In Montgomery Alabama

Dissociative Fugue Cases

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This link is  to Modern Cases below

Missing Colorado Attorney might be a Dissociative Fugue case. (Same link first case below.)

For a A Book Review of "Mad Travelers," click this line

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This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

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Dissociative Fugue

Introduction

I have been disabled for many years with spinal problems. For most periods of recovery from treatment or surgery all I could do was watch TV. I began to notice news segments about people who had suddenly disappeared and were found hundreds of miles away. Sometimes they had died under strange circumstances. In one case there were gas charge tickets that described a wandering course to a road in the wilderness. The car was parked and abandoned. Ground searches of the remote area only found a single item of clothing. There was nothing to explain what had happened.

As the stories happened again, and again I realized that I might be the only person who thought  that the stories were somehow connected.

Dissociative Fugue is the name of that connection.

The thesis of this page is that Subliminal Distraction is the cause of Dissociative Fugue.

History of the Phenomenon discussed on this site.

Visual Subliminal Distraction

Accidental Discovery of a Conflict of Physiology

During the 1950's and 60's there was a great push to improve or modernize society. One of those improvements was a redesign of business and engineering offices. A group of men thought they saw a way to build a new business doing that. They planned to create and sell moveable workstations that could be grouped for individual projects within the same business.

They hired designers, engineers, and scientists to research the project. Haworth used the first room partition walls in 1953. Herman Miller Inc. introduced the 'Action Office 1' in 1964 but by 1968 they had added vision blocking panels to it. A biography on the Herman Miller site claims invention of the Cubicle in 1968.

The reason for that modification was that some of the knowledge workers had begun to have mental breaks while using the new workstations.

When the psychologists were called in it was discovered that Subliminal Sight and Peripheral Vision Reflexes had operated in the "special circumstances" the new workstations created to cause the mental beaks.

The designers and psychologists did not understand what they had found. They thought they had caused this problem for the first time. But there had been an epidemic of dissociative fugue in France in the 1880's. Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease had been discovered and evaluated, 1880's Maine, and there had been an incident aboard the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898, Antarctia.

The discovery was only used to design new compact close-spaced office workstations, Systems Furniture, Cubicles. They did not name the phenomenon. It is a conflict of physiology but they did not call it that. During that time period it was probably called pseudo-psychosis.

Today the phenomenon is thought to be a harmless nuisance in the design of business offices.

A chronological list of related incidents  is at the bottom of this page with definitions.

Cases of Dissociative Fugue

There have been segments on the TV show "Unsolved Mysteries" about runners. A construction worker began to believe someone was pursuing him. He withdrew all his money including a coin collection. He was refused flight tickets to Europe and finally entered the United States from Canada. There was security camera footage of him at a motel. He behaved strangely. Later his body was found in a parking lot in Nashville (?). It appeared that he had been stuck by a car. All the coins and papers were scattered on the ground around him.

A woman suddenly left her job and boarded a bus in the Midwest. She ran out of money in Gulf Shores, Alabama. When her body was found it could not be determined if she had been murdered or committed suicide. When investigated none of her acquaintances could supply a reason she ran.

Jennifer Wilbanks developed a fear of her upcoming wedding. Over several weeks she bought bus tickets, cut her hair and took the bus to Las Vegas and finally ended up in New Mexico. She confabulated an abduction story but finally admitted her bus ride. (Neither Wilbanks or Mason will answer mail or emails for an interview.) She was a worker in a doctor's office. That is one type business that does not provide Cubicle Level Protection. (Cubicles were created after the accidental discovery that Subliminal Distraction could cause mental breaks for Knowledge workers.)

The Modern Cubicle site page.

One of the first things that appeared in my wife's case was the delusional fear that someone was stalking her. She constantly asked to go somewhere but could not say why she wanted to go. She believed a trial was being held about mistakes she had made at work. When I refused to take her to downtown Tuscaloosa just blocks from Denny Stadium on a football weekend, she changed the story and said the verdict had been not guilty but now there was a party celebrating that verdict and she had to go to that party.

