ABSTRACT
A defining feature of dissociative identity disorder (DID) is reported amnesia for autobiographical experience, often manifesting as one identity describing no retrieval of memories encoded in another identity. Yet, studies examining different memory types using group designs routinely find memory representations from one identity are available for retrieval and accessible in an identity reporting amnesia. From these studies it is evident that dissociative amnesia appears more subjective than objective. This chapter examines inter-identity amnesia in DID and an explanatory account that includes two paths is suggested for subjective amnesia. These draw on (meta)cognitive processes and beliefs related to the self, as well as metamemory processes related to Feeling of Knowing (FOK) and how these may influence memory search and sense of memory ownership. It is proposed that, rather than deficits being evident primarily in the apparatus of lower-level memory processes (e.g., retrieval), issues may be evident in higher-level metacognitive beliefs and self-ownership processes indicating that: 1) the person has no access to accessible memories; or 2) accessible partial or complete memories are not their own and ignored as irrelevant to the person’s autobiographical experience and their current goals.
