A Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders and Dissociative Identity Disorder from the perspective of Social Emotions

Abstract

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder are conditions caused by exposure to one or more stressful events of extraordinary magnitude and/or repeated over many years. The traumatic experience(s) may have different outcomes in different persons: some people fully recover within a short time, while others go on to develop one of these three disorders, whose interdependencies are still poorly understood. The present work utilises an updated version of a model of mental functioning, that has been previously applied to schizophrenia, to provide an interpretation of the aforementioned conditions. The model, built through the method of Artificial Life and with the toolset of Artificial Intelligence, foresees that the mind is subject to two forces: trauma, which represents the attack on the mind, and dissociation, which embodies the mind defence in both physiological and pathological conditions. The balance between these forces determines the pathological outcome.