Proust Phenomenon

 

It never fails. When I smell Coconut Lime Verbena, I am transported to 2005, to my best friend’s new house, to sitting on the arm of her couch, just after washing my hands with the newest fragrance of soap from Bath and Body Works.

 

Or when I smell blue Lysol, I am transported to 2016, to Kay’s house, to cleaning up her apartment, just after her untimely death.

 

Or when I smell clear Soft Soap, I am transported to 1999, to a Kindergarten classroom at Anderson Creek Elementary School, to watching a student whom I remember as T playing with soap on the sink counter, because that was the only thing that kept him from disrupting the rest of class.

 

Smell is such a powerful sense.

 

In fact, of all the senses, smell inspires the most vivid memories and emotions. This is because smell bypasses the thalamus in the brain (the part of the brain that relays sensory information) and works directly on the hippocampus and amygdala (the parts of the brain that deal with emotional memory). Smell memories, or olfactory memories, then, are very deep and complex. They are sometimes hard to put into words but they are intensely powerful.

 

Between 1913 and 1927, a Frenchman by the name of Marcel Proust wrote seven volumes of a work that, to some, are a milestone in literature. What’s important for us is that the work’s most famous passage deals with scent and memory. He writes of how the experience of eating a small, shell-shaped sponge cake transports him in memory to childhood. This type of memory has since been coined a Proustian memory, or, as others call it, the Proust phenomenon.

 

According to the American Psychological Association’s dictionary, the Proust phenomenon is “the sudden, involuntary evocation of an autobiographical memory, including a range of related sensory and emotional expressions.”

 

As evidenced by the opening of this note, I experience the Proust phenomenon quite frequently.

 

What about you? What are some of your Proustian memories? I would love to hear.