Eine weit verbreitete Auffassung über die wissenschaftlichen Naturverständnisse besagt, dass ihre historische Entwicklung von einer zunehmenden Abgrenzung gegenüber der Magie begleitet gewesen sei. Ursprünglich eng mit der Magie verbunden, hätten sich die wissenschaftlichen Naturverständnisse in einem langwierigen Prozess immer weiter von der Magie entfernt, bis sie ihre heutige amagische Gestalt erhalten hätten. Mein Beitrag diskutiert einige Argumente zur Stützung dieser, wie ich meine, plausiblen Auffassung. / A whitespread view of the natural sciences holds that their historical development was accompanied by (...) a constantly widening gap between them and magic. Originally closely bound up with magic, the sciences are supposed to have distanced itself from it in a long-drawn-out process, until they attained their present magic-free form. This essay discusses some arguments in support of this plausible view. (shrink)

Dissociative amnesia is a diagnosis category that implies a proposed mechanism (often called dissociation) by which amnesia is caused by psychogenic means, such as trauma, and that amnesia is reversible later. Dissociative amnesia is listed in some of the most influential diagnostic manuals. Authors have noted the similarities in definition to repressed memories. Dissociative amnesia is a disputed category and phenomenon, and here I discuss the plausibility that this cognitive mechanism evolved. I discuss some general conditions by which cognitive (...) functions will evolve, that is, the relatively continuous adaptive pressure by which a cognitive ability would clearly be adaptive if variation produced it. I discuss how adaptive gene mutations typically spread from one individual to the whole species. The article also discusses a few hypothetical scenarios and several types of trauma, to examine the likely adaptive benefits of blocking out memories of trauma, or not. I conclude that it is unlikely that dissociative amnesia evolved, and invite further development of these ideas and scenarios by others. (shrink)

Auf dem Weg des Textverstehens bedient sich die Hermeneutik Ricœurs der sog. Distanzierung, die miteinbezieht, dass das Subjekt des Verstehens über das Lesen, das Hören, das Sehen aus sich selbst austritt, und fordert notwendigerweise eine Art von Andersheit. In dieser Andersheit könnte man auch Derridas „differAnce” erkennen, die in ihren Folgen in eine völlig andere Richtung führt als Ricœurs Begriff der Distanzierung. Die beiden Autoren können besonders auf dem gemeinsamen Feld der Metapherforschung verglichen werden. Ist für Ricśur die (...) wahre Metapher nur die lebendige, diejenige, die neue Bedeutungen schafft und von ihm aus den gegenwärtigen Theorien Blacks und Richards abgeleitet wird, so ist für Derrida in Die weiße Mythologie die ganze Philosophie nur vergessene Metaphorik, die zunächst zum eigenen Tode und danach noch mittelbar zum Tode der Philosophie führt. In dieser immer mehr globalisierten Welt, wo sich auf der einen Seite alle Grenzen und Unterschiede verwischen, tauchen auf der anderen Seite Fundamentalismen auf, die um jeden Preis die Unüberwindlichkeit dieser Unterschiede zu zeigen versuchen. In dem gegenwärtigen europäischem Vereinigungskonzept wie bei jedem anderen Erwachsenwerden haben Erziehung und Ausbildung eine wichtige Rolle bei der Bewahrung der eigenen Identität und der Vorbereitung auf das Verstehen der anderen und auf das gemeinsame Handeln. Es scheint, man könnte mit Hilfe von Ricœurs Begriff der Distanzierung diese zweifache Forderung vereinen. Da aber diese Ansicht über das Erziehungs- und Ausbildungsgebiet wieder in eine „neue Mythologie” geraten könnte, die man als Grundlage der fundamentalistischen Abkapselung versteht, ist es notwendig, diesen Prozess mit Derridas Kritik zu verfolgen. (shrink)

It is a common assumption in contemporary cognitive neuroscience that discovering a putative realized kind to be dissociably realized (i.e., to be realized in each instance by two or more distinct realizers) mandates splitting that kind. Here I explore some limits on this inference using two deceptively similar examples: the dissociation of declarative and procedural memory and Ramachandran's argument that the self is an illusion.

