This term has remained until today though its use is nowadays much rarer than that of dissociative amnesia.
9 At their time and even until after the Second World War it was labeled ‘hysteria’. 6, 7, 8 While it was stated in classical textbooks that the amnesia is usually transient and functional recovery will be complete, more recent research shows that patients with dissociative amnesia may remain amnesic for years and decades, though those with the retrograde version of dissociative amnesia can learn about their past in a neutral, emotionally distant manner.ĭissociative amnesia as a psychiatric condition has a long background, which reached increased awareness with Charcot, Janet, and Freud. This may be accompanied by changes in other cognitive and emotive domains and may also lead to changes in personality. In very rare cases the reverse amnesia picture may be true, namely a preservation of old episodic-autobiographical memories, but an inability to store new personal information long-term 4, 5. All the more their lack of access to their personal past appears puzzling to their social environments (partners, friends, etc.). 3) 3 are usually preserved, implying that the patients on first glance appear quite normal: They can read, write, calculate, behave in a normal social way, and know details about the world and famous people. 1, 2 Semantic memory, which is memory for neutral facts, and procedural memory and priming (cf. Usually patients “forget” (or alternatively said: have no conscious access to) their total personal past. Furthermore, detailed treatment strategies are provided.ĭissociative amnesia is characterized by amnesia in the episodic-autographical domain. They are divided into (a) psychopharmacological and somatic treatments, (b) psychotherapeutic interventions, and (c) neuropsychological rehabilitation. Nevertheless, a number of quite divergent, though largely not evidence-based, therapeutic approaches exist and are described. Patients also seem to a high degree to possess immature, unstable personality features.
As many patients show the phenomenon of “la belle indifference”, their motivation for therapy or treatment of their amnesia is reduced. That means, most of them show severe retrograde amnesia for their biography, usually accompanied by changes in their personality and sometimes also by alterations in other cognitive and emotive domains. It is emphasized that dissociative amnesia has a stress or trauma-related etiology and that affected individuals, contrary to the still dominant clinical belief, are frequently more severely and enduringly affected. The psychiatric disease of dissociative amnesia is described and illustrated with case reports.
0 kommentar(er)