On a non game weekend our daughter joined us. I have film of Connie shaking doors on the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse. When she couldn't get into the court house she decided the trial was in the annex, the Sheriff's Department and Jail. 

Connie had a silent mental break at her desk in the payroll office of a major university. That payroll office had changed from a computer record system with manual entries to a fully computerized system for all areas of payroll. Connie was not a computer person. Rather than use the policy stated in the employee manual her supervisors decided she should retire and began to harass her doing things she could never prove were done deliberately. She had thirty years service at age fifty four.

Several things happened. She was sent on fool's errands but when they moved the office coffee pot and food service table into her room she had a psychotic mental break within thirty days. The University will not answer questions on what happened. I have a letter from the President stating that they will not respond to further mail. They refused to communicate with the Department of Education or the Social Security Administration about an issue of sick leave pay on her 2002/03 W2 forms. (Taxable income appears as normal salary so that it appears the person on leave might have returned to work.)

As I sit here Saturday morning she is standing at the door saying. "I got to go. They want us to go." Her desire to go has been diverted by shopping trips. Most of the time she cannot remain in a store long before she begins to pull on my arm saying she has to go. But she still has episodes where she believes someone is doing something and she must go stop it, or someone is stalking her and she must get away. Although she hears voices the episodes seem to be more like small dream sequences. They come and go within a few minutes or sometimes the same theme will last for several days.

Personal Experiences site page.

"Mad Travelers" is the title of a book by Dr. Ian Hacking. The incidents described in his book began in the 1880's in France then spread to Germany, Italy and Russia. Those events are accepted as the first recognized cases of Dissociative Fugue.

The Mad Travelers were all small shop operators or clerks. It is easy to speculate that they had each created the special circumstances to cause stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

There were no farmers, game keepers, or outdoor workers as victims. Army members were victims but they lived in barracks. Too-small single-room living arrangements allow opportunities for Subliminal Distraction exposure. Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome happened because French Canadian lumber jacks lived in bunkhouses in remote lumber camps. JRMS disappeared when modern logging equipment replaced bunkhouses of men in those camps.

Subliminal stimulation of the subconscious from the normal detection of movement approaching from behind while we concentrate is painless, invisible. None of the travelers would have been aware of what was happening to them.

Culture Bound Syndromes demonstrate that each person experiences this in relation to their ethnic and cultural belief system. But the reason one person runs and another believes they are becoming the Windigo monster is undetermined. There were some references to wandering in accounts and articles about Windigo Psychosis. Culture Bound Syndromes

I suggest that the contemporaneous activities and thoughts are the subject of Accidental Subliminal Operant Conditioning. When there is a dispute those thoughts are expanded to the point that violence is a reasonable choice when the mental event happens. The phenomenon produces fear. Some disappearances cases and mass school or workplace shooters left messages telling of unbearable fear. At the beginning of exposure if that fear or paranoia is attached to and shapes contemporaneous thought delusions occur. (See Personal Experiences site page and paragraph above.)

Accidental Subliminal Operant Conditioning site page.

Fear is evidenced by messages and accounts of Mary Shotwell Little's disappearance, Atlanta 1965, and the Atlanta Day Trader shooting.  Day Trader Shooting site page. Mary Shotwell Little disappearance site page.

In more formal situations such as the exercises Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga the stimulation happens while the subject is concentrating to balance Qi (chee) or to achieve a heightened state of awareness called the Awakening of Kundalini. If the exercises are repeated in a compact time frame a temporary psychotic episode happens. Long term or lifetime users have permanent altered mental states.

The leader of the Falun Gong movement has performed Qi Gong since he was six. He believes that the most important problem facing the world today is that extraterrestrial aliens are cloning humans to take over the earth. A recent news report states that he has proclaimed that he is God.

Qi Gong Psychotic Episodes site page.

