Dissociative amnesia
Human memory disorder / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Dissociative amnesia or psychogenic amnesia is a dissociative disorder "characterized by retrospectively reported memory gaps. These gaps involve an inability to recall personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature."[1] In a change from the DSM-IV to the DSM-5, dissociative fugue is now subsumed under dissociative amnesia.[2]
Dissociative amnesia | |
---|---|
Other names | Psychogenic amnesia |
Brain-imaging data from two patients with dissociative amnesia | |
Specialty | Psychiatry |
Symptoms | Memory loss[1] |
Dissociative amnesia was previously known as psychogenic amnesia, a memory disorder, which was characterized by sudden retrograde episodic memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from hours to years to decades.[3]
The atypical clinical syndrome of the memory disorder (as opposed to organic amnesia) is that a person with psychogenic amnesia is profoundly unable to remember personal information about themselves; there is a lack of conscious self-knowledge which affects even simple self-knowledge, such as who they are.[4] Psychogenic amnesia is distinguished from organic amnesia in that it is supposed to result from a nonorganic cause: no structural brain damage should be evident but some form of psychological stress should precipitate the amnesia.[5] Psychogenic amnesia as a memory disorder is controversial.[6]