What Is Dissociative Amnesia?

Dissociative amnesia

Dissociative amnesia

It is mainly the destruction of consciousness, memory, identity, or the normal integration of the environment that causes trouble in life, but these symptoms cannot be explained by physiological factors. Patients often don't know who they are or experience a lot of "I".

Dissociative amnesia

It is mainly the destruction of consciousness, memory, identity, or the normal integration of the environment that causes trouble in life, but these symptoms cannot be explained by physiological factors. Patients often don't know who they are or experience a lot of "I".

Symptoms of psychogenic amnesia:

1. Patients lose their memory of past experiences, and amnesia is caused by psychological reasons.

2. The memory lost by the patient is sometimes limited to things that cannot be remembered for a certain period of time, just remembering the old things and forgetting the present.

3. Some patients' memory loss is limited to lack of memory of important things. This situation is called {episodic amnesia}.

4. Some of the patients' lost memories may suddenly occur after suffering a painful blow. After a period of time, they may also recover their memories.

There are four types of psychogenic amnesia:

1. Local amnesia: Patients lose memory completely within hours before and after certain traumatic events

2. Selective amnesia: Individuals selectively remember something and forget something about what happened in a certain period of time

3. Holistic amnesia: Refers to an individual who completely forgets his or her life background, including name, address, etc.

4. Continuous amnesia: refers to an individual forgetting past experience since a certain year or before an event

The obvious symptoms of patients with amnesia include loss of memory for short-term things, difficulty in expressing words, and impaired understanding of abstract things. They can only think of speaking, but they cannot do it. Shows that it is easy to forget things, repeat questions, or ask things repeatedly, and that emotions are agitated or dull and uncooperative. Therefore, it is not only costly to take care of patients with amnesia. The long-term physical and mental exhaustion of the caregiver can even cause depression, which is a great shock and burden for the family members and a major social pressure.

The process of developing amnesia is from light to heavy

1. Mild patients: It is easy to forget what just happened, so it is difficult to learn new things. Sometimes you will lose your familiar path, and then you will feel depressed, afraid to go out, and unable to reply or deal with a lot of letters or bills. Therefore, at this time he may still be able to go to work and work well, not much different from normal people. However, if it is a little more serious, it will be difficult to travel, travel, or plan things such as a banquet, and its work efficiency will obviously deteriorate.

2. Moderate patients: forgetfulness worsens, and gradually forgets the names of old friends and things they have done before. Keep repeating one thing, or ask the same question over and over again, or ask your family to give it again if you think you haven't eaten. What you say to yourself will be Zhang Guanli Dai, or make up stories to come to Tangsai. Not being able to implement what you have written down and agreed to do. The behavior gradually gets out of control, easily excited, weird and wandering around. The clothing is malformed or inappropriate, or wear the same outfit every day. Confusion, or delusions, fantasies, and hallucinations. If you continue, you will gradually be unable to bathe yourself, use toilet utensils, and lose control of your bowel movements.

3. Severe patients: Even family and friends do nt recognize it, and they gradually lose the way to communicate with others. They will bark and beat people aimlessly, and they cannot take care of themselves. In the end, even movements and swallowing were impossible, and the family needed to get in and out of bed and insert a stomach tube to feed.

Dissociative amnesia is considered to be the most common dissociation disorder. The most common form of amnesia is amnesia of personal identity, but the memory of general information is complete. In fact, amnesia is the most common symptom of all dissociations. There are more women than men in dissociative amnesia, and there are more young adults than older people. The onset of amnesia in this type of case is usually sudden, and the patient will not be able to recall previous life or personality, and will mainly lose "memory of the past", especially traumatic life events.

Dissociative labyrinthine behavior is usually more purposeful and amnestic. Patients often leave their home or work and travel to another strange place to establish another home or work. When they are found, they already have a new "self", but they cannot remember important personal information of the past (such as the original name, family, work), and the new me and the old me will not interact. . The disease is rare and usually occurs after a war or major disaster. Dissociative dissociative disorder is a familiar multiple personality disorder. It is a chronic disease and is also considered to be the most serious of dissociative disorders.

Patients with this disease usually have more than two types of personality. One personality will become the main personality at different times, and they will ignore each other. When one personality appears, the other personality disappears. The two personalities have their own memories, emotions, behavior patterns, attitudes, etc., and the differences are usually large, as if the two souls live on the same body.

