Amnesia for Homicide ("Pedicide")

The author will present the cases of two women who murdered their children and subsequently suffered from a complete amnesia for the details of these crimes, revealing the phenomenology and dynamics of the concurrent amnesia.

Abstract

Guttmacher and Weihofen1have pointed out that "the recollection of crime is often incomplete with a spotty amnesia which may clear up only partially under sodium pentothal or one of the other abreactive drugs." The author will present the cases of two women who murdered their children and subsequently suffered from a complete amnesia for the details of these crimes. In each case the woman had some vague recollection of having killed her child, but had forgotten all of the specific details of the homicide and the surrounding events. The cases are presented for the purpose of elucidating three factors. 1. The phenomenology and some of the causative factors of such crimes. 2. The phenomenology and dynamics of the concurrent amnesia. 3. The usefulness of hypnosis in elucidating factors 1 and 2 by a recovery of the forgotten events. Case Histories Patient A.—The patient is a