dissociative amnesia

Dissociative amnesia

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. The concept is scientifically controversial and remains disputed. 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. The atypical clinical syndrome of the memory disorder (as opposed to organic amnesia) is that a person with dissociative 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. Dissociative 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. Dissociative amnesia as a memory disorder is controversial.