Quote:'Dissociative amnesia is a type of dissociative disorder that involves inability to recall important personal information that would not typically be lost with ordinary forgetting. It is usually caused by trauma or stress. In dissociative amnesia, the information lost would normally be part of conscious awareness and would be described as autobiographic memory.

Although the forgotten information may be inaccessible to consciousness, it sometimes continues to influence behavior (eg, a woman who was assaulted in an elevator refuses to ride in elevators even though she cannot recall the assault). The amnesia appears to be caused by traumatic or stressful experiences endured or witnessed (eg, physical or sexual abuse, rape, combat, genocide, natural disasters, death of a loved one, serious financial troubles) or by tremendous internal conflict (eg, turmoil over guilt-ridden impulses or actions, apparently unresolvable interpersonal difficulties, criminal behaviors). Rarely, dissociative amnesia is accompanied by purposeful travel or bewildered wandering, called fugue (from the Latin word fugere "to flee").

Quote:'Dissociative fugue is an uncommon phenomenon that sometimes occurs in dissociative amnesia. Dissociative fugue often manifests as

• Sudden, unexpected, purposeful travel away from home
• Bewildered wandering