On January 17, 1887, Rev. Ansel Bourne withdrew $551 from his bank in Providence, Road Island. Rev. Ansel Bourn needed the money to pay for a certain lot of land in and to pay certain bills. He got into a pawtucket horsecar never to return home that day or any day thereafter for two months. He was published in the papers as missing. The police suspected suspected foul play and sought in vain his whereabouts.
On the morning of March 14th, a man calling himself A.I. Brown woke up in a fright and called in the people of the house to tell him where he was. He had been renting a small shop in Norristown, Pennsylvania for six weeks previously and stocked it with stationery, confectionery, and fruit. He carried on his quiet trade without seeming to anyone unnatural or eccentric. He said that his name was Ansel Bourne and was entirely ignorant of Norristown. He insisted that he knew nothing of shop-keeping, and that the last thing he remembered; seeming only yesterday, was withdrawing money from his bank in Providence, Road Island. Ansel was very weak, having lost over twenty pounds of flesh during his escapade. He was so freaked out of the idea of the candy-store that he refused to set foot in it again.
Ansel suffered from what is called a Dissociative Fugue, classified under Dissociative Disorders. Dissociative Disorder is characterized by disturbance in previously cohesive and unified functions of identity, memory, consciousness, and or perception of the environment. There are four types of Dissociative Disorders:
Dissociative Amnesia-loss of memory of personal information;
Dissociative Fugue-Amnesia plus flight;
Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder), two or more separate personalities/identities that controls a person’s consciousness at different times, with each being unaware of the others;
Depersonalization Disorder-sense of being separated by ones thoughts or body without accompanying breakdown in reality testing.
Rev. Ansel Bourne, as mentioned earlier suffered from Dissociative Fugue. So what exactly is Dissociative Fugue? The DSM-IV characterizes it as by a predominant and sudden unexpected travel away from home or place of work with inability to recall past. During a Fugue, a person has confusion about personal identity or has an assumption of a new identity (partial or complete). The disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of Dissociative Identity Disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or medical condition (e.g., temporal epilepsy).
A man by the name of Gene Smith also suffered from Dissociative Fugue. He was a midlevel manager that had been passed over for a promotion, faulted by his supervisor. He was rejected by his 18-year-old son, who during a violent argument called him a “failure.” Two days later. Smith disappeared.
One month later and 200 miles away, police brought a man by the name “Burt Tate” to the emergency room. Tate had been hurt in a fight at a diner, where he had been working as a short-order cook since drifting into town a month earlier. He claimed not to recall where he had lived or worked. He admitted that it was strange but did not seem upset by it.
After a missing-persons check, Mrs. Smith confirmed that Burt Tate was Gene Smith. Though noticeably anxious when faced with his wife, he denied recognizing her. When “awakening” from a fugue state, people such as Gene Smith remember their old identities but typically deny remembering what occurred during the fugue.
Fugues are said to last anywhere from a few hours to a few years. Primary episodic memories from the past are impaired, while semantic knowledge remains intact. A fugue usually follows a severely stressful event, such as a war experience or a natural disaster. Personal stress, such as legal or financial difficulties, and episodes of depression can also trigger a fugue.
Fugues tend to end suddenly leaving the person wondering how he or she got there. If the person is found before the fugue is over it may be necessary to ask them extensive questions about details of their life, keep reminding them who they are, and even involve them in psychotherapy before they recover their memory.
Psychodynamic therapy is commonly applied to Dissociative Disorder. Therapists use free-association and search their unconsciousness. Another common treatment is hypnotic therapy. Therapists hypnotize patients to try to guide them to remember their past. Sometimes injections of sodium barbital or sodium pentobarbital (also known as “truth serum”) are used to regain lost memories.
Approximately 0.2 percent of the population experience Dissociative Fugue and about half of all fugues last less than 24 hours. Most patients have more than one fugue episode, and many have symptoms of Multiple Personality Disorder.
There are four types of fugue states:
Fugue with awareness of loss of personal identity, the most severe type;
Fugue with change of personal identity, such as assuming a false name linked with some unconscious fantasy;
Fugue without loss or change of identity, but with reversion to an earlier period of the individuals life, with retrograde amnesia for events prior to that period; and
Simple fugue, circumscribed memory loss of some past event. This type overlaps with Dissociative Amnesia.
The differential diagnosis of Dissociative Fugue includes seizures affecting the temporolimbic regions, alcoholic breakouts, head trauma, drug intoxication, and carbon monoxide poisoning. Other psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, may sometimes present fugue-like episodes. Thus, it has been argued that fugue is not a diagnosis, but a symptom of an underlying psychiatric disorder.
Recourses:
www.Planetpsych.com/Psychology_101/Disorders/dissociative_disorders.htm
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Copyright1994 American Psychiatric Association.
Exploring Psychology, Fourth Edition. David G. Myers. Copyright 1999, Worth
Publishers, Inc., pp.438 “Dissociative Fugue”.
Fundamentals of Abnormal Psychology. Ronald J. Comer. Copyright 1996, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, pp.377-379 and 388 “Dissociative Fugue”; “Treatments for Dissociative Amnesia and Fugue.”