Dissociative style is mostly studied as a risk factor for dissociative pathology, but it may also reflect a fundamental characteristic of healthy information processing. Due to the close link between attention and working memory and the previous finding of enhanced attentional abilities with a high dissociative style, a positive relationship was also expected between dissociative style and verbal working memory span. In a sample of 119 psychology students, it was found that the verbal span of the high-dissociative group was about (...) half a word larger than of the medium and low-dissociative groups. It is suggested that dissociative style may be one of only very few individual differences that is directly relevant to consciousness research. (shrink)

Neuropsychological dissociations between regular and irregular English past-tense morphology have been reported using a lexical decision task in which past-tense primes immediately precede present-tense targets. We present N400 event-related potential data from healthy participants using the same design. Both regular and irregular past-tense forms primed corresponding present-tense forms, but with a longer duration for irregular verbs. Phonological control conditions suggested that differences in formal overlap between prime and target contribute to, but do not account for, this difference, suggesting a link (...) between irregular morphology and semantics. Further analysis dividing the irregular verbs into two categories (weak irregular and strong) revealed that priming for strong verbs was reliably stronger than that for weak irregular and regular verbs, which were statistically indistinguishable from one another. We argue that, although we observe a regular-irregular dissociation, the nature of this dissociation is more consistent with single- than with dual-system models of inflectional morphology. (shrink)

A key question for cognitive theories of reasoning is whether logical reasoning is inherently a sentential linguistic process or a process requiring spatial manipulation and search. We addressed this question in an event-related fMRI study of syllogistic reasoning, using sentences with and without semantic content. Our findings indicate involvement of two dissociable networks in deductive reasoning. During content-based reasoning a left hemisphere temporal system was recruited. By contrast, a formally identical reasoning task, which lacked semantic content, activated a parietal system. (...) The two systems share common components in bilateral basal ganglia nuclei, right cerebellum, bilateral fusiform gyri, and left prefrontal cortex. We conclude that syllogistic reasoning is implemented in two distinct systems whose engagement is primarily a function of the presence or absence of semantic content. Furthermore, when a logical argument results in a belief–logic conflict, the nature of the reasoning process is changed by recruitment of the right prefrontal cortex. (shrink)

Dissociation during trauma lacks an adequate definition. Using data obtained from interviews with 36 posttraumatic individuals conducted according to the phenomenological approach, this paper seeks to improve our understanding of this phenomenon. In particular, it suggesting a trade off model depicting the balance between the sense of agency and the sense of ownership : a reciprocal relationship appears to exist between these two, and in order to enable control of the body during trauma the sense of ownership must decrease. (...) When the relationship between the sense of agency and sense of ownership changes disproportionately to the constraints of the traumatic event, the dissociative mechanism becomes dysfunctional. By contrast, when the relations alter in accordance with the surrounding conditions, the dissociative mechanism functions properly. (shrink)

This article discusses the possibility of practitioners who mistake organic memory loss for dissociative amnesia. It starts with the case of a young man with complete retrograde amnesia due to a traumatic head injury. Because he did not show any gross neurological abnormalities, a neurologist thought his amnesia had a psychological origin. An extensive neuropsychological examination revealed that the man did have an organic reason for his amnesia. Next, the existence of dissociative memory loss as well as isolated organic retrograde (...) amnesia is considered. While cases of organic memory loss are well-documented, there is hardly any evidence for dissociative amnesia. It is argued that organic memory loss might be mistakenly taken for dissociative amnesia. In line with the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, practitioners are advised to rule out the possibility of organic memory loss, before diagnosing a patient with dissociative amnesia. (shrink)

The condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is metaphysically strange. Can there really be several distinct persons operating in a single body? Our view is that DID sufferers are single persons with a severe mental disorder. In this paper we compare the phenomenology of dissociation between personality states in DID with certain delusional disorders. We argue both that the burden of proof must lie with those who defend the metaphysically extravagant Multiple Persons view (...) and that there is little theoretical motivation to yield to that view in light of the fact that the core symptoms of DID bear remarkable similarity to the symptoms of these other disorders where no such extravagance is ever seriously entertained. (shrink)

The paper makes three points about the role of double dissociation in cognitive neuropsychology. First, arguments from double dissociation to separate modules work by inference to the best, not the only possible, explanation. Second, in the development of computational cognitive neuropsychology, the contribution of connectionist cognitive science has been to broaden the range of potential explanations of double dissociation. As a result, the competition between explanations, and the characteristic features of the assessment of theories against the criteria (...) of probability and explanatory value, are more visible. Third, cognitive neuropsychology is a division of cognitive psychology but the practice of cognitive neuropsychology proceeds on assumptions that go beyond the subject matter of cognitive psychology. Given such assumptions, neuroscientific findings about lesion location may enhance the value of double dissociation in shifting the balance of support between cognitive theories. (shrink)

This article reviews recent findings indicating some common brain processes during dissociative states and dreaming with the aim to outline a perspective that neural chaotic states during dreaming can be closely related to dissociative states that may manifest in dreams scenery. These data are in agreement with various clinical findings that dissociated states can be projected into the “dream scenery” in REM sleep periods and dreams may represent their specific interactions that may uncover unusual psychological potential of creativity in psychotherapy, (...) art and scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Erdelyi does us all a great service by his customarily incisive discussion of the various ways in which our field tends to neglect, confuse, and misunderstand numerous critical issues in attempting to differentiate conscious from unconscious perception and memory. Although no single commentary could hope to comprehensively assess these issues, I will address Erdelyi’s three main points: How the dissociation paradigm can be used to validly infer unconscious perception; The implications of below-chance effects; and The role of time. I (...) suggest that significant progress on construct validity issues is possible; below-chance effects are part of a more general bidirectional phenomenon, very likely unconscious, and do not threaten absolute subliminality; and practice/learning effects pose potential difficulties for time-based dissociation paradigms. (shrink)

The process-dissociation procedure was used to estimate the influence of spatial and form-based processing in the Simon task. Subjects made manual responses to the direction of arrows . The results provide evidence that the form and spatial location of a single stimulus can have functionally independent effects on performance. They also indicate the existence of two kinds of automaticity—an associative component that reflects prior S-R mappings and a nonassociative component that reflects the correspondence between stimulus and response codes.

If someone with dissociative identity disorder commits a wrongful act, is she responsible? If one adopts the Multiple Persons Thesis, it may seem that one alter cannot be responsible for the actions of another alter. Conversely, if one regards the subject as a single person, it may seem that she is responsible for any actions she performs. I will argue that this subject is a single person, but one who suffers from delusions of disownership and therefore does not fulfill ordinary (...) requirements for responsible agency. This is because she suffers from extreme ambivalence: her deep-seated needs and desires conflict, and she forms alter-personalities as a way to cope with inner discord without abandoning any of these contradictory impulses. However, although the ability to exercise autonomous agency is eroded in such cases, the capacity for autonomous agency is preserved. The subject with DID is weakly responsible for her wrongful acts. (shrink)

To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals' responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: (1) patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation (within the limited range of our sample population) and (2) a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

Müller argues that double dissociations do not imply underlying modularity of the cognitive system, citing neural networks as examples of fully distributed systems that can give rise to double dissociations. We challenge this claim, noting that suchdouble dissociations typically do not “scale-up,” and that even some singledissociations can be difficult to account for in a distributed system.

