I like reading books that could be described as "all the oopsies that resulted from my moving to the countryside/a foreign country".
I saw in the introduction to one of those a comment from the author that you can tell on reading the book whether the author is still living in the area about which they are writing, by how blunt they are about their neighbours....
Another one, the author (a lady) started out with amusing columns on her life in the local paper. She badly upset the mother of her manfriend, because he'd spent a load of time sorting out the gates on her smallholding, and she then wrote a slightly tongue in cheek piece on the pleasures of a well hung gate. Didn't name any names but.....
Regarding James Archie comment on lies.
I read biographies and histories for ideally as balanced an account of events as can be achieved.
I read autobiographies to meet a person. I would hope they are not telling porkies, but people have different views of events and what one thinks is true, another doesn't. I have no problem if they change names to protect people or fudge their location.
I remember reading the Lamorna books - market gardening in Cornwall - and Derek Tangye gave his exact location. Fans of his books used to drop by to see him - which was nice - but they also took up a lot of his time and many were oblivious to hints that he had crops and animals to tend - he put that in some of his later books. There was also mention of people coming by, interrupting his work to tell him how much they loved his book and would get it out of the library and copy out passages they loved the best.
Memoirs to me are "events as I saw them". If it is a record of major historical events, by say the ambassador who was there, I'd be looking for mostly accurate names. But if there was reference to someone whose life could be endangered - as in MI6 - I'd expect that to be entirely fudged. Mr X is sometimes OK for me. It should be noted though that with something at Ambassadorial level, then there would be records which would be released many years after the events - and the memoir could be checked against it.
@ Jim - you could just say "my psychologist" unless that is too much of a give away.
Also, my tuppence worth is that I don't see that noteworthy persons have to name names any more than anyone else.
And I don't go checking up on names, so I'm not fussed if they are fudged.