Self and Memory 215“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanityis understandable, since time moves forward and changes constantly.
Places remain the same but the subject moves around and can get con-
fused with space orientation. People’s faces are remembered much lon-
ger as they change very slowly. Thus, inability to recognize people is a
sign of advanced dementia. In very severe cases, even self is no longer
recognized.
In the disorder called “transient global amnesia”, an otherwise
normal person (usually elderly) can suddenly lose all memories and not
recognize family members. Luckily this condition lasts only a few hours,
after which the past gradually returns, but what happens during the epi-
sode stays blank forever.
In focal amnesia, a block of memory within a given time span is
obliterated (say, no recall of a period between five and ten years old),
or the memory of a particular event is erased (when a soldier cannot
recall a combat scene). Focal amnesia are often functional in nature,
i.e., not accountable by a detectable structural damage to the brain. It
is usually due to unconscious suppression, as in neurosis, hysteria, and
post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Hypnosis, of course, can induce
reversible focal amnesia.
William James attributed the phenomenon of double personality
to alternating lapses of memory. In his book, Principles of Psychology,
he recounted a case of a certain Felida X, reported by Dr. Azam of Bor-
deaux: “At the age of fourteen this woman began to pass into a ‘sec-
ondary’ state characterized by a change in her general disposition and
character, as if certain ‘inhibitions’, previously existing, were suddenly
removed. During the secondary state she remembered the first state,
but on emerging from it into the first state she remembered nothing of
the second. At the age of forty-four the duration of the secondary state
(which was on the whole superior in quality to the original state) had
gained upon the latter so much as to occupy most of her time. During it
she remembers the events belonging to the original state, but her com-
plete oblivion of the secondary state when the original state recurs is
often very distressing to her, as, for example, when the transition takes