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The author discusses the problem of psychogenic amnesia using some illustrative case material. He evaluates first the effect of organic factors which, in some individual cases, may overlap the psychogenic factors. He differentiates between 'defensive amnesia' and 'hysteric amnesia'; both are due to emotional anguish but in defensive amnesia there are no complaints about the amnestic
symptom, while the hysteric uses the symptom for his exculpation. The borderline between hysteric amnesia and the amnesia of the malingerer is fluent. The malingerer deliberately refuses to take the responsibility for an emotionally unbearable situation; the hysteric under the same circumstances unconsciously or automatically takes his refuge in amnesia. The author points out that amnestic fugues have much similarity with children running away from home, from an emotional situation with which the child feels incapable of coping. The author reports that in the treatment of amnesia and fugues, he was usually able to overcome 'the refusal to remember' by persuasion, sometimes supported by intravenous barbiturate injections. The reader may object that such persuasive treatment of the acute conflict only circumvents a momentary impasse. The disposition toward such primitive escape mechanisms as 'defensive amnesias', hysteric amnesias, fugues and even malingering represents a more or less serious personality disorder.