Psychogenic amnesia or dissociative amnesia is a memory disorder resulting from a sudden decline in memory and loss of autobiographical memory that occurs over a period of time ranging from a few hours to years. Dissociative amnesia has been defined as a dissociative disorder "in which memory lapses are characterized by retrograde recall, and these lapses include the inability to recall personal information, often of a traumatic or stressful nature." The change from to , dissociative fugue is now included under dissociative amnesia. Dissociative amnesia is an atypical clinical syndrome, in which a person with psychogenic amnesia is largely unable to recall personal information about himself. The person also suffers from a lack of self-awareness and self-knowledge that affects even basic knowledge of the person, such as who they are. Psychogenic amnesia is distinguished from organic amnesia in that it is assumed to result from non-organic causes, with no obvious damage or destruction to the brain or brain structure or brain lesion. However, some forms of stress and psychological distress may contribute to psychogenic amnesia, however psychogenic amnesia as a memory disorder is controversial. Information about psychogenic amnesia: Psychogenic amnesia is defined as a state of retrograde memory. This leads to impairment of episodic memory, but the degree of impairment of short-term memory, semantic memory, and procedural memory varies between cases. If other memory processes are affected, they are usually much less severe than autobiographical amnesia, and this is considered an advantage over psychogenic amnesia. However, the diversity of memory impairments among psychogenic amnesias raises questions about the correct neuropsychological criteria, despite extensive studies of a wide range of cases, few of which have shown that memory deficits are specific to psychogenic amnesia. Previous studies have suggested that psychogenic amnesia can be "situational" or "transient", the former referring to loss of memory for a specific event, and the latter relating to gaps in retrieval memory over several years in the domain of identity and personal information. The most common example of transient global psychogenic amnesia is "fugue states" in which there is a sudden retrograde loss of memory for personal and autobiographical information, resulting in impaired recollection of personal identity and often accompanied by a period of wonder and disorientation. Suspect cases were identified in the 1935 study by Abeles and Schilder. There are many clinical anecdotes of psychogenic amnesia or dissociative forgetting due to stresses ranging from child molestation to soldiers returning from combat. The neurological etiology of psychogenic amnesia is controversial. Even in cases of organic amnesia, where there is a lesion or damage to the brain, care must be taken in determining the cause, except in cases of direct damage to brain areas involved in memory processing, in which case memory impairment may result. Detecting organic causes of amnesia can be difficult, and organic and psychological causes are often intertwined. Failure to identify the organic cause may lead to the amnesia being diagnosed as psychogenic, however organic causes may not be detected at diagnosis, while non-organic causes may be assigned as organic, even though there is no obvious functional impairment. Malingering must also be taken into account when diagnosing the condition. Some researchers have warned against psychogenic amnesia being "trash canned" when organic amnesia is not obvious. Other researchers have been quick to defend the idea of psychogenic amnesia and the right of the person to be diagnosed as suffering from a clinical disorder. It is interesting to note that diagnoses of psychogenic amnesia have declined since the agreement in the field of transient global amnesia. There is also speculation about psychogenic amnesia due to the similarity with pure retrograde amnesia, as they share the same retrograde amnesia. Also, although there is no obvious functional impairment or brain damage in pure retrograde amnesia, unlike psychogenic amnesia, psychological or psychological triggers are not thought to be irrelevant to the condition of retrograde amnesia. Psychogenic triggers such as emotional stress are common in our daily lives, and pure retrograde amnesia is still considered very rare. Also, the lack of identification of organic damage does not mean that it is not present and it is likely that psychological factors and organic causes are present in retrograde amnesia. Comparison with organic amnesia: Psychogenic amnesia is thought to differ from organic amnesia in a number of ways. One is that unlike organic amnesia, psychogenic amnesia is thought to occur when there is no obvious brain damage or lesions. Psychogenic triggers almost always precede psychogenic amnesia. Several anecdotal case studies have provided evidence that psychogenic amnesia arises from traumatic experiences such as World War II. As mentioned earlier, the etiology of psychogenic amnesia remains controversial, as the cause is often unclear. What is common to all cases is the presence of psychological stress and organic amnesia. Often, but not necessarily, a prior history of psychiatric illness such as depression is present along with the stressor. The absence of psychological evidence of the amnesia does not mean that it is not present; for example, childhood trauma can cause amnesia later in life; however, this argument runs the risk of psychogenic amnesia becoming a term for any amnesia that has no apparent organic cause. Given the difficulty of defining organic amnesia, determining the difference between organic and psychogenic amnesia is not easy, and experiences and experiences are often taken into account in the diagnosis, as well as the symptoms of the patient. Amnesia is supposed to differ from organic amnesia qualitatively, as retrograde amnesia of autobiographical memory occurs despite the integrity of deductive memory. Another difference between psychogenic and organic amnesia is the temporal progression of retrograde autobiographical amnesia. The temporal progression of forgetting in most cases of organic amnesia is most severe in the period immediately preceding the disease, while for psychogenic amnesia, the temporal progression of psychogenic amnesia is consistently large. Although there are many studies of psychogenic amnesia that contrast with organic amnesia, the distinction between psychogenic and neurological features is often difficult and remains controversial. Brain activity in psychogenic amnesia can be assessed using imaging techniques such as CT scans, based on clinical data. Some research has suggested that organic and psychogenic amnesia share to some extent the same structure and composition of the temporal hierarchical region of the brain. It has been suggested that episodic memory deficits may be due to dysfunction of the limbic system, while deficits or defects in self-identity have been suggested to be due to functional changes associated with the posterior parietal cortex. We always repeat that caution must be exercised when attempting to establish a causal relationship, since cause and effect may be intertwined. Since psychogenic amnesia is defined as being caused by the absence of physical brain damage or injury, it is difficult to determine treatment by physical means. However, distinguishing between organic and dissociative amnesia is described as a key step in effective treatments. Treatment in the past has attempted to alleviate psychogenic amnesia by treating the mind itself, guided by theories ranging from concepts such as the "betrayal theory" to drug-induced amnesia. Treatment attempts often revolved around discovering the trauma that caused the amnesia, as well as relying on medications such as intravenous sedatives, which were most popular in the treatment of psychogenic amnesia during World War II, and were later replaced by benzodiazepines. "Confidence serums" were thought to work by making the traumatic memory more palatable to express by reducing the emotional intensity of the memory. Under the influence of these drugs, the patient may be more willing to talk about what happened to him or her. However, the information extracted from the patient under the influence of drugs such as sedatives may be a mixture of fact and fiction, and thus not scientific in gathering accurate evidence of past events. Treatment has often aimed to treat the patient as a whole, and practice may have varied in different settings. Hypnosis was also a popular method of eliciting information from people about their past experiences, but like "truth" drugs, this technique served only to lower the threshold of suggestibility, so that the patient would speak easily but not necessarily be truthful. If the motive for the amnesia was not immediately apparent, deeper motives were often sought by intense questioning of the patient, often using hypnosis and "truth" drugs. In many cases, patients were found to recover from their amnesia on their own, so they did not need treatment. Psychogenic amnesia is a fictional plot device in many films, books, and other media. Examples include Shakespeare's King Lear who suffered from amnesia and madness after his daughters' betrayal, the character of Nianna in the 1978 opera by Nicholas DeLiaras, Jackie Chan in Who Am I, Roy Gibbs's Ter Boer in 24, Victoria Lord in One Life to Live, Bryn in The Mysterious Skin, and Jason Bourne in the Bourne trilogy.