Definition of “Memory Gap”: When a person cannot understand why they do not remember a period of time, certain behavior, or an event

People have a lot of experience with normal forgetting. After all, time passes. Many things are routine, trivial, or uninteresting. Also, a person sees what others forget. So most people know very well what is normal forgetting.

(Of course, I'm not talking here about a general problem with memory, such as is seen in Alzheimer's. People with the kind of memory gaps discussed in this post have generally good memory, often exceptionally good memory, which makes these memory gaps so puzzling.)

When I ask someone if they have memory gaps, I rarely have to explain what I mean. A person who has had memory gaps will usually give me an example. For example, one woman told me that her boyfriend had recently asked her if she was enjoying the coat he had given her. She told him yes, so as not to hurt his feelings or appear stupid, but she really didn’t know what he was talking about. However, when she got home, she found the new coat in her closet. But she still did not remember getting it. (And we determined that she had not been intoxicated, and that the coat had not been put in the closet without her knowing it as a surprise or practical joke. Also, let me add, Feb. 1st, she said that she had been having memory gaps since childhood, so this was no big deal.)

Talking about the coat made her uncomfortable. I could see that she wanted to change the subject. But I kept discussing it. And after about five minutes, her demeanor suddenly changed, and I was talking to another identity, who explained how she had gone shopping with the boyfriend and made him aware of how much she loved that coat, and how she was happy when he gave it to her. I then stopped discussing the coat, and her demeanor suddenly changed back to her regular self, who had no memory—a memory gap—for what had just happened.

Neither the regular identity nor the alternate identity accepted the idea that she had multiple personality. The regular identity did not call me a liar when I told her about my conversation with other identity, but she did not remember it, and thought the idea of multiple personality was far-fetched. When, at a later time, I talked again with the alternate identity, she remembered both my conversation with her and my conversation with the regular “host” identity. But the alternate identity rejected the idea of multiple personality, because she felt that she was a person in her own right.

Do novelists occasionally have memory gaps during times when they write, or in the rest of their life?