What the fug[ue]?
- *Note: if you’ve never seen Breaking Bad, spoilers are ahead
An unpopular opinion within Five Guys is that Breaking Bad was a good series. If you’ve watched the series, you know that at one point Walt is abducted by Tuco and co. before eventually okey doke’ing them and killing the drug lords. This whole escapade takes a few days, during which no one of his family or friends knows where he is, what he’s up to, or if he is dead…Walt realizes this and in a moment of desperation, or perhaps wit, comes up with a plan: he will pretend he’s been in a fugue state prompted by the cancer meds, and he has no idea where’s been or what has happened over the past few days.
To pull off the ruse, Walt strips naked and enters a supermarket, acting confused and lost, where concerned citizens send him off to the hospital. Eventually, when a psychiatrist tells him it might be months before he is released, Walt admits he made the whole thing up, under the cover of doctor-patient confidentiality.
Now, for this FF, I’m not so interested in the implications of the plot as I am interested in enlightening y’all on the concept of a fugue state. So buckle up boyos, we’re about to go into some more crazy case studies.
First, let’s learn some basics. A fugue state is a type of amnesia. There are a couple really famous types of amnesia that a person can suffer from, the most studied ones being 1) retrograde amnesia (you forget everything that happened before a certain date, see this story for an example) and 2) anterograde amnesia (you can’t form new memories, see the story of HM here). You could also be super unfortunate and suffer from both (looking at you, Clive Wearing), where you basically think that every couple of minutes you’ve been woken up from a coma (this dude’s journal has pages where he would write: “8:31 AM: now I am really, completely awake, 9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake, 9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.”…FOR MULTIPLE PAGES).
Traditionally, you can visualize the difference in memory periods between these two as such:
These are just two types of amnesia, and they are a bit extreme, in that you forget pretty much all memories before a certain date, or are unable to form pretty much any new memories. These really serious and permanent forms of amnesia generally occur after brain damage. So what about when you forget things during a short period of time? Often, this is caused by purely psychological factors and is called psychogenic amnesia.
Dissociative fugue is the current technical term for what was formerly known as a fugue, and is an example of a type of psychogenic amnesia. It lies in between the two extremes of permanent amnesia. That is, it occurs over a short period of time in one’s life and you only forget anything within that time period. The reason fugues have their own designation within psychogenic amnesia is because of their unique identity characteristics — people often assume an entirely new identity and travel to crazy places. Once they “snap back,” they resume their life as if nothing had happened. Regular psychogenic amensiacs don’t assume new identities but don’t remember anything that occurred during the time period. According to the DSM-5 (the gold standard in psychiatric disease definitions):
Dissociative fugue, formerly fugue state or psychogenic fugue, is a dissociative disorder.[1] It is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (ranging from hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.
Moreover, people can do some crazy stuff when they are in a fugue, and it’s not uncommon for people to assume an identity and commit crimes or violent attacks. This is why Walt was brilliant to commit to the fugue story.
Walt was lying, of course, but there have been many famous cases throughout history of people really struggling with fugues. Let’s explore some:
Ansel Bourne (this story is courtesy of Sam Kean’s book notes from “The Tale…”, I’ve paraphrased but it’s worth a read)
Ansel Bourne was a 60 year old ex-preacher/carpenter who probably suffered from seizures and occasional amnesic fits. He had been known to go on walks intended be a block long and end up a couple miles away, with no recollection of the trip. This had happened on occasion, but the fits never persisted and he definitely never went missing.
On Jan. 18, 1887, Ansel left his house in Coventry, Rhode Island, carrying $551 cash with his mind set on buying a new farm. He stopped by his nephew’s store in Providence and then visited his sister a little ways down. He parted ways with his sister and began walking. He was last seen that day on the corner of Dorrance and Broad. After three weeks and no response to their missing-persons note in the newspaper, the nephew and sister accepted the unfortunate likelihood that he had been robbed and killed…not an unreasonable assumption at the time.
The day of Bourne’s disappearance, a man who went by Albert John Brown traveled from Providence to New York, eventually ending up in Norristown, PA. Brown rented a room in a boarding house and set up a small general store, where he sold everything from candies to trinkets. Locals found Brown a bit weird, but ignored him for the most part — he mostly kept to himself, often relegating himself to his back room, cooking steaks or hams for dinner (a la Dil).
