Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Psychology, Experimental, Psychology, Dissociative amnesia, occurrence, beliefs, feigned amnesia, UNCONSCIOUS REPRESSED MEMORY, ASSISTED INTERVIEWS, RETROGRADE-AMNESIA, DISORDERS, WIDESPREAD, LORAZEPAM, TRAUMA, ABUSE, Amnesia, Humans, Surveys and Questionnaires, C14/19/013#55213131, G0D3621N#56129231, 1109 Neurosciences, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Experimental Psychology, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5202 Biological psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology

Abstract:

Dissociative amnesia is one of the most controversial categories in the field of psychiatry and clinical psychology. Self-reports of dissociative amnesia in the general population, and beliefs about this topic, have so far not been subjected to empirical scrutiny. Here, we surveyed a sample from the general population (N = 1017), revealing that about a tenth (n = 102) claimed to have experienced dissociative amnesia. Some claims pertained to amnesia for traumatic autobiographical experiences (e.g., sexual assault), while other claims reflected memory loss for experiences that can be regarded as non-traumatic or non-stressful (e.g., dissociative amnesia for an anniversary). Importantly, many participants believed in the existence of dissociative amnesia, and those who claimed dissociative amnesia indicated even more belief in this phenomenon than the rest of the sample. Finally, many participants indicated to have at least once claimed to have feigned memory loss in their life, and that they experienced some form of forgetting when trying to retrieve events for which they lied upon. Overall, our findings suggest that claiming dissociative amnesia goes hand in hand with believing in dissociative amnesia.