After brief historical review about the concepts on amnestic aphasia the authors emphasize the need to consider as a starting point the cases in which this disturbance presents itself in a pure form; in this sense they try to differentiate the amnestic aphasia from other aphasic disturbances, seemingly analogous but essentially different. A case of pure amnestic aphasia is reported in a patient with an astrocitoma at the posterior part of left temporal lobe, including Brodmann's area 37 which lesion is responsible for this type of aphasic disturbance; besides the study of the patient's verbal and writing expressions, of gnosia and praxia, the authors applied the Rorschach test.