Autobiographical Memory and Emotional Disorder

A special issue of the journal Memory

  • Edited by Tim Dalgleish, Chris Brewin

For those suffering from emotional disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression aspects of the personal past can dominate conscious experience in tenacious and toxic ways. For example, memories of distressing autobiographical experiences can intrude into awareness as thoughts or images, as flashbacks or nightmares, each laden with unwanted and painful affect. This Special Issue of Memory focuses on two broad themes. The first is the nature of autobiographical remembering of the personal past —what are the characteristics of such memories? And to what extent are they phenomenologically distinct from other types of autobiographical remembering? The second theme concerns varieties of difficulties in remembering emotional experiences from complete amnesia to lack of specificity of autobiographical recall. The Special Issue draws together the world’s leading theorists and researchers on these varied issues to provide a broad overview of the cutting edge work in this field.

ISBN: 9781841698335

Published June 01 2007 by Psychology Press.