Dissociative Amnesia

Let me grab your imagination for a sec and have you ponder this. It's wartime, and the opposing nation is dropping bombs. You have to scavenge and defend everything you find. Money is no longer accepted, and the currency is now barter and trade. Imagine a handful of coffee beans being worth more than the diamond ring on your finger. Bandages are a rarity that people would kill for. You and your family are secluded away in your boarded up apartment, trying to wait out this terrible fighting. You're beloved wife falls sick and soon after dies. Leaving you to take care of your 10 year old daughter on your own. Seeing his mother pass away sends your beloved little girl into a deep melancholy that eventually encourages the same illness that took her mother. You're doing everything you can to save her life. Trying with every fiber in your being to find what she needs to survive. But you can't leave her alone to go out and scavenge for medicine, so you have to wait for someone to come to you and barter. But one day, she disappears. You swear she's been kidnapped. You turn over every rock and search to the end of the earth for her. Only to find out that she died in your arms and you forget. 

That pain and sorrow you feel is exactly what gaming studio 11 bit studios wants you to feel. This war of mine: a father's promise focused on dissociative amnesia, a brutal psychiatric ailment similar to Alzheimer's. Previously known as Psychogenic Amnesia, this disorder has been reported in literature since 1935. By definition it is a sudden retrograde memory loss, often brought on by severe stress or trauma. I suppose that witnessing your daughter's death would definitely count as severe stress. In  this situation, Adam (the father) suffered from localized dissociative amnesia. He simply lost his memories from a specific period of time. There are two other forms, however, that gradually become more severe. 

Generalized Dissociative Amnesia is a complete loss of memory, including ones identity and life history. This is very similar, but not to be mistaken with Alzheimer's. The difference being that amnesia is a sudden onset generally brought on by trauma, stress, or in some rare cases travel. Which brings us to Dissociative Fugue. A relatively rare condition, a person develops generalized amnesia and can adopt a whole new identity. Unlike other types of dissociative amnesia, Fugue is a little more difficult to recover from. 

Generally, the lost memories can be recovered by environmental or social triggers. Being in a place that's oddly familiar, a smell you don't know why you know, your mom saying "the bacon is ready." Memories often can return as quickly as they disappeared. However, Fugue is the exception to this. Since the patient would often create a new identity, various therapeutic treatments would be required. Treatment would often include a combination of psychotherapy, medications, creative writing, therapeutic hypnosis, or family therapy. So basically a psych doctor would have to dive deep into your brain to recover the lost memories. Oddly enough I'm picturing a scuba diver fishing out oyster pearls from the ocean floor. 

So long story short, a video game taught me something new. It is possible to suddenly forget everything that makes you who you are. Its ironically beautiful if you think about it. A severe trauma is what causes you to lose your memory. Then in most causes it's the same trauma that allows you to recover them. Is this karmic justice or a subconscious form of self-mutilation on a mental level?