Dissociative Amnesia and Dissociative Identity Disorder

Forgetting What No One Should

Shirley J. Davis
4 min readJun 2, 2024

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Photo by David Babayan on Unsplash

If you live with dissociative identity disorder in your life, you are very aware of the problems you have with your memory. Conversations and appointments get forgotten, leaving many confused friends, colleagues, and loved ones.

Then, after we realize we have forgotten something important, we are embarrassed and wonder if we have early-onset dementia.

This article will explore dissociative amnesia in-depth, including personal thoughts and feelings concerning memory dysfunction in dissociative identity disorder.

Different Forms of Amnesia in DID

Dissociative identity disorder brings with it many challenges, but perhaps the worst is amnesia. Memory loss in DID is classified as:

Localized: No memory for a short period.

Generalized: No memory of your life history and who you are.

Selective: No memory for specific events or the different aspects of an event.

Continuous amnesia: the inability to remember events after a specific time up to and sometimes including the present.

Systemized amnesia: You cannot remember specific categories of information, including but not limited to…

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Shirley J. Davis

I am an author/speaker/grant writer in the U.S. My passion is authoring information about mental health disorders, especially dissociative identity disorder..