![]() ![]() 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. Speculation also exists about psychogenic amnesia due to its similarities with 'pure retrograde amnesia', as both share similar retrograde loss of memory. Diagnoses of psychogenic amnesia have dropped since agreement in the field of transient global amnesia, suggesting some over diagnosis at least. Other researchers have hastened to defend the notion of psychogenic amnesia and its right not to be dismissed as a clinical disorder. Some researchers have cautioned against psychogenic amnesia becoming a "wastebasket" diagnosis when organic amnesia is not apparent. Possible malingering must also be taken into account. Failure to find an organic cause may result in the diagnosis that the amnesia is psychological, however it is possible that some organic causes may fall below a threshold of detection, while other neurological ails are thought to be unequivocally organic (such as a migraine) even though no functional damage is evident. Organic causes of amnesia can be difficult to detect, and often both organic cause and psychological triggers can be entangled. Even in cases of organic amnesia, where there is lesion or structural damage to the brain, caution must still be taken in defining causation, as only damage to areas of the brain crucial to memory processing is possible to result in memory impairment. Neurological cause of psychogenic amnesia is controversial. There are many clinical anecdotes of psychogenic or dissociative amnesia attributed to stressors ranging from cases of child sexual abuse to soldiers returning from combat. ![]() Suspected cases of psychogenic amnesia have been heavily reported throughout the literature since 1935 where it was reported by Abeles and Schilder. The most commonly cited examples of global-transient psychogenic amnesia are ' fugue states', of which there is a sudden retrograde loss of autobiographical memory resulting in impairment of personal identity and usually accompanied by a period of wandering. Past literature has suggested psychogenic amnesia can be 'situation-specific' or 'global-transient', the former referring to memory loss for a particular incident, and the latter relating to large retrograde amnesic gaps of up to many years in personal identity. 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. If other memory processes are affected, they are usually much less severely affected than retrograde autobiographical memory, which is taken as the hallmark of psychogenic amnesia. Access to episodic memory can be impeded, while the degree of impairment to short term memory, semantic memory and procedural memory is thought to vary among cases. Psychogenic amnesia is the presence of retrograde amnesia (the inability to retrieve stored memories leading up to the onset of amnesia), and an absence of anterograde amnesia (the inability to form new long term memories). 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. 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. These gaps involve an inability to recall personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature." In a change from the DSM-IV to the DSM-5, dissociative fugue is now subsumed under dissociative amnesia. More recently, "dissociative amnesia" has been defined as a dissociative disorder "characterized by retrospectively reported memory gaps. ![]() ![]() 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. ![]()
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