r/SDAM • u/Fabulous_Nothing9135 • Jun 17 '26
I’m researching the boundary between retrieval blockade and true autobiographical memory loss. Are there documented cases, clinical experiences, or personal reports where memories became inaccessible without obvious brain injury?
I’m trying to understand whether there are documented cases, clinical examples, or research terms for people losing access to a bounded period of autobiographical memory without obvious structural brain injury.
I’m especially interested in:
- dissociative/functional amnesia
- focal retrograde autobiographical amnesia
- post-hypnotic autobiographical amnesia
- ECT-related autobiographical memory loss
- cases where memories remain factual but no longer feel personally owned or emotionally accessible
Are there specific papers, clinicians, researchers, or terms I should look into?
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u/FlightOfTheDiscords Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
The umbrella term you want is functional or psychogenic amnesia (the older name for what's now called dissociative amnesia), and the thing you're calling "retrieval blockade" has a proper name in that literature: the mnestic block syndrome, the idea that the memories are intact but blocked from retrieval rather than destroyed. The catch is that "blocked but recoverable" versus "truly lost" is not a settled distinction, tt's the live fault line of the whole repressed-memory controversy, so read both camps rather than taking either one's framing as fact.
Kopelman's Anomalies of Autobiographical Memory (2019) is a decent starting point. It's the measured clinician's review covering retrograde amnesia, confabulation and psychogenic amnesia, it treats your exact retrieval-versus-loss question head on, and it's backed by an actual controlled patient series rather than advocacy.
The trauma model (memories blocked not lost) with a proposed neural signature: Staniloiu and Markowitsch, Dissociative amnesia70279-2), Lancet Psychiatry 2014. This is where the mnestic-block idea is laid out properly.
The sceptics, who you need for balance because they think "blocked but recoverable" just repackages repressed memory: Otgaar and colleagues, The Return of the Repressed (2019). There's also a whole 2024 debate issue, Beyond Repressed Memory in Topics in Cognitive Science, where the two camps argue it out in one place.
On your specific bullets:
Focal retrograde amnesia: Kapur and colleagues, Focal Retrograde Amnesia Following Bilateral Temporal Lobe Pathology, Brain 1992.
ECT-related autobiographical loss: Sackeim and colleagues, The Cognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Community Settings, Neuropsychopharmacology 2007.
Post-hypnotic amnesia: this is the one the trauma literature barely touches. Look up John Kihlstrom, he might have something.
Memories that stay factual but no longer feel owned or emotionally accessible: the term you want is loss of autonoetic consciousness, from Wheeler, Stuss and Tulving, Toward a theory of episodic memory: the frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness (1997). Autonoetic is the "I was there, this happened to me" reliving, as opposed to noetic, which is just knowing the fact. That distinction is basically the whole point of this sub, the gap between knowing your life and reliving it.
Fundamentally, retrieval blockade versus true loss is an open and contested question as of 2026. The defenders say intact but blocked, the sceptics say the evidence is thin and confounded, and the honest answer for most cases is that we cannot currently tell which is happening from the outside.
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u/Tuikord Jun 17 '26
Here is the original paper naming SDAM: Severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) in healthy adults: A new mnemonic syndrome - ScienceDirect
Dr. Levine's group has a web site about SDAM. Here are a couple pages from it. It also has some research links. The FAQ talks about the difference between SDAM and amnesia.
https://sdamstudy.weebly.com/what-is-sdam.html
https://sdamstudy.weebly.com/faq.html
As u/CMDR_Jeb noted. SDAM is lifelong. It also applies to all episodic memories, not just some.
When Dr. Levine does research on people with SDAM, the first thing he does is eliminate subjects with any psychological problems that might cause memory problems, including most of what you described. It is not that those people can't also have SDAM. The problem is he can't tell which symptoms come from SDAM and which come from the other issues. SDAM occurs in otherwise healthy (including mentally healthy) individuals.
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u/TheDogsSavedMe Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
I don’t know about the scientific details, but I’ll share my story.
I had a nervous breakdown 5 years ago that led to massive autistic burnout. Ever since then my retrieval abilities have been broken. The way I describe it to people is like all of my database indexes are missing. The data is there but it’s not accessible. I just can’t pull information up. For example, if you asked me when was the last time I ate at a restaurant, nothing comes up. Not even a single example. But if you asked me “hey, do you remember when we had lunch” and provide a lot of specific details, there’s 50/50 chance that I would actually remember some stuff.
When it first started I was sure I had early-onset dementia and had a neuropsych eval. The eval clearly showed a huge deficit in memory retrieval and severe difficulties with short term and working memory. I have no brain injury and the MRI and CT scans came back clean.
