Psychology in the Frozen Journey

     I think the difference in the Victor Kemmings' views of the past in the Frozen Journey are interesting because of how vastly different they are while both still being entirely possible.
     In the beginning of the Frozen Journey Kemmings has a very positive view of the past, remembering only the best parts. In psychology this is called rosy retrospection, basically meaning that you remember and talk events from the past more favorably than they actually were. Later he remembers everything that went wrong and it taints his memories (the house falls about and the whole memory becomes dramatically depressing). Both of these ways of recalling memories are recognized in psychology.
     Right now psychologists aren't totally sure what causes these ways of remembering memories, but one main theory has to do with implicit theories. They believe that before an event happens you decided how it might turn out (think a spring break trip you think will be awesome) and with this idea in mind when you look back at the event you fail to recall the neutral moment and only remember those that proved or took down your theory. If the event you remember go along with your prediction you'll remember the whole trip with rosy retrospection, On the other hand if an event happens that causes you to be wrong you'll remember the whole trip as terrible.
      Psychologists ideas of how this effects people's future also matches up with what happened in the story pretty well. The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology states "Rosy mechanisms may help to explain why people often seem to repeat the mistakes of the past... [rosy retrospection] may suggest some reasons or circumstances where people learn less from experience than they could or should. Constantly rewriting the past in a favorable light may mean we don’t adjust to the demands of the future.” I think this idea can be seen with the bird because it is an event he forgot about or at least had altered in his mind to not be as bad (rosy retrospection) that keeps replaying itself in other memories in different forms.
     Another part of psychology that I see play out in this story is dampening, the tendency to think of current or recent events as less favorable and pleasurable than they really are. This can be seen in all of his later memories, which to him seem to be current events. It is exaggerated in this story because, since he can alter his memories, when he starts thinking of the memory as bad it actually starts to become terrible (ie the house falling apart).