It must be extremely rare, since I’ve never heard of any real cases of it happening.
I’m currently reading Cornell Woolrich’s The Black Curtain, and it’s a typical Woolrich amnesia story in which the protagonist is struck on the head by some falling object or in a car accident; in Woolrich’s amnesia fiction, typically, the protagonist functions perfectly in every other way except he simply can’t remember ANYTHING of his life or where he belongs or who he is. That’s the mystery.
Has amnesia like this ever happened to you or someone you know, or perhaps was that story proto-type simply a writer’s/director’s fad of an earlier time (mostly, the film noir era)?
Amnesia after a head injury does happen, but it would usually be retrograde amnesia. In other words, the lost memory concerns the period of time surrounding the injury. It may or may not be permanent.
There are other types of amnesia as well. There is a psychological form that can be a symptom of post traumatic stress syndrome.
Very serious head injuries can cause global amnesia, but there are other problems associated. This wouldn’t be someone walking around.
I know this doesn’t exactly answer your question. I’m speaking only from my own professional experience.
It has happened to me twice and to my first husband once.
The first time that it happened to me was immediately after an electro-convulsive shock treatment in the 1960’s. For a few minutes I didn’t know who I was or where I was, but I did understand language and responded to a reassuring nurse. The amnesia lasted only moments but it was very frightening.
The second time was the result of an emotional trauma. My mind blocked out recent events (covering a period of a few months --I’m still not sure how long). I think that I could have remembered if I had allowed myself to, but I wouldn’t.
I knew who I was, but didn’t remember that I was separated from my husband. I was hospitalized sometime during the winter. I didn’t remember the previous Christmas or much of what had transpired in autumn. Yet I remembered teaching at the high school I was assigned to and I was there only for that one year.
I was extremely depressed and confused when my estranged husband found me – or maybe I called him.
I spent five weeks in the hospital and I began to recover my memory beginning with little things like seeing a certain movie.
On one “therapeutic” trip home from the hospital for a few hours with my husband, I found a diary that I had kept during the stressful period that led up to the episode which caused my mind to choose to shut down. It was “enlightening” to read. My husband double checked some of the information which bore out the truth of what I had written and what I then remembered after reading the diary – which was only a couple of pages long and consisted mostly of lists, I think.
It may sound like a poorly written movie script, but it was ugly and awful and frightening.
My husband I reconciled but separated again about five years later and divorced but remained friends.
During the early days of our divorce, he was knocked unconscious in a fight. For a while (an hour or two) he did not remember that we were divorced or that he was in love with another woman.
I’ve had it once as a result of a head injury (motorbike accident). I can’t recall anything from about an hour or so prior to the accident and a similar period afterward.
Many people (myself included) have probably also experienced alcohol induced amnesia. Is this the same thing as regular amnesia?
My uncle’s football helmet pad fell out, but the coach told him to still play. He got hit, and couldn’t remember anything at all. He had to re-learn who he was, who his family members were, etc. Took him a few weeks to get his memory back.
During this time he was very timid and child-like, which is much different from his usual loud, confident jerk nature.
An old National Geographic article mentioned a case like this. A woman suffered a fairly minor head injury, and ended up losing all memory of her past. Permenantly.
Now, for Movie Amnesia, that’d just mean she couldn’t remember her personal past or identity, but still remembered learned skills (like reading, driving a car, etc.) The woman in the article, however, had to relearn nearly everything. I think she could still (or very quickly relearned) how to speak and walk, but that was about it.
I read some years ago about a gentleman who was on board a cruise ship in the 1920s or 30s. For no readily apparent reason, he collapsed one day and was bleeding out of both ears. When he came to, he didn’t recognize his surroundings or any of the people he was with. He knew who he was, but the last thing he could remember was being about 12 years old and playing in a baseball game, during which he was struck in the head by a fastball. The twenty or so years between the baseball game and waking up on the cruise ship were apparently gone for good. He had forgotten two or three languages that he’d learned in adulthood, and had no memory of his wife and children. He even panicked when he saw an airplane flying overhead as he couldn’t remember ever having seen one before.
Yeah, there’s about 18 hours I appear to have permanently lost associated with a football game in college. I remember deciding to skip my 2PM class and then I was waking up in the hospital the next morning.
The game began at 6PM so it looks like I lost 4 hours prior to the injury and everything after that until I woke up. I’m told I was awake and disoriented.
Well, close. There are only two types of amnesia (as recognized in diagnostic materials) : retrograde, which means memories were lost that occured prior to the causitive event, and anterograde, which means the lost memories are from after the causitive event. There are varying levels of each, and they are not exclusive (but having both is rare).
You are correct in stating that retrograde amnesia is very common in relation to stressful or physically damaging events. Most people who have had serious physical trauma (being unable to remember the details of a car wreck is a great example) have experienced some form of it, and many who have suffered several emotional trauma have as well.
The extreme of retrograde, in which one forgets everything that happens before a causitive event is rare, and often signals several trauma, either psychological or physical. Hollywood may show this as common, and reversable, but people with this level of loss rarely recover completely.
The extreme of anterograde is (in my opinion) even more debilatating, since the sufferers generally cannot remember (learn) new skills or retain any new data. They also often appear to be suffering from a form of dementia, since they are suprised to see people aged, or to discover that the house was painted, even if they knew that the previous day.
