For the caveats Eric Schleisser expressed and Roy Weintraub's further reflections, we have an excellent source in the 2004 HES presidential address by Roy: "Autobiographical Memory and the Historiography of Economics." (JHET, Vol 27, No. 1 March 2005)

It uses the research in cognitive psychology to point out many of the pitfalls historians of economics should be aware of. I am sure it is okay to quote the concluding thought:



"As a consequence, we historians of economics  understand too little of the autobiographical impulse and have too impoverished a vocabulary to provide interesting, let alone compelling, appraisals of its products. Scholars in history, psychology, sociology, literature, and medicine have begun to address these issues. I submit that we historians of economics have a lot of interesting work left to do."



Sumittra Shah



On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Medema, Steven <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
But of course Friedman was also making an autobiographical statement, so his, too, should be viewed with suspicion. The historian is thus left with something of a conundrum.

These concerns flagged by Schleisser are quite real and need to be part of the mental landscape of any historian of contemporary economics. The literature in cognitive psychology on autobiographical memory is very large, and growing. From studies on PTSD to ideas about how one's self-narrative construction constrains and shapes memory, historians of science particularly see the dangers in employing recollection as unmediated reports of historical "facts".

--
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy
Duke University
www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html<http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html>