Elsevier

Comprehensive Psychiatry

Volume 40, Issue 2, March–April 1999, Pages 160-171
Comprehensive Psychiatry

Dissociative detachment and memory impairment: Reversible amnesia or encoding failure?

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-440X(99)90121-9Get rights and content

Abstract

The authors propose that clinicians endeavor to differentiate between reversible and irreversible memory failures in patients with dissociative symptoms who report “memory gaps” and “lost time”. The classic dissociative disorders, such as dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder, entail reversible memory failures associated with encoding experience in altered states. The authors propose another realm of memory failures associated with severe dissociative detachment that may preclude the level of encoding of ongoing experience needed to support durable autobiographical memories. They describe how dissociative detachment may be intertwined with neurobiological factors that impair memory, and they spell out the significance of distinguishing reversible and irreversible memory impairment for diagnosis, patient education, psychotherapy, and research.

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      These findings pave the way for further research of autobiographical memory failures among dissociators with regard to current, daily events and not only past and childhood experiences. A promising angle for further investigation is the underlying mechanism of these memory failures, which should question whether they are based on the disruption of encoding processes, and are therefore irreversible, or perhaps they involve retrieval failures and are therefore reversible (this issue is thoroughly described by Allen et al. (1999)). Additionally, the relationship found between dissociative experiences and alterations in SoA should be further explored to understand the basis upon which this relationship is formed.

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    D.A.C. is in private practice, Topeka, KS.

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