About 8 weeks after Bourne’s disappearance, Brown was sleeping peacefully when he heard a gunshot and was startled awake. Odd. The bed felt…different. There was a weird crease in the mattress and lights were buzzing outside. He realized he must’ve fallen asleep in a stranger’s room, and huddled under the sheets waiting for the owner of the room (or maybe the police) to come back. After hours with no one coming, he gained the courage to walk down the hall and knock on the boarding house owner’s door, asking where he was and what day it was.
The owner told him it was the 14th of March, Brown insisted it was the 18th of January — the day Bourne went missing. Confused and concerned, the owner called a local doctor in to check on Brown. Under questioning during the exam, the man insisted his name was not Brown, he was a preacher and carpenter named Ansel. The doc called up Bourne’s nephew and confirmed his identity and that he had gone missing eight weeks earlier. Indeed, Brown was Bourne’s alter-identity.
Bourne was referred to various specialists and eventually ended up under the care of William James (a famous old guard psychologist) who wanted to figure out what happened to Bourne during those 8 weeks (since he lost all memory of it after he snapped back in to real life). James began hypnotizing Bourne to bring back his Brown identity for interrogation. He was never able to bring back those memories or unite the two identities, but he did determine that Brown was a fairly unimaginative doppelganger of Bourne. Evidently Brown and Bourne shared the same birthday, Brown’s wife had died the same day as Bourne’s, and Brown had studied theology, much like Bourne.
Speaking of which, Bourne was probably fugue’ing when he was converted to christianity. The story goes that one day a 31 year old Bourne was on a country road when he heard a “disembodied voice” telling him that he should be attending chapel — Bourne was an atheist before this, going out of his way to play cards on Sunday as a big ol’ middle finger to God. Much like St. Paul on his way to Damascus, Bourne retorted: “i’d rather be struck deaf, dumb, and blind,” and wouldn’t ya know it, he was struck senseless to the point that his pupils no longer responded to light, his hearing disappeared, and his speech was nonexistent.
As Bourne recalled, “God” restored his sight the next day. He was so thankful he began writing letters of repentance for the local preacher to read every Sunday. About 6 weeks later, while the preacher was reading one of his letters, Bourne apparently broke out into sweat. Suddenly his speech and hearing came back and he yelled “Glory to God the Lamb forever,” converting right then and there.
Evidently, Bourne had a dream later on where he spoke with Jesus, who told him to “settle up your worldly business…and go to work for me.” Following J.C.’s orders, Bourne became a carpenter and an itinerant preacher. His second wife eventually forced him to stop traveling for his own health. It’s hypothesized that the stress and guilt of quitting the preaching triggered the fugue almighty.
Bonus side note: Jason Bourne is probably the most famous fictional character to have suffered from fugues, and he’s likely named after Ansel.
Hannah Upp
It’s notable that during a fugue one’s sense of self and identity disappears, and the body runs on autopilot. This disables certain memories (things like personal memories — where do I live? What do I do for a living? Who is Chuck Testa?) but maintains other memories (specifically motor memories — things like the keystrokes for passwords or how to ride a bike)
A good example of this was the case of Hannah Upp, a 23 year old New Yorker who disappeared from her teaching job in the city. She was spotted by the Staten Island Ferry captain bobbing in the water helplessly 3 weeks later. She was dredged up with horrific sunburn and a giant blister from wandering around the city. During the investigation to figure out what happened during that time, detectives found footage of her visiting her gym and logging into her emails at the Apple Store.
So, she was so familiar with typing her password that she could type it out in the Apple Store just out of muscle memory, but seeing her name typed all over the page didn’t trigger any personal memories? Apparently not. Hannah says she vaguely remembers a period of time where she was trying to figure out who this “Hannah person” was. An acquaintance even spotted her while she was out and about during the fugue and asked if she was the missing girl, Hannah. Upp vehemently denied it…wtf
Jody Roberts
Jody was a reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune who disappeared in 1985 and was found 12 YEARS LATER in Sitka, Alaska, under the name “Jane Dee Williams.” Short and sweet summary for a long-ass fugue.
Well, that’s all I’ve got on fugues for now. If you’re interested in some other stories, check out the wikipedia page here.
TL;DR there are lots of types of amneisas. Fugues are especially crazy and have been accessories to crimes.
Sources:
Breaking Bad, Season 2, Episode 3
“The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons…” By Sam Kean
