Dissociative amnesia, defined as an inability to remember important autobiographical experiences, usually of a stressful nature, is a controversial phenomenon. We systematically reviewed 128 case studies of dissociative amnesia reported in 60 articles that appeared in peer-reviewed journals in English over the past 20 years (2000–2020). Our aim was to examine to what extent these cases met core features of dissociative amnesia. All cases were about reports of autobiographical memory loss, but the evidence offered in support of a dissociative amnesia interpretation was often weak and plagued by an ambiguous heterogeneity with respect to nature, etiology, and differential diagnoses of alleged memory loss. Most case studies failed to rule out plausible alternative explanations of dissociative amnesia, such as ordinary forgetting and malingering. We encourage clinicians and researchers to more critically investigate alleged cases of dissociative amnesia and provide criteria for how a dissociative amnesia case ideally would look like.

分离性健忘症被定义为无法记住重要的自传体经历，通常具有压力性质，是一种有争议的现象。我们系统地回顾了过去 20 年（2000-2020 年）发表在英文同行评审期刊上的 60 篇文章中报告的 128 例分离性遗忘症案例研究。我们的目的是检查这些病例在多大程度上符合分离性遗忘症的核心特征。所有病例都是关于自传性记忆丧失的报告，但支持分离性遗忘症解释的证据通常很薄弱，并且受到在性质、病因和所谓记忆丧失的鉴别诊断方面模棱两可的异质性的困扰。大多数案例研究未能排除对分离性遗忘症的合理替代解释，例如普通遗忘和装病。