What is an event itself, as opposed to the event as we interpret it to or for ourselves, or as it is interpreted to or for us by others, particularly authoritative others? ‘When I was eight my father hit me with a tennis racket,’ says a subject. ‘Not true,’ says his father. ‘I was swinging the racket and accidentally hit him.’ What really happened? Specifically, is the boy’s memory of the event true, or is the father’s true? […] How are we to disentangle the memory component from the component of interpretation, leaving aside for the moment the will behind the interpretation? Is it possible – philosophically but also neurologically – to speak of a memory that is pristine, uncoloured by interpretation?

J. M. Coetzee, The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy (2015)