Dissociative identity disorder is a dissociative disorder that gained a significant rise in the past few decades. There has been less than 50 DID cases recorded between 1922 and 1972, while 20,000 cases are recorded by 1990. Therefore, it becomes of great significant to assess the various concepts related to DID to further understand the disorder. The current review has a goal of understanding whether an individual suffering from DID is legally responsible for the committed crime, and whether or not (...) he or she can be considered competent to stand trial. These two questions are to be raised in understanding DID, by first shedding a light on the nature of the disorder and second by examining the past legal case examples. Despite the very nature of the disorder is characterized by dissociative amnesia and the fact that the host personality may have limited or no contact with the alters, there is no consensus within the legal system whether the DID patients should be responsible for their actions. Further to that, courts generally deny the insanity claims for DID suffering patients. In conclusion, more studies in the field are suggested to incorporate primary data into research, as the extensive reliance on secondary data forces us to believe the conclusions that were previously made, and no opportunity to verify those conclusions is present. (shrink)

The conflict and dissociation between the Body and the Mind have determinant implications in the context of our current clinical practice, and are an important source of internal and relational disturbances. Body-Mind Dissociation in Psychoanalysis proposes the concept as a new hypothesis, different from traumatic dissociation or states of splitting. This approach opens the door to a clinical confrontation with extreme forms of mental disturbance, such as psychosis or borderline disorders, and strengthens the relational power of the (...) analytic encounter, through a focus on the internal sensory/emotional axis in both analyst and analysand. The book details this importance of the analyst's intrasubjective relationship with the analysand in constructing new developmental horizons, starting from the body-mind exchange of the two participants. Body-Mind Dissociation in Psychoanalysiswill be of use to students, beginners in psychotherapy, mental health practitioners and seasoned psychoanalysts. (shrink)

Dissociation is the psychological aspect of stress response. It is an adaptive reaction to a stressor on a short-term basis but can be maladaptive if under- or overutilized and comprises the partitioning of consciousness, ranging from barely to rigidly partitioned. Current means of measuring dissociation focus primarily on DSM-IV-TR Dissociative Disorders and do not sufficiently account for adaptive sub-clinical forms or maladaptive under-dissociating. These measures of pathology are not useful for determining how well-adapted a population is to stress– (...) i.e., how well dissociation is generally put to use. The purpose of this paper is: (1) to analyze the general population and university student studies that have been conducted using current epidemiological methods of assessing dissociation in sub-clinical populations; and (2) to compare and contrast anthropological and epidemiological models of dissociation. An alternative method for assessing dissociation that synthesizes these two views is proposed. (shrink)

Many theorists, in their search for a better explanation of the dynamics of structure and agency, have expressed the need for a theory in which reflexivity and habitus are reconciled. In this article, we argue that a dissociative theory of mind can provide the essential framework in which habitual routines and reflexivity function in parallel. This is explored using the examples of athletic training and hypnosis, where the interplay between conscious and unconscious mechanisms is displayed. In both settings, there is (...) evidence to show that conscious reflexiveness and intersubjective and unconscious automatic processes are necessary to reach the desired outcome. We conclude that a dissociative theory of mind can shed new light on the relationship between habitus and reflexivity. (shrink)

Since Freud and his co-author Breuer spoke of dissociation in 1895, a scientific paradigm was painstakingly established in the field of unconscious cognition. This is the dissociation paradigm. However, recent critical analysis of the many and various reported dissociations reveals their blurred, or unveridical, character. Moreover, we remain ignorant with respect to the ways cognitive phenomena transition from consciousness to an unconscious mode. This hinders us from filling in the puzzle of the unified mind. We conclude that we (...) have reached a Kuhnian crisis in the field of unconscious cognition, and we predict that new models, incorporating partly the relevant findings of the dissociation paradigm—but also of dynamic psychology—, will soon be established. We further predict that some of these models will be largely based on the pairs representation–process and analog–digital. (shrink)

Music and listening, music and consciousness -- Conceptualizing consciousness -- The phenomenology of everyday music listening experiences -- Absorption, dissociation and trancing -- Musical and non-musical trancing in daily life -- Imaginative involvement -- Musical and non-musical trancing : similarities and differences -- Experiencing life and art : ethological and evolutionary perspectives on -- Transformations of consciousness -- Everyday music listening experiences reframed.