It is worth noting that movies tend to portray amnesia as a wholly psychological condition, that can be undone / overcome. Amnesia can be caused by physical trauma as well, and if the trauma is permanant the loss generally is.
My wife is a psychotherapist who has counseled a few patients with amnesia. All of her patients with amnesia have suffered from some sort of traumatic event (ususally molestation, rape, abuse) and the amnesia is limited to the actual events and the immediate time around the event (a day or so either side). According to her, complete amnesia is extremely rare and, as was pointed out above, is usually accompanied by other forms of dementia as well. She worked with the family of one such woman who not only couldn’t remember anything at all about herself, she couldn’t remember anything at all from minute to minute.
So to him, he went 20 years into the future! :eek: He was 12, got hit on the head during a game, and when he came to, he was now 32, married (w/children?) and on a Cruise ship.
In The Man Who Mistook His Wife or a Hat, Oliver Sacks describes a man suffering from what I suppose would be considered a form of anterograde amnesia. After years of alcohol abuse he had lost several decades of memory, with the result that he was convinced he was still in his early twenties and was at a lost to explain why the man who said he was his brother looked like he was in his sixties. The man also had severe difficulties with making and keeping new memories, much like the hero in the film Memento. Sacks would visit the patient daily, but have to introduce himself each time. It wasn’t just that the man couldn’t remember his name; it was as though he was meeting him for the first time in his life each time.
I recall some years back a piece on some 60 Minutes-type show about a teenage girl somewhere in The United States who was walking home one day down a quiet strteet in her suburban neighborhood. She suffered a blow to the head–how or why was not known–and lost consciousness. A considerable interval had passed–at least a year or two–and she was now apparently a sufferer of the classic “movie amnesia”; after she was found she had to be retaught what her name was, where she lived, what school she was enrolled in, etc. At the same time, however, she could recall how to talk, how to dress herself, how to read, etc. So yeah: apparently it does happen sometimes, apparently.
Also of interest are so-called “fugue” states in which a person becomes extremely disoriented and suffers some significant memory loss for a period of relatively short duration. A classic sufferer was Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. Unhappy in his career and his life generally, and apparently suffering from a lot of stress, one day he became sort of dizzy while sitting at his office desk, got up, muttered something about going down to the river to soak his feet, and simply wandered off like a sleepwalker. Wanting to forget about his responsibilities and his lousy life, he had. IIRC, a short time later he quit his career and devoted himself to writing.
The people who had to relearn everything… did they have to relearn motor skills, or did they just have to discover that they had them? Imean, could someone discover they used to be a great hockey player just by playing with the puck a little?
For about six years now I’ve gotten up every morning and checked my email. At this point I’ll call it instinct. If I had everything erased by amnesia, when I groggily crawled out of bed in the mornings would I instinctively plant myself in front of the computer?
Or better yet, a Yank goes to the UK and gets amnesia. Would he instinctively drive on the right side of the road or would he be a total blank slate?
There was a 90% chance that sentence was going to read, “a Yak goes to the UK and gets amnesia” would make sense to no one but would inspire many punchlines.
i was playing rugby in school many years ago, when i decided i could take on this really big forward…of course i simply bounced off and knocked myself out. the rest of the day was very surreal. the moments surrounding the incident was extremely hazy, and i remember patches of time, like getting into scrum straight after, then next thing i know i was trying to work out how to put my shirt on in the changing rooms. then i remember asking people what year and date it was later on in the day. i still knew who i was, but everything seemed different, like i was in a different dimension. very earie. then walking back from school i recall that everything was getting a little more normal, but still not quite right. following day i was of course fine. this may seem strange, but in some ways i enjoyed the experience, apart from the getting knocked out part!
The condition slipster refers to is Korsakoff’s (sometimes Korsakov’s) Syndrome. I mentioned Dr. Sacks when pixelfreak posted about amnesia in December. Here’s the thread:
I agree with slipster that fugue states can can correspond closely to some presentations of “movie (or sop opera) amnesia”
People in a fugue state may experience a “break”, and often move to another area, start a new life (get a differnt job, marry, have kids). Do they really “lose their memory”? It’s hard to say. Often they retain significant skills, but it’s at least as common for them to forget they have substantial professional training (e.g. a lawyer may be founf selling cars, without ever haveing displayed any special understanding of the law; a doctor who becomes a carpenter might be considered ‘bright’ but not show signs of a scientific education). Are they faking it or just repressing? It’s hard to say, but some cases have been striking enough that the question is apparently moot. The APA and DSM-IV recognizes the reality of the memory loss - but maybe you just have to accept it to treat it. I’m not familiar with any intensive neurological studies of such people, but I’m sure they must have been undertaken. It’s just too intriguing!
Stress is usually a factor. Organic disease or trauma (physical or emotional) can sometimes play a role, but it’s not necessary, and it’s often impossible to say exactly what role they played in the fugue state, even when they are present.
Fugue states are very uncommon (but apparently real). Feigned fugue states are much more common. Running away is rampant.
However, some cases have gone into a fugue state when they were apparently happy at home, and may return to their old life and spouses with apparent equanimity, when they are “discovered”, and may be perfectly happy in the life they left. Each case is unique.
Humans are a funny species. Gödel was right: no symbolic system can contain a complete description of itself.
