The value of emotionally-charged memories

I have no wish to provoke Jim to further dialogue, but he did raise a point which I thought was very worthy of discussion, and that is:

I wish I could remember every factual detail from thirty years ago, it would have made writing my novel much easier.

I know what Jim means here. Some memories have really faded -- places, people, events just seem to be a blur. But the amazing thing is that memories that are charged with emotions, whether traumatic events, fear, surprise, etc. are still extremely vivid. I'm not sure whether Jim is disparaging emotionally-charged memories when he says the following, but as far as I understand it (not being a health care professional or a psychiatrist), is that the ONLY reason memories still exist so clearly, "frozen" on the silver screen of our minds in sharp detail, is because the adreneline was high at the time the memories were being made and stored in our brains. Jim says:

I believe that you have a very emotional memory of these incidents; the removal of your children, the unjust dropping of you off in the snowy cold at 2am. After speaking and writing to many SGAs over these last few months, I have found that they have a very good handle on the emotional side of their memories of events, horrible events, -yet the factual side is still a blurr to so many. Many remember faces, but not names or places.

First of all, the reason most SGs can't remember names (if legal names are being referred to) is because Bible names were used. I don't think Jim can be referring to this, since this is so obvious, so he must mean that SGs have difficulty remembering even Bible names of "uncles" and "aunties." I'm not sure this is indeed the case, but even if it is, it could be because they were so young. As far as not remembering details of places, well, most Family kids lived inside the "bubble" of Homes and Jumbos, and never got to see the outside world much, except for litnessing, etc.

But my main contention here is that emotionally-charged memories are not only valid, but only exist BECAUSE they were charged with strong emotions at the time they were made. As I get older, I find many memories and details are fading, but some are still sharp and clear, and those are the emotionally-charged ones.