Meanings
- rareuncountableThe fear of one's own memories.
Complicating matters, some people suffer from Mnemophobia, the fear of memories. Every time they try to remember when it was they first became phobic, they become even more phobic!
1985, John Ficarra, The Mad Book of Fears and Phobias, New York, NY: Warner Books, →ISBN, unnumbered page2 more examples
Anyone enduring mnemophobia would endure painful psychoanalysis treatment when asked to recall when they first experience mnemophobia and subsequent triggers for the condition - it is the fear of experiencing memories.
2014, Richard O Smith, Man with His Head in the Clouds: James Sadler: the First Englishman to Fly, Oxford: Signal Books, →ISBN, page 97It is fascinating to study on a micro-scale how the psychological condition of a dominant leader, characterised by a form of mnemophobia became a determining feature of the group's relationship with the past and led to one individual having political and economic control and to a gradual unification of interpretation.
2019, Pierrot Ross-Tremblay, Thou Shalt Forget: Indigenous Sovereignty, Resistance and the Production of Cultural Oblivion in Canada, London: University of London Press, →ISBN, page 177
Origin
From mnemo- (“memory”) + -phobia (“fear”).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
mnemophobia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mnemophobia
“mnemophobia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mnemophobia. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mnemophobia,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mnemophobia.
Source: mnemophobia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.