The cause of the disease is unknown, but studies have shown that antisocial personality, alcohol and drug abuse cases are prone to the disease. Disappearance of self-consciousness is the continuous or repeated consciousness of self, which temporarily disappears, and feels strange and unreal. Patients often feel like a robot, in a dream, or feel that they have left their body. Feeling uncomfortable for patients, and they know these symptoms are not real.

As for the cause of dissociation, there are still divergent opinions. In terms of pathogenesis, it is generally considered to be "dissociation of psychological function", that is, an individual who was originally capable of self-awareness and integration, because of the pressure, dissociated into various parts, so that the mind, memory, and behavior Being excluded from consciousness causes symptoms such as amnesia and personality changes.

Dissociative disorder refers to the psychological effects of the dissociation of the parties, the pain that exists in personal memory, or the desire that may appear in the consciousness and the impulse that is not recognized by the society, Dissociate to defend yourself, but because of dissociation, self-unification is lost, and eventually a psychological anomaly is formed. Dissociation is a general name for a class of mental illnesses. Among the important ones are psychogenic amnesia, psychogenic labia, and multiple personality.

(A) psychogenic amnesia and labia

Psychogenic amnesia is a kind of selective abnormal amnesia, referred to as amnesia. The symptoms of amnesia are:

(1) Although the patient loses the memory of past experience, there are no physical symptoms. The amnesia phenomenon is formed purely by psychological reasons.

(2) The memory lost by patients is sometimes limited to things that cannot be remembered for a certain period of time; some only remember the old things and forget the recent ones. This situation is called anterograde amnesia; some only remember Recent events and forgetting of old events are called retrograde amnesia.

(3) Some of the patients' lost memories are limited to the loss of important things. This situation is called episodic amnesia. Some patients may forget their address and name, but still remember how to drive and other activities.

(4) The memory lost by the patient is mostly related to matters that integrate with him (such as name, occupation, etc.). Anything that does not involve self-integration (such as driving a car) is not easy to forget.

(5) Psychogenic amnesia often occurs suddenly after suffering pain, and after a period of time, memory may suddenly resume.

Psychogenic fugue, referred to as fugue, refers to a psychological anomaly in which a patient loses one's husband's memory and has lost his way. The word fugue is Latin and means "to leave." After leaving home, the patient lost all his memories of the past and even forgot his name, address, and occupation. Patients wander to a new place, may learn to adapt from scratch, and re-establish a personality that is completely different from the past. The occurrence of stray disease is always followed by a painful blow. After wandering for a while, most of them suddenly wake up and restore their memories. However, after the end of the wandering, all the experiences of the wandering will no longer be remembered.

(Two) multiple personality

The so-called multiple personality, sometimes called dual personality, is a psychological anomaly in which a person has several personalities or personality. For a person with multiple personalities, each of his personalities is independent and has different memories, attitudes, and behaviors. Even the characteristics of each personality are completely different; one personality may be introverted, restrained, and conservative, while the other personality may be changed to be outgoing, open, and radical. Personalities have nothing to do with each other, but at different times and on different occasions, each personality alternates to control the behavior of the parties.

Among various psychological anomalies, multiple personality is a strange and mysterious anomaly. Patients with multiple personalities are mostly females. According to research, a female with multiple personalities is found. When different personalities appear alternately, the patient's physical condition changes accordingly; different personalities have their own heart rate, blood pressure, health status, Menstrual cycle (Jen & Evans, 1983).

Psychological Causes of Dissociation

In perverted psychology, although dissociation has long been identified as a type of personality loss of unity, but due to lack of sufficient research evidence, the cause of its formation has not been clearly understood. According to the psychoanalytic explanation, dissociation is caused by childhood, and the painful experience of childhood is suppressed in the subconscious. When growing up and encountering similar life difficulties, it is a symbolic way of changing face to dissociate Various symptoms of it. According to behaviorist psychologists' explanations, each psychological abnormality of dissociation is a patient who has encountered difficulties in life since childhood, in order to avoid the suffering of psychological stress caused by difficult events. Difficult ways of dilemma, over time, forming habits, and finally evolved into disease