Certainly a continuing refrain in the clinical accounts of amnesiacs and autistics is the clinician's distress over the subject's apparent loss of affect, confirming that one of the important adaptive functions of narrative identity and the exchange of identity narratives is the enhancement of bonding and social solidarity. Sacks's remark testifies to the working of social accountability: to achieve a socially recognized identity, individuals need to display 'that range of emotions and states of mind that defines a 'self' for the rest of us.

• autism
• amnesia
• narrative
• identity
• relational identity
• community
• cultural canon
• emotion
• self
• self-representation
• conceptual self
• functions
• emotions
• loss
• social accountability