In Kundalini Yoga a mental event is the desired outcome. Users are attempting to release what they believe is an untapped source of Universal Life Energy. The coiled cobra is the icon for this energy and it is explained as residing at the base of human spines. A string of Chakras is said to exist along the spine and each stage of the development opens another one of them until the Awakening of Kundalini happens. Articles on-line claim that first psychotic mental breaks are accidental Kundalini Awakenings. Serious mental problems associated with this practice are claimed to happen because the Awakening was not controlled properly.

Hearing voices, sounds of running water, birds chirping, and other sounds, are indications that this Awakening is beginning to happen.  Eventually advanced users believe they can levitate, become invisible, walk through solid objects, and communicate telepathically  then control the acts of others by telepathy.

I

In this case the belief system is expanded to psychotic levels by Subliminal Operant Conditioning.

Kundalini Yoga Psychotic Episodes site page.

Accidental Subliminal Operant Conditioning is not operant conditioning in the same sense as it is currently explained in psychology classes. Instead you can say that operant conditioning has happened when the repeating internal signals to effect a vision reflex are perceived to be reinforcement of contemporaneous thought and activity. When the victim is constantly bombarded by the detection of threat movement from behind, a sensation of being watched is generated. That subliminal effect eventually increases then colors thought producing paranoia.

In cases of Dissociative Fugue two effects are present. There is no reason to believe that the detection of threat movement communicates any complex intelligence to the brain. The system is primitive and is a warn first evaluate second system. The detection of movement happens when the stimulus from the retina meets criterion for a reflex. The conflict of your physiology is that although you can ignore the movement you can't stop seeing it. The subliminal operation of the detection system prevents your being aware that the warning is still being generated.

Your brain must grow or modify connections between neurons to create memory. When the brain attempts to understand and correctly source the subliminal input it makes incorrect associations and connections. At a threshold point too many of those connections cause the dissociative mental break. The brain shuts down when it can no longer function.

The overall sensation of paranoia as un-attributed fear causes the victim to  attempt escape.

Escape moves the victim away from the source of Subliminal Distraction. When the stimulus is no longer present the improper associations disappear from disuse. The victim recovers but the missing connections block memory of the events during the escape. Different people have different outcomes and there are variations in the level of missing memory.

Unfinished.....

Mad Travelers

An epidemic of mad traveling began in France in the 1880's and spread to other countries, Italy, Germany, and Russia . It stopped after twenty three years. Diagnosed as fugue, Wandertreib, automatisme ambulatoire and dromomania and is defined by aimless wandering driven by what seem to be irresistible impulses. Causes were thought to be epilepsy or hysteria. 

The first case was in 1887. A gas company employee named Albert Dadas. You would think that he was an outdoor worker but one account lists him as a part time clerk and repairman. That will turn out to be the case for all the true fugue victims. Almost all of them were artisans, clerks, or small shop owners.

He did not know what caused him to travel to distant places. He had walked to Moscow and Constantinople. He lost any identifying papers that had been supplied, including  his marriage certificate,  military discharge, and a letter explaining his condition.

He would hear of a distant location and drop what he was doing and walk toward it. When he arrived he was able, through menial work or charity, to  gather funds to return home.

Philippe Tissii, his doctor diagnosed him with "pathological tourism."

http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/kabatoff.html

http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Kabatoff.pdf

How does a mental disorder start, continue and expand for twenty three years, spreading into several countries, then abruptly stop?

Were there developments in clerical work that lowered the number of victims? Unlikely. Or did the mental health professionals just drop the problem from consideration.

There is some indication that the classification was changed.

Were fewer cases discovered because the identity and travel papers no longer supplied information on these mad travelers?

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The Book "Mad Travelers," a brief review.

Although limited to history and the current belief about the cause of fugue events, the book has many cases and references to papers and articles about Dissociative Fugue.

