0bs1d1an_kn1ght
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- Aug 21, 2015
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Amnesia in fiction is often depicted as a complete retrograde amnesia for events that have taken place before a certain point of time, maybe including its own identity, typically with the person/pokémon waking up from unconsciousness without remembering anything about the past, yet with no problems of forming new memories or recalling things that take place after they wake up. Typically, the episodic memory is gone, while the semantic (i.e., memory of facts) and procedural (i.e., memory of procedures, such as how to cook, how to use a phone etc) memory may be relatively intact. In reality, I would suspect some sort of dissociative amnesia in that case, that is, an amnesia without an identifiable underlying organic cause but rather a psychiatric condition. That is in humans of course. Maybe pokémon are different? Essentially, this is where your fantasy comes in. My rule of thumb is that it can happen if you can make it believable. As Beth pavell points out, disorders of memory can also occur after a brain damage, for example. Severe amnesia after a brain damage is often associated with other symptoms.
Having said that, let's leave the medical stuff and focus on amnesia as a plot device. You may use it to make the readers curious, to make them keep reading to understand what happened. In that case, I think that making the amnesia temporary and having the pokémon suddenly remembering everything will be a disappointment to the readers. Rather, let it gradually find out more and more about its past and how it ended up where it is. If you want the amnesia to end suddenly for some reason, I think you should reconsider using another plot device to get what you want.
Actually I think I've given up on the whole amnesia thing, and will just have it be a nasty bump on his head.