Psychogenic Amnesia

Psychogenic amnesia, or dissociative amnesia, is a memory disorder characterized by sudden retrograde autobiographical memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from hours to years. More recently, "dissociative amnesia" has been defined as 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 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. 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.