Ian Hacking treats the issues raised in his book as "Transient Mental Illness." He proposes that "ecological niches" are created by sociological and political factors. Sociological factors existed  in local societies to create stresses for victims. Political factors involve the struggle between different factions dealing with mental illness. Release is a name for the behavior of fugue for dysfunctional men to escape their life situations. They did not have money to travel and responsibilities of home and work kept them restricted. The system of  controls governments had in place required papers to travel. This meant that '"fugueurs" would eventually come to the attention of authorities and be arrested. When they demonstrated amnesia or other symptoms they would be sent for medical attention.

The Reverand Ansel Bourn a  preacher in Coventry Mass. disappeared and two months later found him self tending shop in Norristown Pennsylvania as John Brown. He had no memory of the events during his travel.

Deserters from compulsory military service are discussed through the book. A cafe worker identified as Henri C.  enlisted in the army but had sudden attacks of depression while living in the barracks.  He had no memory of the beginning of his fugues but could remember some of the later incidents. He left the army eight times. On several occasions he turned himself into authorities in Germany and France as a French deserter. He joined the French Foreign Legion but left it too. On one occasion he escaped confinement by removing a bar from his window. In the early 1900's he would have been diagnosed as having ambulatory automatism.

Barracks living is a single-room situation. That situation allows the "special conditions" to be created for exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Slight dissociation of the victim while reading or performing some other activity requiring full mental investment is necessary to cause exposure. That, in part, is why some are affected but not all living in the same circumstances. There may be inherited physical factors that increase the likelihood that someone will be exposed. Jumping Frenchmen of Maine was discovered in French Canadian lumberjacks who lived in bunkhouses. That disorder disappeared when modern logging equipment replaced lumber camps and their bunkhouses. While some investigators believe a  neurological problem causes startle-matching behaviors others point out that operant conditioning created by "special conditions" explains it. (See the JFMS page here.)

In Notes for pg 74-84, footnote no. 2, "Fisher (1945,1947) describes three types of fugue in American service during WWII, namely fugue with awareness of loss of personal identity, fugue  with changes of personal identity, and fugue without awareness of loss of  identity, but with retrograde amnesia."

Unfinished .....11:10 pm October 17,2005

_________________________________

Hacking, Ian. Mad Travelers : Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses . Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002

Depression is one of the outcomes of exposure to Subliminal Distraction aboard the Belgica, Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898. Barracks living, many people in a single-room living arrangement,  allows the creation of the special circumstances and exposure to Subliminal Distraction.

See the Astronauts & Insanity VPN site page for quotes from Dr. Cook's book,

"Through the First Antarctic Night."

MC__

Modern cases

Colorado Missing Attorney May 3, 07

This may or may not be a dissociative fugue case.

Royal "Scoop" Daniel went in to work at an unaccustomed 5:30 am.  He usually arrived after 9:00 am. Scott Howard who's office shares a wall with Davis saw him in the hallway when Howard was making coffee. He heard nothing through the connecting wall that morning.

Davis' cell phone made a nine second call to 911 at 7:48. There was nothing on the 911 call recorded except the operator answering. His car keys, a partially broken pair of glasses, and a fresh pot of hot coffee were left behind.

He disappeared leaving his Golden Retriever in the office. J B Katz an associate says he would have never left the dog voluntarily. He took the dog with him everywhere.

Davis was a real-estate attorney and had traveled to Brazil many times for business. He formerly had an office with a Washington DC law firm. Police obtained a search warrant and took files from the office. They are investigating his financial affairs. His associate said previous financial problems stemmed from his performing work and not being paid. He was said to be generous to the point that it hurt him financially.

If Daniel had attempted to work where he could have subliminally detected the dog moving in the room that would be enough to cause the expected mental break from Subliminal Distraction. There is no evidence that that did happen. Did he use a laptop? Where did he use it?

New information May 10:

Another Van Susteren broadcast revealed that Daniel had used client's money. Perhaps as much as one million dollars is missing. He applied for a passport and said travel in late April of 2007 was planned. He left a paycheck for his secretary.

