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The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. XIV, No. 4, 1945, pp. 437–469.
The author describes cases of fugue which fall into three categories: (1) fugue with awareness of loss of personal identity; (2) fugue with change of personal identity; (3) fugue with retrograde amnesia. He emphasizes the necessity of discovering exactly what occurred in the patient's mind just prior to, during, and immediately after, the onset of the fugue. The exposition of the technique used and the cases are clear. The fugue state, like the dream, has manifest and latent content; the manifest content is acted out, but the deep unconscious meaning frequently does not obtain expression. Another resemblance to dreams is the process of distortion. It is suggested that the fugue permits acts or phantasies which are in conflict with the super-ego. Usually there is a real or imagined danger from which there is no escape since the patient has not the ability to fight or protect himself.