhelmed, and when we experience that, it affects our cognitive processes."

The study of the neuroscience of grief is still in its infancy, but preliminary neuroimaging studies have shown that grief is a complex neurological process that activates many different brain regions involved in emotional processing, visual processing and conscious memory.

Neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor, author of the book The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, has described grief as a learning process: it involves learning to live a meaningful life without the loved one whom we have lost. And, like any learning process, this involves the creation of new connections between the neurons in your brain. This rewiring may also alter our memories.

This memory plasticity is particularly pronounced in children. "Young children may not have all of the information about the death and what has happened," Hankey said. "Naturally, parents want to protect children and shield them from some of the details, but in my experience, this can often cause problems, and if children have blanks in their knowledge, they will often fill it with things that aren't true, and the story that they create then becomes their reality."

Mickes also pointed to evidence that people suffering from complicated grief may block out certain memories altogether. An experiment in 2013, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, compared how people with and without complicated grief recalled past experiences. "Participants with complicated grief had difficulty recalling events from the past," Mickes said. "But this occurred only when the events happened without the deceased. They remembered events with the deceased as well as participants without complicated grief."

The effects of grief are not confined to the brain, and bereavement has also been associated with cardiovascular issues, stomach issues, such as stomach ulceration, chronic headaches, and increased levels of stress.

How long do the effects of grieving last?

How long this intense period of grieving lasts will vary significantly from person to person. "It is a process and depends on the support the person has and how open they are in talking about their experiences," Hankey said. "Especially for children—I find they will come back and revisit their memories as they get older and gain new experiences."

This has certainly been the case for Prince Harry. "In Harry's interview he talks about having a greater understanding of how hard it must have been for Charles to break the news to him [about Diana] now he is a parent himself," Hankey said. "Part of bereavement support work/bereavement counseling is giving people the space and time to go back and revisit memories and process old emotions now that they are out of that shock and working through the grieving process."

More research is needed to truly understand the neurological impacts of grief. But what we do know is that grief is not simply an emotional response: it is a physiological response that affects not only our brains but our entire bodies. We also know that everybody processes grief differently.

"Even if someone might look as though they are coping and that they're getting on with life, it is really important to check in on them and see how they are doing," Langford said. "How someone presents externally might not be the same as how they're feeling internally."

Is there a health issue that's worrying you? Do you have a question about grief? Let us know via health@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.

References:

Gündel H, et al., Functional Neuroanatomy of Grief: An fMRI Study, Am. J. Psychiatry, November 1 2003, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.11.1946

O'Connor MF, Grief: A Brief History of Research on How Body, Mind, and Brain Adapt Psychosom Med., October 2019,. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000717

O'COnnor MF, Seeley SH, Grieving as a form of learning: Insights from neuroscience applied to grief and loss, Current Opinion in Psychology, February 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.019