Personality Quirks: L is for Lacunar Amnesia

A lacuna is an unfilled space or interval. There might be a lacuna in the historical record, or one’s diary, so that events during that time are lost and unretrievable. In lacunar amnesia, there is loss of memory of one specific event that happens in the cortex region where memories are stored.

The lacunar amnesia is often caused by physical damage to the cortex or by psychologic factors, and can be triggered in several ways. Injury, disease, and alcoholism can cause physical damage to the cortex. Psychologic factors for memory loss may result from situations that are too painful to remember. Memories are repressed and retained only in the subconscious mind.

Etymologically, lacunar comes to us from Latin lacus, ‘pool, lake’ and from Greek amnesia, ‘forgetfulness.’

Perhaps your lacunar amnesiac character was in a car accident in which someone died. Did heesh cause the accident or was heesh a victim, too? After coming out of a concussion (or drunken fugue state), the character is charged with vehicular homicide and sets out to recover shis memories in order to prove heesh was not responsible.

 

Or your character might be the key to solving a crime, but heesh can’t remember anything beyond a certain point. The lacunar amnesiac might be a child who witnessed shis mother being killed or it might be a woman lying on the floor during a bank robbery who is the only one left alive. Lacunar amnesia resulted from the observation of shocking and unacceptable situations. Does hypnosis help unlock the unconscious? If so, perhaps one of the investigators doesn’t want the memory unlocked and tries to interfere or discredit the recovered memory.

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Here are some ideas for #writers on creating lucunar amnesiac #characters from @RomanceRighter http://bit.ly/2ou6gSw