Extracted from

DISSOCIATION AND MEMORY: A TWO-HUNDRED YEAR PERSPECTIVE

by Adam Crabtree

Full article http://www.joannecrabtree.com/psychotherapyarts/innerMind/dissociationAndMemory.html

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO DISSOCIATION

In the late 1960's a new wrinkle on dissociation and memory was introduced. It was the discovery of "state-dependent" effects in human beings. The notion, briefly stated, is that when people learn information, undergo an experience, or develop a skill in a specific state of consciousness, they can recall that information, reclaim that experience, or exercise that skill most easily when the original state of consciousness is re-establish. The earliest experiments in this area investigated the effects of certain drugs on memory in animals (Overton 1964, 1968). These were followed by investigations of the effects of alcohol or barbiturate intoxication on human memory (e.g., Goodwin et al. 1969 and Eich 1977). The results proved the old saw that if a person when sober could not remember where he put his keys when drunk, the best way to get the memory back was to get drunk again.

Roland Fischer, a pioneer in this field of investigation (Fischer et al., 1970, Fischer and Landon 1972, Fischer 1976, 1977), attempted to place our understanding of state-bound memory in a framework that takes into account both context and a spectrum of psycho-physical arousal, ranging from hypo- to hyper-arousal (Fischer 1971). He speculated that the more discontinuous the states of arousal, the less ability to retrieve a memory in one state of an event in another. In 1971 Fischer stated: "The implications of this amnesia between disparate levels of arousal for criminology, jurisprudence and psychotherapy have not yet been realized" (Fischer 1971, p. 33); that statement seems to be quite valid yet today.

The implications of the notion of state-dependent learning and state-dependent memory are vast. It can be said that for all people, the so-called normal and the disordered, memories are attached to specific states of consciousness and gaining access to memories depends on returning to the proper state of consciousness.

Memory as state-dependent serves as an experimental model for verifying the understanding of dissociation and memory of Janet. It also confirms the notion that "amnesia" or "forgetting" are misleading concepts to use in attempting to describe dissociative experience, and points instead to dissociation as a partitioned assimilation of information and experiences.

So this is what is comes down to: dissociation, normal and disordered, is the partitioned assimilation of information and experiences. And memory is the retrieval of information and experiences by returning to the compartment into which they were assimilated. There is no "forgetting" followed by "remembering." Instead we move from state of consciousness to state of consciousness and retrieve information or experiential data with greater or less efficiency, depending on the "disparity" of the present state from that in which the information was obtained or the experience was undergone. If the disparity is too great, retrieval will fail.

http://www.joannecrabtree.com/psychotherapyarts/innerMind/dissociationAndMemory.html

Dissociation & Dissociative Identity Disorder 

History of Dissociation

Dissociation has long been somewhat of an intrigue to clinicians and the general public. In the United States, as far back as 1860 (i.e., the case of Mary Reynolds), cases have been reported in which clients experienced state specific dissociative disorders. It was in the mid 1970's however, that clinicians began recognizing considerable numbers of clients with symptoms of dissociation that resembled Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder.) At that time it was estimated that the prevalence of the disorder was about one in a thousand.

In the mid-eighties, the number of clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder in treatment began to increase. There has been a great deal of speculation offered as explanation. One thought is that as clinicians become more aware of the disorder and its symptoms, the more able they are to detect and treat it. Others believe that DID has been over diagnosed, especially with those clients who are highly suggestible. Dissociative Identity Disorder is diagnosed up to nine times more often in females than in males. It wasn’t until the 1970's, when the women’s movement began to bring child abuse issues to public awareness that clinicians became open to the idea of a trauma induced disorder. DID has been shown to have a strong link to severe trauma, especially sexual and physical childhood abuse.

   

What is Dissociation?

The essential feature of a Dissociative Disorder is a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment. The disturbance may be sudden or gradual, transient or chronic. In other words, an event is processed in a way that breaks up the pieces of the event into differing states of consciousness.  Dissociation is common and nearly everyone experiences mild dissociation from time to time. If you have ever had the experience of driving somewhere, and suddenly you realize that you have little or no memory of driving the last few minutes.  Perhaps you even passed your exit. Your driving ability wasn't hindered because the mind was still utilizing the part of the brain that was needed to drive the car. However, instead of your thinking-mind focusing on the driving, it was somewhere else. That is dissociation. Daydreaming is a very mild form of dissociation.  On the other end of the dissociation-continuum, dissociation is often a way for the brain to tear apart the sensations, or the memory of a traumatic event in order to survive the situation with as little damage as possible. For instance, the actual memory might be put so far back in the subconscious mind, that it is perceived as being forgotten. However, the body sensations may still be present and may be experienced from time to time as somatic eruptions, body memories. The feelings related to the trauma may be "switched off," generally taking with it the individuals ability to experience other feelings later in life.       http://www.psych-net.com/dissociation.html

