Following carbon monoxide poisoning from a furnace at his workplace on May 31, 1926, Franz Breutel was unable to remember anything for more than two seconds.
An interdisciplinary panel will discuss this forgotten amnesic case study at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, in Wilson Hall, Room 214. The panel discussion, “Remembering Mr. B: The Man with a Two-Second Memory,” is sponsored by the Washington University in St. Louis Center for Programs.
Philosopher and psychiatrist Gustav Wilhelm Störring first reported Breutel’s unprecedented story in 1930. German psychologists argued about Breutel’s condition. Some suspected that he was malingering. Others argued that the symptoms were not due to brain injury but arose as a secondary psychiatric response to the original brain insult. Others argued that the brain had no visible evidence of damage.
Though the case was discussed at some length in 1967, no English translation of Störring’s report currently is available. The panel will read and react to a working translation of the text by junior Ben Graham, majoring in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology and Germanic languages and literatures, both in Arts & Sciences.
Panel members will discuss the case from their own disciplinary perspectives: neurological, philosophical, social and historical.
Members of the panel are: Pascal Boyer, Ph.D., the Henry Luce Professor of Collective & Individual Memory and professor of sociocultural anthropology and of psychology, both in Arts & Sciences; Shayna Rosenbaum, Ph.D., principal investigator at the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at York University in Toronto; Julia Driver, Ph.D., professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences; Carl Craver, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy; and Gerhild S. Williams, Ph.D., vice provost, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and the Barbara Schaps Thomas and David M. Thomas Professor in the Humanities and professor of Germanic languages and literatures.
For more information, visit artsci.wustl.edu/~bwgraham.