Dear Dr. Josh,
Could you comment on plot-amnesia? I know novelists use amnesia shamelessly (I certainly have), and I've read some really interesting stuff about fugue states that aren't really organic in nature, but it could be interesting to hear him on the subject.
-- Mary Jo
Dr. Josh: Ah, amnesia! A concept far more common in fiction than reality. The only time I've ever encountered classic amnesia is in books, and I'm not talking about medical texts. The novelists' version of amnesia does occur, albeit very rarely; far more common is a selective memory loss of recent events associated with aging and dementia (not too useful to most novelists) and substance abuse (also not too useful to most novelists, although there's a certain subset).
There is a condition known as transient global amnesia where people lose their memory of recent events, but still tend to retain distant memories (the thought being that they are more 'hard-wired' into the brain). Frankly, no one really knows why it occurs, although there's some thought that it's somewhat stroke-like, and no one knows why it gets better. Because of this uncertainty, feel free to exploit at will - no one can fault you scientifically.
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