Of all people who have ever lived, if anyone has ever traveled into the future, it would have had to have been Leonardo Da Vinci, the brilliant visionary and inventor from the 16th Century

Perhaps artists are the best people to ask about time travel - many have reported a feeling of time being altered or suspended when they become absorbed in their creative activities. Some report that what felt like a matter of 2-3 hours really turned out to be 8-10. Where were they during those missing hours? In another dimension of space/time? This type of time suspension experience has led many to question the mysterious nature of consciousness as it relates to time.

In his book "Time-A Travelers Guide," time travel expert Clifford Pickover states the brain is indeed a time machine, "Voluntary motions are not initiated by our conscious minds, and the brain does seem to have a time machine for antedating perceptions." Pickover's statements are based on numerous physiological experiments conducted and then published within scientific circles in a paper entitled, "Time and the Observer: the Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain," by Daniel Dennett and Marcel Kinsbourne.

According to Pickover, the results of these studies show that the brain projects mental events backwards in time in strange ways, "these studies show that the time line experienced by your conscious brain is often quite different from the objective time line of events occurring in your brain or in real life. In short, the time lines do not register and can develop kinks and order differences relative to another." So what does this misalignment of time lines mean? Pickover believes it should stimulate fascinating adventures and experiments in consciousness in the 21st Century.


Mental Time Travel Exercise

Here's a simple time traveler experiment you can perform each night before you fall asleep. Place yourself in a space and time where you can remember yourself being happy and carefree - perhaps one of the brightest moments in your life. Now, as you recall the environment first, and then the faces and circumstances surrounding the time frame, connect with the feeling you had. Feeling is the key to placing yourself back in a certain time of your life. Without being able to feel your emotions back then, it is merely nothing but a two-dimensional picture in your mind. This is a form of mental time travel, and if you connected with your true feelings then, you are officially initiated as having traveled back, using your brain/mind to enter into another time period to reexperience what you felt surrounding an event. After you feel comfortable with travel back into your own past, you can branch out using your imagination to reexperience events in history you have always longed to witness. Perhaps you will be able to penetrate some mysterious time warp field allowing your consciousness to breakthrough into a different time, past or future.

Keep Track of Your Internal Time Clock

If you want to get in tune with your own internal time clock, keep a journal handy and record those times when you felt time went by faster than you expected, and the circumstances surrounding this occurrences. Begin to note a pattern in what triggers time suspension in your life and note whatever impact it has, negative or positive, in your life.

Source Info

Time - A Traveler's Guide, Clifford Pickover
Oxford University Press, Inc 1998

http://www.brainchannels.com/Memory/timetravel/timetravel3.html

'Spacetime cloak' can make time travel possible

'Spacetime cloak' can make time travel possible

Posted by gp at Wednesday, November 17, 2010

A 'spacetime cloak' may be straight out of science fiction, but some day it might permit time travel or change history.


A 'cloaked' individual could, for instance, travel from one place to another while appearing to vanish and appear instantaneously in a new location.


The device would speed up and slow down light to give the illusion that events have just not happened, according to the Journal of Optics.


For instance, a scientifically-savvy thief with access to technology could open a safe, empty its contents, and escape right under the watchful eye of a surveillance camera, reports the Daily Mail.


The video footage would show that the safe door was closed all the time. Scientists at Imperial College London have proved it could work in theory by adapting standard fibreoptic technology.


Lead scientist Martin McCall said: "We have shown that by manipulating the way the light illuminating an event reaches the viewer, it is possible to hide the passage of time."


"If you had someone moving along the corridor, it would appear to a distant observer as if they had relocated instantaneously, creating the illusion of a Star Trek transporter. So, theoretically, this person might be able to do something and you wouldn't notice," McCall added.


The new research goes a step beyond 'invisibility cloak' technology by devising a way to conceal events as well as objects. This is achieved not by bending light, but by manipulating the speed at which light travels through a material medium.


Illuminating light is divided into an accelerated 'leading part' which arrives before an event, and a slowed 'trailing half' which lags behind and arrives after the event.


Both the fast and slow rays are joined back together and adjusted to the same speed before being seen by an observer.


The result is a concealed passage of time or 'temporal void' during which the event is not illuminated and goes unnoticed.


Graduate student Alberto Favaro, who also worked on the project, said: "It is unlike ordinary cloaking devices because it does not attempt to divert light around an object."

IANS

http://www.phenomenica.com/2010/11/spacetime-cloak-can-make-time-travel.html