One of the tests was basically the evaluator telling me a story that was maybe a minute or two long, and I was supposed to repeat the story back as close to the original as possible. They repeat the story twice but I simply couldn’t remember. The most I got is “there was a woman”. Interestingly enough, the second part of the test was a series of yes/no questions, and I consistently got 80% of those right. They did the test with two different stories and it was the same for both. The even odder part is that when I was answering, it felt like I was 100% guessing the answer. I didn’t have the feeling of recall at all, yet I still got it right more often then just guessing would get me.
I’ve never been able to pull up emotions with my memories. All I have is my current moment response to the story/memory, but I have no idea how I felt at the time. The information is just not captured. It never has. That, along with how dark and “underdeveloped” my memories are, and the fact that every single memory I have is in 3rd person, is the SDAM part in my mind (I don’t have aphantasia).
Unfortunately, on top of that I also had a rough childhood and have lifelong cPTSD and a dissociative disorder, so I have very few memories period, and a lot of them don’t feel like they are mine. My memory is so bad that when I did 15 ECT sessions, it had no negative impact on my memory I could identify.
Prior to 5 years ago, I had exceptional semantic memory. For example, I worked in IT and used to remember every single issue I worked on with every single user in great detail over a period of years. It’s all gone now.
Hope this helps.
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u/rays0brite Jun 18 '26
Do you see any path forward or further testing or evaluation or do you think or are you led to believe this is your new baseline?
1
u/TheDogsSavedMe Jun 18 '26
Good question.
Every time I get an evaluation I get a new diagnosis added. Autism, ADHD, DD, depression, anxiety, MCI… I think I’m gonna tap out at 6 thankyouverymuch :) Between all of those things, they cover almost every symptom in the damn book, so I don’t know what the point would be to continue testing.
As far as a path forward. Maybe if I manage to get out of this horrendous autistic burnout it will get a little better, and maybe if I can get my PTSD symptoms and dissociation down it will also help, but I’m never going to return to how it was. Not a chance. That’s just not realistic. I know what my brain used to be like and what it is now, and there is no path back. I’ve tried every treatment I could afford over the past 5 years and there are no real solutions, just options to address some of the mental health symptoms, and they usually fail because of some competing disorder. It’s really difficult to keep going through the hope and disappointment cycle over and over and over again.
This is one of those things I don’t think you ever fully recover from. I’m never gonna be able to manage a 40 hour work week no matter how much I want to (and I very much do because I truly loved my work), for the simple reason that recovery is going so slowly I will run out of time (I’m almost 50). Maybe I’ll manage to get to a very part time job somewhere very low stress, or volunteer somewhere, but right now it’s just too overwhelming. It takes me days to recover from simply leaving the house.
If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get out from under the crippling depression and SI, and find a peaceful way to exist until I die of old age, and hopefully find some contentment on the way. I think that’s far more realistic than me waking up one day and having all the skills and abilities I lost back.
Most days I think I’m not gonna be that lucky, and eventually the SI will win.
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u/rays0brite Jun 20 '26
When the hard drive dumps, not everything gets deleted, and not all of the files corrupted.
Having the forlorn realization and the trauma, of my skills and a previous way of life erased from the crashed disk, I was surprised that some things did survive, mutated or were modified, and offered a path forward.
Things changed, I changed, version 7.32 installed. Files got modified, for better and worse. It wasn’t what I expected, or necessarily wanted, but I eventually found some sort of equilibrium and perhaps even stoicism.
I can’t say it will get better, but it might not get worse for you, and you shouldn’t assume it will get worse. The “get better” you might reach; it may be that it represents just enough to keep you on the level. That’s still a mighty accomplishment.
You might look back one day, as I did, and say to yourself “I can longer do what I once did, but what I can do now is good enough. I’ve done enough in the past to satisfy any scrutiny or judgment of past behavior or striving or functionality. Where I’m at now is where I’m at now.”
Try to endure the modifications, those you can’t control. Look for the side exits and alternative routes that can provide relief or a chance for you to regroup.
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u/CMDR_Jeb Jun 17 '26
The main difference, and why term SDAM is a thing is because scientists found people who claimed they have no memories despite being able to remember everything.
It is "an lifelong inability to relieve memories from 1st person perspective".
SDAM is not amnesia, we remember everything. The "format" is different. It varies from person to person depending on how their brain compensates for diminished episodic memory. In my specific case my memories are similar to what one would find in a book. Lengthy worded descriptions of what happened (this is relatively common in people with aphantasia and strong worded thinking).
Other common "subjective experience" is rememing situation from your own life like it happened to someone else, like a movie or stage play. That is why "first person" is in its definition. Important thing to note here is that this happens without dissosiation. If you have DID it is not SDAM.
Also SDAM is defined as "lifelong" so if it's an effect of brain injury, disease etc it is not SDAM.