There are many types of amnesia, and many reasons these can develop such as head injury, disease, drugs or psychological trauma. Retrograde amnesia is where the sufferer has difficulty remembering events that happened before the onset of amnesia. Anterograde amnesia, where new events and experiences fail to be stored as long term memories, and transient global amnesia is characterized by a short term loss of the ability to put down new memories, and difficulty accessing old memories.
"When I actually talk about this in class I like to jokingly call retrograde amnesia 'soap opera amnesia' because for the most part this is the Hollywood version that you're thinking about," says Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at University of Toronto Scarborough. "I think storytellers love it because it gives them a freedom of expression and viewers love it because it creates situations of interesting conflict that should be unreal but are seemingly medically plausible."
The difference between reality and fantasy
And, though we have often seen retrograde amnesia played out in films like The Bourne Identity and The Majestic, in truth Joordens says this type of across-the-board memory loss is very rare, particularly for extended periods of time.
"In most cases, the memory will be spotty, and there are things they won't remember and things they will remember,” he says. “It's not like movies where it's all or nothing."
Dr. Myriam Mongrain, a psychologist at York University, says she can understand the appeal of putting stories about amnesiac disorders, memory disorders and identity disorder on screen, but says the problem is that there are often so few actual known cases out there that actors and writers take creative liberties, and audiences then start believing these are credible portrayals of something rare.
"I don't think the depiction comes close to the clinical reality," she says. "It happens in so few people, so it's not likely that your neighbour or bank teller has it."
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