Anamnesis

An effect of reminiscence in which a past situation or atmosphere is brought back to the listener's consciousness, provoked by a particular signal or sonic context. Anamnesis, a semiotic effect, is the often involuntary revival of memory caused by listening and the evocative power of sounds. Anamnesis, an evocation of the past, refers to situations in which a sound or a sonic context revives a situation or an atmosphere of the past. This effect can span very different periods of time while retaining its intrinsic nature: it can happen on the scale of an entire life, a song that evokes a childhood memory, or a short span of time – for example, when a film soundtrack plays on the exposition of a sound element previously heard. However, the more distant and unexpected the reference, the more the emotion may overwhelm the listener. The effect is not based on the sound or on its meaning. It is rather the listener who gives it an anamnesic value. Two people listening to the same sound environment can develop very different evocations, but these effects could not happen without the occurrence of sound. The anamnesis effect merges sound, perception, and memory. It plays with time, reconnecting past mental images to present consciousness, with no will other than the free activity of association. In its clinical meaning, anamnesis does not refer only to a simple evocation of a memory; it also implies the historical reconstitution of a disease by a patient. In the same way, a sound or a group of sounds may lead to the reconstitution of a whole period of life as it unfolds during the entire updating of a time sequence.