This does not eliminate the possibility of Subliminal Distraction exposure. Where is the passport?

Jeff Ingram September 6, 2006

When Jeff Ingram realized he did not belong in Denver he made public appeals on TV programs for anyone who might know his identity. His fiancé's brother saw him and called her. Two Denver police detectives accompanied him on a flight back to Olympia, Washington to be reunited with Penny. He had previous episodes in 1995, disappearing for nine months, ending up in a Seattle hospital. This time he started a trip to Alberta, Canada to visit a friend dying of cancer. 

He had awoken in Denver with $8 and no memory of how he got there or who he was. He wandered the streets until he was picked up and placed in a hospital for testing. His memories of the former life are all missing. His car, a greenish-blue colored Neon, is still missing. The ability to cook is gone as well as his driving skills.

Experts insist the stress of dealing with a friend's pending death caused the fugue episode. There were no comments on what caused the previous two episodes.

Ingram is said to be a machinist in a mill. There is no other information available at this time. You can be sure no one has investigated exposure from Subliminal Distraction as the cause of fugue states.

There are noted cases of startle matching behaviors in factory workers in the United States. From the episode of Jumping Frenchmen of Maine we know that Subliminal Distraction can cause psychiatric symptoms. Rarely a work position on a factory floor creates the same "special circumstances" as single-room living arrangements. That is, a worker concentrating to perform some task is exposed as others walk too-close beside them. The question is what had Ingram  done to cause the "special circumstances" for exposure in 1995 and again in 2006.

Transcript Greta Van Susteren http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,225084,00.html

Michael Smith, MD Stress caused amnesia. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,225723,00.html?sPage=fnc.health/neurology

Joe Bieger October 10, 2006

Six AM October 6th, The Highlands School, assistant football coach Joe Bieger left his apartment to walk two dogs. The dogs were found wandering the neighborhood but he was missing. Bieger had two previous episodes of fugue and missing memory. One was for four hours and the second for eleven hours. The diagnosis in his case is global amnesia.

Twenty-five days later he walked up to the construction site of his new house in Carrolton, 20 miles from the apartment disappearance site,  and the contractor recognized him. Bieger answered to his name, Joe, when the contractor called out to him. He had stories of sitting in a bar while an investigative reporter told his story. In an encounter with police he was handcuffed while being investigated as the robber of a pizzeria. Witnesses place him at a church carnival in Plano miles north of Dallas. He asked the minister to allow him to search for his keys in the bushes. They thought he was part of a habitat for humanity work crew near-by.

WFAA TV   http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/tv/stories/wfaa061

CBS-11 TV  http://cbs11tv.com/sports/local_story_303180840.html

Raymond Power Jr. ABC News Feb 17, 2006

Attorney Raymond Power left his Westchester County home home for work located in White Plains, August 1, 2005. He disappeared and was located six months later living among the homeless in Chicago at the Pacific Garden Mission. His Vietnam War experiences and the stress of the 911 terrorist attack in New York are being blamed through PTSD. He left his office in the Trade Towers just before the attack.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=1629645

Sean McNulty  Nov 2005

Newlyweds Sean and Amy McNulty started on their honeymoon trip the day of their wedding, Sean thought he left his wallet in their car parked at the airport terminal and went back to get it. He didn't return. Amy waited at the terminal until they missed their flight. She contacted police but Shawn didn't turn up until three days later. He was wandering near a motel and covered in scratches and bug bites.

Accounts on-line mention that drug use, tampering with his drink,  might have caused a first memory loss episode and a head injury was blamed for the disappearance. But one story recounts that his new wife mentioned he had begun acting strangely before he returned to the car for his wallet. There is no mention that testing for drugs was done in the first instance.

When Sean returned to their home he had lost the meaning of music. (Reported by TV news anchor.)

The usual Psychobabble appears in statements by "experts."

" One of Sean's good friends was in a serious car accident after the event and ended up in a coma.  According to psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Brown, in this case, Sean's brain disassociated with his identity. ...

