To what extent do you believe that psychogenic amnesia is distinct from organic amnesia? What would be the differences and similarities between psychogenic amnesia and organic amnesia?
There are brain injuries and emotional traumas. here on RG are people who have studied the expressions of these ways to loose your former life. Do a search.
Check this link:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/150/4/428.short
They are distinct in aetiology and also typically in both severity and reversibility. Organic amnesia is the product of a brain lesion, and tends to be severe and disabling, and usually irreversible. Psychogenic amnesias are rarely severe or disabling, and in most cases reversible as there is no associated brain damage.
I would recommend reading introductory Cog Psych textbooks, such as chapter 7 of Groome et al. (2013) An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and Disorders. Psychology Press.
Leah, I just saw your question. This is a tricky area, because the term "psychogenic amnesia" assumes we know the cause for certain (that it is "psychological" in some way), but that's not usually the case. Usually, all we know for certain is that there are features to the profile that don't fit with any familiar profile that is associated with a known organic cause, and so "psychogenic" is our next best guess.
A good overview of a series of presumed "psychogenic" cases is here: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/9/2498/4080831 You will notice that the cases are an extremely mixed bag, and while some have temporary difficulties, for others, the difficulty is severe and persistent. Many cases occur following an event that is not at all "psychological" (e.g., a head injury, substance abuse), so the evidence for genuine "psychological" causation is a bit flimsy. -
It is possible that some presumed cases of "psychogenic" amnesia may actually be cases of diffuse head injury not detectable using commonly used clinical imaging tools. The profile of disproportionately severe retrograde memory loss was once thought to be the hallmark of "psychogenic" amnesia, but there are now multiple reports of this amnesia profile consequent to head injury, suggesting the presentation alone does not necessarily imply a "psychogenic" origin (see for example, https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/121/10/1951/265627 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945208707342)
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