Abstract
AbstractDissociated states represent pathological conditions when psychological trauma may emerge in a variety of forms such as psychic dissociative symptoms or, on the contrary, as paroxysms or other somatoform symptoms. There is evidence that epileptic activity plays an important role in the generation of dissociative states and it is able to generate various psychopathological processes as well as a wide spectrum of somatic symptoms or seizures. For the explanation of these connections between dissociative states and epileptic discharges the author proposes a neuroscientific model of dissociation based on the theory of competitive neural assemblies which can lead to chaotic self-organization in brain neural networks. This model is suggested as an integrative view interconnecting the various psychopathological and somatoform manifestations of dissociative states and suggests further possibilities for future research regarding common pathogenic mechanisms among epilepsy and mental disorders.
Highlights
Scientific history of the dissociation began in the French psychiatry of the 19th century mainly in the Pierre Janet’s work
Empirical confirmation with respect to prediction of the neuroscientific theory of dissociation is related to data which led to the epilepsy/temporal lobe dysfunction model of multiple personality disorder (MPD) that was at first mentioned by Charcot in 1892 (Putnam, 1997)
This situation when seizures hardly differentiable from “true” epileptic seizures are produced by dissociative mechanism suggests interesting and important possibility to understand other somatoform manifestations of dissociation due to experienced stress and trauma in the so-called somatoform disorders as a category of mental disorders characterized by somatic symptoms of a general medical condition, but without independent evidence of any diagnosable general medical condition (Colman, 2003)
Summary
Scientific history of the dissociation began in the French psychiatry of the 19th century mainly in the Pierre Janet’s work. Janet initially elaborated the concept of dissociation in his work “Psychological Automatisms” (Havens 1966; Janet 1890; van der Hart & Friedman, 1989), where he sketches his notion of psychic functions and structures He dealt with psychological phenomena often observable in hysteria, hypnosis and states of suggestion or possession. In the case of complete or partial automatism, systems of unconscious fixed ideas play an important role and may repress conscious control and perception They may emerge in many forms of psychopathological or somatoform symptoms, for example paroxysm, which may be understood as a representation of psychological trauma when a fixed idea is transformed into hallucinations and body movements (van der Hart & Friedman, 1989). A neuroscientific model of dissociation and its empirical evidence is discussed and it is shown how this model, jointly constrained by psychopathological and neuroscientific data, can help to explain phenomena of somatoform dissociative symptoms, forced normalization and alternative psychosis
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