Question

Victor, a New York City investment broker, quit his job in a fit of rage after being accused of embezzling thousands of dollars of his clients' money. Four months later, the police discovered Victor driving a cab in Los Angeles. Victor claimed that his name was actually George Saunders, that he had always been a cab driver in Los Angeles, and that he had no knowledge of Victor. Even after he was positively identified as Victor, "George Saunders" insisted that he was someone else. Assuming that he was not faking his condition to escape arrest, Victor was probably suffering from ________

Answer 1

Answer: Dissociative fugue or Fugue state.

Explanation:

Dissociative fugue or fugue state refers to a state in which a person suffers a personal identity amnesia that is commonly reversible in this case a person losses his memories, personality and other things that tells people who the person is. A person can suffer from this for days, months but can even be longer than that.

The word "fugue" is derived from a Latin word "flight " because it is a dissociative disorder that causes someone to desire escaping what ever they are current faced with. For this reason a person start to invent a new identity and in a new place that they haven't lived in before as a way of escaping their past.

Symptoms of Dissociative Fugue

- a person seems to not know who they are.

- forgetting the past events

- feeling attacked when their identity is questioned

This person will not be noticeable on the outside that they are suffering from this disorder because they strongly believe that their new identity is actual who they are.