Cryptomnesia

Cryptomnesia is the phenomenon in which a person completely forgets the source of information, an idea, or a work they previously encountered or learned, and experiences it as a new and original creation of their own mind. The term literally means "forgotten memory."^【1】 It is a form of plagiarism, or appropriation, in which a writer, researcher, or individual thoroughly internalizes another person’s ideas, data, methods, or research outputs and mistakenly believes them to be their own.^【2】 This condition is characterized by the individual claiming as their own a work or thought without being aware of its true origin.^【3】

F. K. Taylor (1965) notes that the concept of cryptomnesia points to the existence of "hidden memories in the human mind." Individuals unaware of these hidden memories often unconsciously draw upon these memory traces while striving to produce a new and original work, thereby leading to unconscious plagiarism.^【4】

The concept of cryptomnesia was initially addressed in the early 20th century not in direct connection with plagiarism, but rather in the context of old memories temporarily disappearing from consciousness and returning without being recognized as memories.^【5】

• Early Medical and Literary Cases: In a case reported by Dr. Freeborn in 1902 in the journal Lancet, a 70-year-old woman, during delirium caused by high fever, began speaking in Hindi, a language she had not used or even remembered since the age of four. Similarly, in another example recounted by the writer Coleridge, an illiterate servant girl spoke for hours in Greek and Hebrew during a high fever; it was later discovered that she had worked as a child beside a priest who read texts aloud in these languages, and she had unconsciously recorded these sounds.^【6】
• Psychoanalytic Definition: In a 1934 American psychology dictionary, cryptomnesia was defined as "a memory condition in which old experiences are forgotten due to unconscious motives and thus give rise to so-called new formations that lack the character of a memory."^【7】
• Carl Gustav Jung’s Work: In his lectures on "The Psychology of the Unconscious" delivered in 1937 and 1938, C. G. Jung examined cryptomnesia among the various expressions of the unconscious, alongside hypnotic states, while explaining the relativity of consciousness and the state of the psyche.^【8】

^{Dış Kaynaklı Bir Bilginin, Bağlamından Koparak Zihinde Özgün Bir Fikir Gibi Algılanması (Yapay Zeka ile Oluşturulmuştur.)}

The cognitive foundation of cryptomnesia lies in the discrepancy between different processes of human memory. The distinction between semantic (semantic) memory and autobiographical memory helps explain this phenomenon:^【9】

• Semantic Memory: The domain in which knowledge is retained purely as "information," without regard to when, where, or under what conditions it was learned.
• Autobiographical Memory: The type of memory that records personal experiences along with the time, place, context, and individuals involved in those events.

When an individual encounters an idea or solution from the external world, the autobiographical memory may gradually lose or forget the contextual details—such as who provided the information and under what circumstances. However, the essence of the information remains preserved in semantic memory. When the person later needs this information, semantic memory presents it to consciousness; but since autobiographical memory fails to retrieve its source, the person perceives the idea as entirely their own original creation. Thus, cryptomnesia does not arise from a general failure of memory, but rather from semantic memory preserving the information well while autobiographical memory forgets its context.^【10】

In modern psychological sources and copyright law, cryptomnesia is commonly used synonymously with the concepts of "unconscious plagiarism" or "unintentional appropriation" (unbewusste Entlehnung).^【11】

• Difference from Unintentional Plagiarism: Cryptomnesia differs from "unintentional plagiarism," which results from a person’s lack of necessary academic or technical skills to avoid plagiarism or from underdeveloped authorship identity; it is instead a complete memory illusion driven entirely by unconscious mechanisms.^【12】
• Legal Assessment (Intent and Moral Blameworthiness): Under intellectual property law and criminal norms, plagiarism (Article 71 of the Turkish Penal Code) requires the act to be performed "consciously" and "intentionally." In cryptomnesia cases, the person is unaware that the work they have cited without attribution belongs to someone else (Fremdheit). Therefore, since the required element of intent is absent at the time of the act, this situation is not considered intentional plagiarism, and moral blameworthiness does not apply to cryptomnesia. Nevertheless, the lack of awareness does not negate the fact that the original author’s right to be credited has been violated.^【13】
• Examples in Daily Life and Art: Cryptomnesia is not limited to academic texts; it also occurs in many contexts, such as presenting at a later meeting a solution proposed by someone else at an earlier meeting as one’s own idea, publishing a well-known surgical technique in medical journals as a novel discovery, or believing one has invented a new recipe or training exercise. The most famous musical case of cryptomnesia is the lawsuit over George Harrison’s 1969 song "My Sweet Lord", which was found to be melodically identical to The Chiffons’ 1963 song "He's So Fine". The judge ruled that Harrison had unconsciously copied the melody from his unconscious memory (cryptomnesia); however, since a factual copying had occurred, a copyright infringement verdict was issued.^【14】