In
Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer does a good job of tiptoeing around one of the, um, potentially stickier aspects of mnemonic technique. He does this, in the first paragraph of the first chapter, by jumping into the middle of things (a strange way to tiptoe, I'll grant you, but humor me, okay?), describing a sequence of mnemonic images he created to remember a particular order of shuffled playing cards. In that description, one finds the following:
Rhea Perlman, diminutive Cheers bartendress (and queen of spades), has been caught cavorting with the seven-foot-seven Sudanese basketball star Manute Bol (seven of clubs) in a highly explicit (and in this case, anatomically improbable) two-digit act of congress (three of clubs).
That image is enough to cause one to tap the side of one's head with the heel of one's palm (as an "out, out damnèd thought!" maneuver), but actually, that would be defeating the purpose of the image. If an image is hard to forget, then so is anything you've associated with it.
Later in his book, Foer writes:
I needed [Ed Cooke's] help with one other problem. Following the recommendations of Peter of Ravenna and the Ad Herennium, my collection of [...] images included a handful of titillating acts that are still illegal in a few Southern states, and a handful of others that probably ought to be. And since memorizing a deck of cards [...] requires recombining prememorized images to create novel memorable images, it invariably meant inserting family members into scenes so raunchy I feared I was upgrading my memory at the expense of tormenting my subconscious. The indecent acts my own grandmother has had to commit in the service of my remembering the eight of hearts are truly unspeakable (if not, as I might have previously mentioned, unimaginable).
I explained my predicament to Ed. He knew it well. "I eventually had to excise my mother from my deck," he said. "I recommend you do the same."
Peter of Ravenna was a 15th century Italian jurist best known today for his memorization techniques, and the
Ad Herennium (formally the
Rhetorica ad Herennium) is the oldest book known on rhetoric, once believed to have been written by Cicero, and both the information it contains and Peter of Ravenna's advice on memorization hasn't really changed much over the centuries.
You want to remember something? Make a picture in your mind, linking what you know with what you don't. The more outrageous, the more vivid the picture, the better you'll remember that link.
Among the key things to keep in mind is that images need not be true, need not be fair, and need not be correct, either politically or in any other way. In fact, one could argue that the further they are from truth, fairness, and correctness, the better they will serve the purpose of
remembering something. What they
must be is vivid and outrageous enough to be memorable, otherwise they will be dull, forgettable, and forgotten.
I personally suspect that one of the reasons the art of memory fell into desuetude, besides the widespread appearance of printed books, had much to do with not wanting impressionable young minds to think "impure thoughts" as they went about the business of memorization and learning. (Keep in mind that, while memorization does not automatically bestow learning, there can be no learning without memorization.) Visualization gave way to rote in cases where memorization was still considered essential, and frankly, things haven't really changed much over the course of several hundred years.
As is the case with most simple answers, there are subtleties hidden in the details of the advice to "visualize memorable images." Still, as I embark on creating my own set of personalities and actions (as a general tool, as I have no overarching desire to routinely memorize decks of cards, thank you), I have gone back and crossed out a few names, so as to not risk "tormenting my subconscious."
Cheers...
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