: To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals’ responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation and a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Beyond Dissociations Reassembling the mind-brain after all? Yves Rossetti Antti Revonsuo "Comme des banes de poissons de meme espece, ...

Two experiments are described that investigate the effects of attention in moderating evaluative conditioning (EC) effects in a picture‐picture paradigm in which previously discovered experimental artifacts (e.g., Field & Davey, 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) were overcome by counterbalancing conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) (...) across participants. Conditioned responses for individuals who had attention enhanced were compared against a control group and groups for whom attention was impeded using a distracter task. In a second experiment the effects of attention were dissociated from those of contingency awareness by using backward‐masked US presentations. The results of these experiments indicate that although associative EC effects may not be disrupted by a lack of contingency awareness, attention is an important factor in establishing conditioning. These results shed some light onto the possible boundary conditions that could explain past inconsistencies in obtaining EC effects in the visual paradigm. (shrink)

The present study examined whether a dissociation among formats for rational numbers can be obtained in tasks that require comparing a number to a non-symbolic quantity. In Experiment 1, college students saw a discrete or else continuous image followed by a rational number, and had to decide which was numerically larger. In Experiment 2, participants saw the same displays but had to make a judgment about the type of ratio represented by the number. The magnitude task was performed more (...) quickly using decimals, whereas the relation task was performed more accurately with fractions. The pattern observed for percentages was very similar to that for decimals. A dissociation between magnitude comparison and relational processing with rational numbers can be obtained when a symbolic number must be compared to a non-symbolic display. (shrink)

Brain damage may doubly dissociate cognitive modules, but the practice of revealing dissociations is predicated on modularity being true (T. Shallice, 1988). This article questions the utility of assuming modularity, as it examines a paradigmatic double dissociation of reading modules. Reading modules illustrate two general problems. First, modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of exclusionary criteria that define pure cases. As a consequence, competing modular theories force perennial quests for purer cases, which simply perpetuates growth in the (...) list of exclusionary criteria. The first problem leads, in part, to the second problem. Modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of pure cases. The second failure perpetuates unending fractionation into more modules. (shrink)

Dijkerman & de Haan (D&dH) argue that body image and body schema form parts of different and dissociable somatosensory streams. We agree in general, but believe that more emphasis should be placed on interactions between these two streams. We illustrate this point with evidence from the rubber-hand illusion (RHI) – an illusion of body image, which depends critically upon body schema.

_The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working With Trauma_ is an invaluable and cutting edge resource providing the current theory, practice, and research on trauma and dissociation within psychoanalysis. _Elizabeth Howell and Sheldon Itzkowitz _bring together experts in the field of dissociation and psychoanalysis, providing a comprehensive and forward-looking overview of the current thinking on trauma and dissociation. The volume contains articles on the history of concepts of trauma and dissociation, the linkage of complex trauma (...) and dissociative problems in living, different modalities of treatment and theoretical approaches based on a new understanding of this linkage, as well as reviews of important new research. Overarching all of these is a clear explanation of how pathological dissociation is caused by trauma, and how this affects psychological organization -- concepts which have often been largely misunderstood._ _This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists, trauma therapists, and students. (shrink)

This article presents a model of dissociative experience that includes a transpersonal perspective. The first aspect ofthe model focuses on whether an experience represents controlled flow, uncontrolled flow, controlled dissociation, or uncontrolled dissociation. The second aspect asks whether there are alterations in one's identification with the ego-self or whether one transcends the ego-self, making contact with a hypothetical All-Self. The third aspect of the model asks whether the experience is life-affirming or life-denying. The model is postmodern in that (...) it recognizes that these latter judgments are a matter of time, place, and power, as is the determination whether or not a dissociative experience is psychopathological. (shrink)

