Searching for Memory by Daniel L. Schacter

Author:Daniel L. Schacter [DANIEL L. SCHACTER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

WHEN THE MIND FORGETS ITS SELF

Beyond Lumberjack

Because there have been so few controlled studies of memory during episodes of psychogenic amnesia, it is difficult to say whether the constellation of features that characterized Lumberjack—loss of explicit memory for individual episodes and other personal information, a preserved island of autobiographical recall involving a specific lifetime period, and excellent retention of nonpersonal, semantic memory—is typical of other patients. The neurologist Marc Kritchevsky and colleagues recently reported that ten patients with psychogenic amnesias involving loss of personal identity performed just like Lumberjack on the Crovitz task, recalling many episodes since the onset of their amnesias and virtually none from before. But only half of these patients recognized famous faces normally; the other half, in contrast to Lumberjack, performed poorly on this test of semantic memory. All of them had problems recalling specific public events (for example, Who killed John Lennon?), a task that probably draws on both episodic and semantic memory. In contrast to Lumberjack, some of the patients remained amnesic for weeks and months. These findings indicate that no single profile characterizes all patients with psychogenic amnesia and loss of personal identity. This should not be surprising, because such amnesias are no doubt influenced by idiosyncratic features of each patient’s psychological history and present conflicts.4 (See figure 8.1.)

FIGURE 8.1

Martha McCollough, “Amnesia,” 1992. 9 x 26 x 6ʺ. Mixed media construction. Clark Gallery, Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Psychogenic amnesias often serve the purpose of temporary escape from an intolerable situation, as highlighted in this evocative wire-mesh sculpture. We see part of the piece, which consists of seven interconnected “pages” of wire. The work centers around the printed phrase: “The amnesiac, recovering his memory, changes his name and leaves home to start a new life.” This is an enigmatic offering: in classical cases of fugue and functional amnesia, patients adopt new identities and leave home upon losing their memories. But the phrase does imply that intolerable life events caused amnesia in the first place. Below this phrase is a shadow figure, perhaps symbolic of lost identity. On the facing page we see an empty grid overlaid on the repeated word days, suggesting lost periods of time. Other pages contain empty grids overlaid on the words years and ages; ladders leading to and from nowhere; and a sinking ship. With this piece, McCollough manages to convey a sense of the bewildering state of mind that characterizes patients with psychogenic amnesias.

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