17 Facts About Psychogenic amnesia

Psychogenic amnesia or dissociative amnesia is a memory disorder characterized by sudden retrograde episodic memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from hours to years to decades.

Atypical clinical syndrome of the memory disorder 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.

Psychogenic amnesia is distinguished from organic amnesia in that it is supposed to result from a nonorganic cause: no structural brain damage or brain lesion should be evident but some form of psychological stress should precipitate the amnesia, however psychogenic amnesia as a memory disorder is controversial.

Psychogenic amnesia is the presence of retrograde amnesia, and an absence of anterograde amnesia.

However the wide variability of memory impairment among cases of psychogenic amnesia raises questions as to its true neuropsychological criteria, as despite intense study of a wide range of cases there is little consensus of which memory deficits are specific to psychogenic amnesia.

Organic causes of Psychogenic amnesia can be difficult to detect, and often both organic cause and psychological triggers can be entangled.

Some researchers have cautioned against psychogenic amnesia becoming a "wastebasket" diagnosis when organic amnesia is not apparent.

Diagnoses of psychogenic amnesia have dropped since agreement in the field of transient global amnesia, suggesting some over diagnosis at least.

Also, although no functional damage or brain lesions are evident in the case of pure retrograde amnesia, unlike psychogenic amnesia it is not thought that purely psychological or 'psychogenic triggers' are relevant to pure retrograde amnesia.

Psychogenic amnesia is supposed to differ from organic amnesia in a number of ways; one being that unlike organic amnesia, psychogenic amnesia is thought to occur when no structural damage to the brain or brain lesion is evident.

Lack of psychological evidence precipitating amnesia doesn't mean there isn't any, for example trauma during childhood has even been cited as triggering amnesia later in life, but such an argument runs the risk of psychogenic amnesia becoming an umbrella term for any amnesia of which there is no apparent organic cause.

Psychogenic amnesia is supposed to differ from organic amnesia qualitatively in that retrograde loss of autobiographical memory while semantic memory remains intact is said to be specific of psychogenic amnesia.

The temporal gradient of loss in most cases of organic amnesia is said to be steepest at its most recent premorbid period, whereas for psychogenic amnesia the temporal gradient of retrograde autobiographical memory loss is said to be quite consistently flat.

Functional assessment of brain activity can be assessed for psychogenic amnesia using imaging techniques such as fMRI, PET and EEG, in accordance with clinical data.

Psychogenic amnesia is defined by its lack of physical damage to the brain, treatment by physical methods is difficult.

Treatments in the past have attempted to alleve psychogenic amnesia by treating the mind itself, as guided by theories which range from notions such as 'betrayal theory' to account for memory loss attributed to protracted abuse by caregivers to the amnesia as a form of self-punishment in a Freudian sense, with the obliteration of personal identity as an alternative to suicide.

Psychogenic amnesia is a common fictional plot device in many films, books and other media.