This article reports a study comparing the effects of a single dose of alcohol with a matched placebo drink on recognition memory with and without conscious recollection. A double-blind, cross-over design was used with healthy volunteers who were all social drinkers. Processing depth at study was manipulated using generate versus read instructions. Conscious recollection at test was assessed using the remember-know-guess paradigm (Gardiner, 1988; Tulving, 1985). Alcohol significantly reduced conscious recollection (remember responses) but had no effect on recognition in the (...) absence of conscious recollection (know responses). False alarms rates were low and unaffected by alcohol. Previous findings that generation effects are found only for remember responses were closely replicated. A further dissociation of the generation effect occurred between treatments in that deeper processing at study facilitated recognition on placebo but not on alcohol. That both alcohol and depth of processing produce dissociative effects on recollective experience provides further evidence that remembering and knowing reflect distinct memory systems. (shrink)

Llewellyn has written a fascinating article about rapid eye movement dreams and how they promote the elaborative encoding of recent memories. The main message of her article is that hyperassociative and fluid cognitive processes during REM dreaming facilitate consolidation. We consider one potential implication of this analysis: the possibility that excessive or out-of-phase REM sleep fuels dissociative symptomatology. Further research is warranted to explore the psychopathological ramifications of Llewellyn's theory.

Brain damage may doubly dissociate cognitive modules, but the practice of revealing dissociations is predicated on modularity being true (T. Shallice, 1988). This article questions the utility of assuming modularity, as it examines a paradigmatic double dissociation of reading modules. Reading modules illustrate two general problems. First, modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of exclusionary criteria that define pure cases. As a consequence, competing modular theories force perennial quests for purer cases, which simply perpetuates growth in the (...) list of exclusionary criteria. The first problem leads, in part, to the second problem. Modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of pure cases. The second failure perpetuates unending fractionation into more modules. (shrink)

The target article postulates that rule-based and similarity-based categorization are best described by a unitary process. A number of recent empirical dissociations between rule-based and similarity-based categorization severely challenge this view. Collectively, these new results provide strong evidence that these two types of category learning are mediated by separate systems.

A definition of virtual or virtuality is not an easy task. Both words are of recent application in Philosophy, even if the concept of virtual comes from a respectable Latin tradition. Today’s meaning brings together the notions of potentiality, latency, imaginary representations, VR, and the forms of communication in digital media. This contagious, and spontaneous synonymy fails to identify a common vein and erases memory as a central notion. In the present essay, I’ll try to explain essential features of the (...) concept of virtual, taking the investigation of memory troubles in Pierre Janet’s work as an exemplification. Pierre Janet’s work represents a rare combination of medical observation and description of symptoms of mental illnesses, therapeutic guidance in hypnosis and philosophical writing about the main psychological themes of an epoch in transition from a Metaphysics of the Soul to the modern Experimental Psychology. Pierre Janet’s intellectual evolution since the 1880s until the end of his life is dominated by the philosophical project of a theory of the psychic system supported by three basic pillars: a concept of personality, a theory of memory and a sketch of a general theory of conduct. Such complex endeavour cannot be abstracted from the initial connections with Jean-Martin Charcot’s school at La Salpêtrière which meant a turning point in the tradition of the “animal magnetism” concerning the treatment of epileptic-hysterical symptoms along with the contributions of Hyppolite Bernheim’s “Nancy School” of hypnotism. J.-M. Charcot’s or H. Bernheim’s theorising about the organic and psychological aspects of the hypnotic treatment of the hysterical symptoms was already aware of the difficulty in dealing with the extent of the dissimulation of the patients regarding the symptoms of the illness, under hypnotic suggestion, even if Charcot insisted in the identification and cataloguing of the organic expressions, such as contractures or the posture of the body in arc during the attacks. The precise location of the “great hysteria” in the organic-psychic corridor was itself a riddle. If a symptom is a special type of sign, in the case of the “great hysteria” nobody knew for sure what it stood for. The clinical symptom of the attack stood for an organic trouble with cerebral causes, a psychological interruption of the normal sensorial and muscular movements or a disguise of the female desire? Pierre Janet described many hysterical patients, somnambulism and multiple personality since his articles in La Revue Philosophique de la France et l’ Étranger, a Journal founded by the philosopher, experimental psychologist and his intellectual predecessor Théodule-Armand Ribot. The description of the case of the “great hysterical” Lucie, treated by him, is an example of a theoretical hypothesising on multiple personality and discontinuity of memories fragments. There are more cases revealing the same relation between hysteria, somnambulism, personality dissociation and “alternating memory”. Decisively inspired by and corroborating P. Janet’s ideas, S. Freud conceived also the essential of the hysterical sicknesses as disorders of memory. The theme of memory came even more to the foreground in the dissertation L’Automatisme Psychologique. Here, the strange world of somnambulism was scrutinised along with hysterical contractures and convulsions, anaesthesia, the compulsion to repetition, obsessions, “automatic writing” in hysterical patients, multiple personality and “alternating memories”. In the depicted cases memory could not be taken as a homogenous series of remembrances or as a stock of disposable information but as a variable of the depth of the personalities’ inner formation. The so-called “seconde existence” of some somnambulists referred not only unconscious representations and unconscious thoughts but complete or inceptive latent personalities provided with multiple virtual existences and multiple memories. Hypnosis was the privileged technique to access to such multiple memories ignored by the official personality. Later and after the writing of his M.D. Dissertation, Contribution à l’ Étude des Accidents Mentaux chez les Hystériques, P. Janet addressed again the themes of memory and alternating memories in a series of lectures at the Collège de France but now according to the larger framework of a general theory of conduct which included a description of the social actions participating in the narrative construction of personal memories, and the role of social memory. (shrink)

