Irish society has changed a lot over the last few decades. Along with more international changes like globalisation, the ubiquity of the internet etc., Ireland specifically has seen rapid economic growth as well as sea changes in social policy (e.g. going from criminalisation of homosexual activity at the start of 1990's to legalising gay marriage by a referendum in the 2010's). Even people in their forties and younger will recognise they live in a country that is different in many ways from the Ireland they lived when they were children (notwithstanding often high rates of emigration). As Fintan O'Toole (and others) put it, We don't know ourselves.
The autobiographical intersects with changes over society. Do you reckon that you were ahead of your time when looking back at how things used to be? Or do you remain nostalgic and wish things were more like the past? (It will depend, of course, on the subject or aspect of life).
A recent chapter in a book on psychobiography followed on from an in-depth look I had with some collaborators from Maynooth University and DIT. The sense of self was not always so stable, and could be affected by changing economic circumstances-one individual mentioned she used to look forward to going away on a holiday for a long time, and would discuss it at length for long after, but would now (in more prosperous times) would get back from holidays and just wonder where she and her family would be going next. (I should say this was from before the COVID-19 pandemic!)
Besides actual changes, counterfactual descriptions of the past can be used to think through the value of different decisions. What if I had taken that job, or married that person? What if that politician hadn't been elected, or if most people had had the internet in the 1980's? These can often be tinged with regret that things could have worked better, with the benefit of hindsight.
People may alternate between a first-person description of autobiographical events and a broader third-person description more routed in the family, friends or society around them (people often use the second person as a generic person, "you'd want to think twice about that" can sometimes mean "one would want to think twice about that", rather than just the listener). The lines between the individual, inter-individual, cultural and societal can get blurred by language. Pre-autobiographical "memories" can have an instructive function when shared with younger relatives, to give a sense of continuing extended self with one's family.
Indeed, there are various different functions that reminiscence about the past can play. A story from one's past can act as an instructive (perhaps cautionary) tale for a younger person going through a similar phase in life that one went through in the past. At other times, such a story may be used to demonstrate or think through how one's self has been formed over time, or to build rapport with someone by illustrating how two past lives were quite alike, or just for simple entertainment value.
How we talk about the past can vary in terms of the extent to which we situate ourselves in the events that have shaped our lives and our society (Note how I'm segueing into first-person plural here). We don't know ourselves, so we'll have to keep constructing them on the fly.
Allen, A. P., Doyle, C., Doyle, C. M., Monaghan, C., Fitzpatrick, N., & Roche, R. A. (2021). What we talk about when we talk about the past: Discursive psychological analysis of autobiographical reminiscence in older Irish adults. In Psychobiographical illustrations on meaning and identity in sociocultural contexts (pp. 327-344). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
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