MEDIATIONISM AND THE OBFUSCATION OF MEMORY (REPRINTED FROM THE AMERICAN-PSYCHOLOGIST, VOL 45, PG 328-335, 1990)

Memory theorizing is going nowhere. The reason is that it is rooted in mediationism, the doctrine that memory is mediated by some sort of me mory trace. Mediationism is the basic tenet of those who seek the subs trate of memory; for students of memory per se it is merely a metaphor , and moreover an unfruitful one, for it cannot be penetrated by the m ethods of psychology. The rejection of mediationism would serve both t o replace mechanistic theories with laws or other modes of explanation and to focus research on the actual experience of memory and on the c ontext in which it occurs. The ensuing advantages are discussed and il lustrated.