Adam Blatner

This involves the mind’s propensity to just make things up. It’s an unconscious “mechanism” that is also called “confabulation.” We should not underestimate this dynamic. It makes dreams seem so real while you’re dreaming; it accounts for people swearing that they saw someone or experienced something that in fact they didn’t (i.e., “false memory syndrome”), and really accounts for far more of our life than we acknowledge. It’s why your sibling and you have quite different memories of episodes in your childhood.