When Dissociative Amnesia Expands: A Concept Creep Perspective

Haslam and Tse (2026) argued that harm-related concepts can expand over time. They can extend to new domains, and they can also come to include milder and more ambiguous cases. We applied this concept creep framework to the topic of dissociative amnesia. Dissociative amnesia refers to inability to recall autobiographical information usually of traumatic nature. However, the term is often used more broadly to denote claims of traumatic memory loss. We argue that dissociative amnesia is vulnerable to vertical concept creep because it is usually inferred from reports rather than directly observed, it has no stable marker, and it is supported by cultural scripts that explain distress in terms of memory loss. We outline what follows when the dissociative amnesia boundary becomes more expanded in clinical and legal settings, as well as in public discourse. Finally, we highlight implications of vertical concept creep in dissociative amnesia to show how a more extended boundary can change what the label communicates and how it is used in applied judgments.