Similar to Lacunar amnesia, dissociative amnesia causes the individual to lose their memory of a specific period of time, such as the duration of a violent crime (Mesulam 189). The memory is too stressful and traumatic be remembered. This type of amnesia may be resolved with extensive therapy.
Instances of alcohol abuse are often the foundation for a type of memory loss called Korsakoff's psychosis (syndrome). This type of memory loss is a form of anterograde amnesia. In this situation the person will have no problem recalling things that happened recently. However it will be difficult to remember simple things such as childhood stories. Korsakoff's psychosis is a progressive disorder and eventually triggers difficulties within the nervous system that could cause a loss of feeling in the fingers and toes.
In contrast to anterograde amnesia, retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall the events that took place before a trauma. Using the abovementioned example, the person in the car accident would have difficulty remembering being in the car or the accident itself. In many cases those who suffer from this type of amnesia never remember the seconds just before the traumatic incident. Retrograde amnesia tends to be more severe for recent events than those that took place in the distant past. During the early stages of recovery, many patients "display a gradual shrinkage of the time period encompassed by the retrograde memory loss"(Mesulam 61).
When a person demonstrates an inability to recollect events from their first years of life, they have what is called infantile amnesia. It is extremely difficult to discover the origin of this type of amnesia because it could stem from a number of situations. Robert L. Greene states that infantile amnesia is often "the result of the lack of schematic organization of experiences"(Greene 183). Others believe that a lack of language development during the early stages of life cause memories to be difficult to retrieve.
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