When Musicians Unintentionally Steal – Pacific Standard:
There is, as it turns out, a known phenomenon, called cryptomnesia, where previously stored memories present themselves as original creations. We’ve all experienced something like this: You’re asked your opinion on a newsworthy subject and, perhaps unconsciously, find yourself parroting an op-ed you read earlier in the day.
For decades, it was assumed that these suppressed memories could only be recalled in alerted states of consciousness. That changed when, in 1965, Dr. F. Kräupl Taylor conducted some of the first research to explore the idea that these thoughts might be lying dormant, sometimes sneaking into our consciousness:
When an event consists of information about some original creation in the world of art, literature and thought, and the logical memory of the event has deteriorated to the point at which the information is no longer recognized as a memory, cryptomnesia may give rise to unintended plagiarism. This happens when the logical memory is activated fortuitously or by some mental scanning process so that the information appears in consciousness as a cryptomnesically unfamiliar train of thought whose originality and value is appreciated. The train of thought may then be proudly, though mistakenly, claimed as a personal creation.
