The psychological issues of the main character in Memento is an interesting lens to look at manipulation through. Leonard’s short term memory loss manipulates him into being forced to trust everything he is told, having no memories to use to question them. This opens doors for further manipulation of people taking advantage of his condition (like when he was charged for two rooms instead of one). His condition does not only open doors for manipulation, it also eliminates them. Memory is itself manipulation. In my psych class we learned about perception, processing and memory and learned that memory is often unreliable. When people perceive things, they rarely process and remember everything they see. When certain information is missing in our memory we fill in the blanks using prior knowledge and experience. This leads to false memories, even when the person in question believes that its the truth. False memories manipulate and mislead people, including the person misremembering. This has real life consequences including false imprisonment from unreliable eye-witness testimonies. The human conscious is not reliable and is constantly manipulating while also manipulated. Leonard’s absence of new manipulative memories and use of facts through notes and tattoos leads him to solve his case. Although its certainly easier to follow a case with a working memory, Leonard was able to find his wife’s killer successfully from facts, notes and deduction, bypassing mind’s manipulation.
I can see the point that you are trying to make. Due to not being able to completely remember and understand his surroundings, Leonard is in an almost permanent state of confusion and manipulation. Without the tattoos or clues that he uses to manipulate himself, he would never be able to keep track of what's going on and how to approach it. Without these self manipulations, it would be almost impossible for him to survive and live in the real world.
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