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My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

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Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#141

Post by kamaal »

mathattack wrote: post #59
csense wrote: post #46

Whenever I hear about stuff like this, I wonder: Is there anything the failure modes of the human brain allow us to deduce about the software architecture? Maybe memories are stored in some partitioned database, and one of the partitions is always stuff relating to "my identity", and somehow this partition can get unlinked and temporarily re-linked to a blank one, which is discarded after a few hours. Hmm, maybe this…

This is why a lot of cognitive psychologists study abnormal psychology. It's when things break that you can find out what's going on. I do think being able to blank things out (including times of immense pain) is a feature that increases survival rather than a bug. If you are excessively afraid, your ability to pass on your genes goes down.

>> It's when things break that you can find out what's going on.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, early part of Medical academics is all about studying how a healthy body body works. So that when they start studying the diseases they can learn to distinguish between a disease and a expected behaviour.

So to know if something is an abnormal psychology, you need to first know what is normal.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#142

Post by Klinky »

mapt wrote: post #133
Klinky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such rose-colored glasses of the past you have. The handling of the mentally ill in the past was atrocious. Hiding mental illness away is very convenient for society, but it doesn't fix the actual problem. People who suffer brain trauma often end up with it affecting their personality. It is quite possible that many personality disorders have a physiological basis, one that is not as simple as someone "just stopping…

Yes, we hid them away, we ostracized them, we caged them, we lobotomized them, we murdered them. I'm not downplaying that by any means. The physiological and the psychological and the sociological interact to produce psychiatric problems in the forms and rates we see. The fact that we've diagnosed a person with a disorder means that the person is failing to control their condition as well as we desire; It's wishful j…

The harsher treatment isn't really what I was talking about. People were often said to be "off" or "crazy", but no one talk about it much. Likely mental disorders were underreported because there was less interest in understanding them and more ostracization of those who were open about it. Classifying mental disorders does not mean we're letting people off the hook.

Like I posted previously, physiological factors with the brain can cause poor emotion and impulse control. Abuse during the developmental stages of the brain could also wire the brain in strange ways that, again, someone may not be able to actually control.

Saying society is "soft" and these people are "weak" doesn't solve anyone's problems.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#143

Post by ajkjk »

pbz wrote: post #92
kazinator wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was your home and you recognized it, and the people in it, then that is not relevant here at all. You're equivocating between the colloquial use of "dissociate" (as in "marathon runners practice dissociation and association") and the clinical term as it is used in this context for a disturbing disorder which has nothing to do with driving a memorized route on "auto pilot". And, by the way, you'd still hit the b…

The kind of dissociation you may experience driving a car (being on auto-pilot) is definitely not as extreme as DID, but they share the same foundation. This is our current understanding of how it works. If you don't believe me you'll have to take it up with the professionals in the field. Comparing zoning out with DID is like comparing a hill to a mountain. However, I understand where you're coming from. I don't kno…

We don't believe you because you haven't shared any sources, not because we disagree with professionals.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#144

Post by pyre »

kazinator wrote: post #84
pbz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever driven home and when you got there you weren't sure how it happened? You didn't remember driving the entire time. Your hands were at the wheel, but your "mind" was somewhere else.

If it was your home and you recognized it, and the people in it, then that is not relevant here at all. You're equivocating between the colloquial use of "dissociate" (as in "marathon runners practice dissociation and association") and the clinical term as it is used in this context for a disturbing disorder which has nothing to do with driving a memorized route on "auto pilot". And, by the way, you'd still hit the b…

> Simliarly, a piano player isn't "dissociating" just because he or she isn't thinking about which finger goes to which key at all times.

The piano player example is apples to oranges with driving on auto-pilot example. In the auto-pilot example, you are responding to external stimulus (even without a kid jumping into the road), in the piano player example, he/she is using "muscle memory."

Also, the piano player doesn't get to the end of the piece and forget ever playing the piece.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#145

Post by Squarel »

baby wrote: post #90
Squarel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume as the poster is talking about raves, they are referencing ketamine or MDMA, and both of these are more than capable of making you forget who you are, let alone who your friends are.

I think you are mixing MDMA and LSD here.

Definitely not.

Unless the usual method of taking LSD is via pill form.

But I hear MDMA does not induce hours of hallucinations either, so perhaps LSD does come in pill form with logos on it.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#146

Post by Squarel »

anextio wrote: post #118
Squarel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume as the poster is talking about raves, they are referencing ketamine or MDMA, and both of these are more than capable of making you forget who you are, let alone who your friends are.

MDMA is not capable of making you forget who your friends are, except maybe in serotonin-syndrome inducing doses. Primarily it is an empathogenic[1] drug, not a hallucinogen. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathogen-entactogen

MDMA absolutely is. I am well aware that it is not ordinarily associated with hallucinations or disassociation. I can also absolutely say that you do not need a serotonin-syndrome inducing dose to forget who your friends are, who you are, or have no idea why you have are sitting on a bed (your own), or who it belongs to. It can also make you hallucinate and "disappear" into your hallucination for several hours, before you pop back into reality. Finally, and not really disassociation and more hallucination, it can make the faces of your friends morph into other peoples and even appear featureless.

Or so I have heard.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#147

Post by bad_user »

kazinator wrote: post #84
pbz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever driven home and when you got there you weren't sure how it happened? You didn't remember driving the entire time. Your hands were at the wheel, but your "mind" was somewhere else.

If it was your home and you recognized it, and the people in it, then that is not relevant here at all. You're equivocating between the colloquial use of "dissociate" (as in "marathon runners practice dissociation and association") and the clinical term as it is used in this context for a disturbing disorder which has nothing to do with driving a memorized route on "auto pilot". And, by the way, you'd still hit the b…

> And, by the way, you'd still hit the brakes if a kid jumped out onto the road chasing a ball. It's just multitasking.

It isn't multi-tasking, that's just our autonomic nervous system learning to drive a car and goes further than hitting brakes - driving a car becomes all automatic, with gestures that include switching gears, stopping at red lights and so on. It's the same system that's responsible for breathing - you don't need to remember to breath, right? And it's what we call reflex.

Humans are actually bad at multi-tasking. It's cooperative multitasking at best, requiring expensive context switches, which is really the reason for why many of us can't do software development while talking on the phone or while having other distractions around us. For some reason women seem to be better at multitasking, not sure how that works.

Also, as a funny personal experience ... I'm fully on auto-pilot when I drive, which is why I've found myself several times driving to work on the weekend and my work place wasn't my destination :-)

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#148

Post by rangibaby »

Squarel wrote: post #146
anextio wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MDMA is not capable of making you forget who your friends are, except maybe in serotonin-syndrome inducing doses. Primarily it is an empathogenic[1] drug, not a hallucinogen. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathogen-entactogen

MDMA absolutely is. I am well aware that it is not ordinarily associated with hallucinations or disassociation. I can also absolutely say that you do not need a serotonin-syndrome inducing dose to forget who your friends are, who you are, or have no idea why you have are sitting on a bed (your own), or who it belongs to. It can also make you hallucinate and "disappear" into your hallucination for several hours, befor…

All that from E?

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#149

Post by thewarrior »

csense wrote: post #46

Whenever I hear about stuff like this, I wonder: Is there anything the failure modes of the human brain allow us to deduce about the software architecture? Maybe memories are stored in some partitioned database, and one of the partitions is always stuff relating to "my identity", and somehow this partition can get unlinked and temporarily re-linked to a blank one, which is discarded after a few hours. Hmm, maybe this…

There is a guy who has dedicated his career to this :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran

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