The existence or questionability of “repressed memories” can be discussed as being a matter of definition. It seems, however, far-fetched to consider all “lost” memories as caused by encoding problems, brain damage, forgetfulness, failure to disclose events, and so on. We argue that dissociative amnesia (DA) (or “psychogenic amnesia,” or “functional amnesia,” or, as we favor to call it, “mnestic block syndrome”) is caused by psychic alterations, but ultimately they can be traced to changes in the physiology of the brain, (...) as we are of the opinion that all memory processes—positive or negative—alter brain functions, sometimes more permanently, sometimes transiently. We have proven this idea using functional imaging techniques, in particular fluoro-deoxy-d-glucose positron emission tomography. Having investigated dozens of patients with severe and long-lasting DA conditions, we believe it to be disrespectful to many (but not to all) of the affected patients to question their disease condition, which can be proven to be not caused by feigning, malingering, or direct brain damage. (shrink)

While many theorists have argued that dissociative identity disorder is a case of multiple selves or persons in a single body, I maintain that DID instead should be understood as involving a single self who suffers from significant disruptions to self-consciousness. Evidence of overlapping abilities and memories, as well as the very logic of dissociation, supports the claim that DID results from internal conflict endured by a single self. Along these lines, I will maintain that alter-formation should be understood (...) as the result of extreme emotional ambivalence. While it is true that subjects with DID exhibit volitional conflict, as Frankfurt [1988. The Importance of What We Care About. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1999. Necessity, Volition, and Love. New York: Cambridge University Press] maintains, I argue that these incompatible volitions have a deeper source: conflicting desires and affective stances concerning basic emotional needs that are not easily abandoned. A single subject turns to... (shrink)

Four pairs of connectionist simulations are presented in which quasi‐regular mappings are computed using localist and distributed representations. In each simulation, a control parameter termed input gain was modulated over the only level of representation that mapped inputs to outputs. Input gain caused both localist and distributed models to shift between regularity‐based and item‐based modes of processing. Performance on irregular items was selectively impaired in the regularity‐based modes, whereas performance on novel items was selectively impaired in the item‐based modes. Thus, (...) the models exhibited double dissociations without separable processing components. These results are discussed in the context of analogous dissociations found in language domains such as word reading and inflectional morphology. (shrink)