Dissociative Amnesia

Dissociative amnesia is a condition where a person cannot remember important information, usually related to a stressful or traumatic event. This memory loss is much more severe than normal forgetting.  It is not caused by physical injury (like a head injury). It causes significant distress and impairment.  Dissociative amnesia is often triggered by a traumatic or upsetting event. There are different types of dissociative amnesia:

1.       Localized Amnesia

It is the most common type of dissociative amnesia. In localized amnesia, the person forgets everything that happened during a specific period of time, usually after a traumatic event. The forgotten period is called the amnestic episode. During an amnestic episode, people may appear confused. They already have memory problems, but they usually don’t realize it.

Example: A soldier cannot remember a battle or events around it, but remembers everything before and after.

2.       Selective Amnesia

It is the second most common form of dissociative amnesia. The person remembers some parts of the event but not all.

Example: The soldier remembers some conversations during battle but not the most disturbing events.

3.       Generalized Amnesia

The memory loss goes beyond the traumatic event and includes things from the past.In severe cases, the person may not recognize family and friends.

4.        Continuous Amnesia

The memory loss keeps happening, even into the present. Example: The soldier forgets past events and also forgets new experiences as they happen.

Clinicians are not sure how common dissociative amnesia is, but they know it often happens during serious stress or danger. It often starts during serious stress, like war, natural disasters, or life-threatening situations. Childhood abuse, especially sexual abuse, can trigger it. Many adults have reported remembering long-forgotten abuse from childhood. It can also happen after emotional events, like losing a loved one, rejection.

Dissociative Fugue

            An extreme version of dissociative amnesia is called dissociative fugue. Here persons not only forget their personal identities and details of their past lives but also flee to an entirely different location.

•          Some people travel a short distance and make few social contacts in the new setting.

•          Some people travel a long distance takes a new name, new job, new relationship and even new personality traits.

The fugue usually ends suddenly. The person may wake up in a strange place, confused about how they got there. Sometimes discovered by police, friends, or accidents.

•          Most people regain their memories and do not experience fugue again.

•          Short fugues cause few problems, but long fugues (months or years) can cause big problems.

•          Some people may commit crimes during fugue and later face legal issues.

Explain

The Psychodynamic View

Psychodynamic theorists believe dissociative disorders happen because of repression. Everyone uses repression sometimes, but people with dissociative amnesia use it too much. The person blocks the memory of a very upsetting event to avoid the pain and anxiety.

The Behavioral View

Behaviorists believe that dissociation comes from normal memory processes, such as forgetting. They told it is learned through operant conditioning. Forgetting trauma for a short time lowers anxiety, making the person more likely to forget again in the future. So, dissociation is seen as an escape behavior.

State-Dependent Learning (Cognitive-Behavioral View):

People who develop dissociative disorders often have very strong connections between memories and their emotional state. They can only remember an event when they are in the same emotional state they were in when it happened. For example, if they are calm, they may not remember what happened during stressful times. This can lead to dissociative amnesia.

Self-Hypnosis:

Self-hypnosis means hypnotizing yourself, sometimes to forget painful events. Dissociative amnesia can happen when people, knowingly or unknowingly, hypnotize themselves to forget recent traumatic experiences. If this self-hypnosis erases all memories about their past and identity.

 

Treatments

The main treatments are psychodynamic therapy, hypnotherapy, and drug therapy.