Brown attributes the onset of the amnesia to a series of stressful moments. "There's never a single causal explanation for these things," said Brown. "It's the underlying personality issue of a style of avoidance and a precipitating event like the severe accident and near-death of his friend at his wedding."..."

As you know if you read this site, there is a single cause for most Dissociative Fugue cases.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124355&page=1

Mykensie Martin

November 10, 2005

Missing exchange student Mykinsie Martin, Oregon, has been found.

News reports on cable news networks are reporting that she disappeared over the weekend while traveling to a church event. Initial reports are that she began hitchhiking and eventually traveled by bus over a thousand miles. A news reporter found her living in a youth hostel.

The sole piece of information that might link her to the conflict of physiology is that she is a high achieving student with no history of this type behavior.

Current interviews are reporting she is physically unharmed but emotionally distraught over the events. He brother gave an interview in which he repeated that she is physically fine but seriously emotionally distressed.

The psychobabble about what might have caused her disappearance has already started.

Ahmad Arain 

Arain disappeared while traveling on  a bus to a meeting at UCLA. His brother had driven him to the bus station and arranged to pick him up that afternoon. He carried a cell phone and called his mother once. Then he left the bus in Watts. Police investigations using the bus security camera showed him standing by the driver preparing to exit.

Six weeks later he recovered enough to email home. He had been found wandering in Mexico by a non-English speaking family. His family released a statement that he had a mental break.

I had left phone messages on the numbers his family provided. I don't know if they visited this site.

Kevin Mura

The owner of a family inn, Mura disappeared after taking someone to the airport. His damaged blue van was found in the airport parking lot. He realized that the small Iowa town where he ended up was not his home and asked for help from a priest and a psychiatrist. Together they found Mura's picture in a missing persons file on the Internet. He had been missing three months. He had wandered through several states during the fugue event.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,142005,00.html

http://www.webmediainc.com/54157PT/PeshtigoTimes.taf?function=detail&Layout1_uid2=12653

Ron Tammen 1953

There was an outbreak of Dissociative Fugue at Miami of Ohio in 1953.  Several students disappeared, recovered, then returned with amnesia of the events during their disappearance. When Ron Tammen disappeared they thought he would return too. There are Adobe files of newspaper accounts about the disappearance. The psychology department understood that the several students had a "case of amnesia" But they did not connect the events to the dorm situation at Miami University.

One of the newspaper photos is of the too-small dorm room with its unprotected study desk. Fisher hall was donated to the University. It had been an insane asylum and the rooms were sized for a single patient.

This case is important because of the Adobe files of newspaper stories and pictures.

Mary Shotwell Little 1965 Atlanta

This case has its own page. Mary Shotwell Little Solution to the Disappearance This case is revealed because two women disappeared not one. They had used the same desk in a downtown Atlanta bank. One was found murdered and the other has never been found. If she is still alive she would be about sixty-five.

Undated Military Case

The subject was found seated in a church with memory that encompassed events fourteen months earlier. He had been a college student and thought he was still in college working in a kitchen and a member of a fraternity.  Diazepam, a long-acting benzodiazepine, has not previously been known to cause fugue states or amnesia. He had been prescribed the drug for back spasms three days before he was located in the church. When held for observation, the symptoms resolved with no treatment. Amnesia of the events remained. Investigation revealed that the assumed past identity was real.  The article assumes the drug was the cause of the Dissociative Fugue event. Barracks living would have created the opportunity for exposure to Subliminal Distraction. There are no details about that.

Read this article here.   http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3912/is_199906/ai_n8872234

Links for Dissociative Fugue page

 (The links page for the entire site are not the same as  individual page links. Page links involve research for that page while site links are favorites listings for the entire project.)

Site Links  (leaves this page)

Working with dissociative fugue in a general psychotherapy practice: A cautionary tale

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Apr 2003 by Jasper, Frank J

This article shows how psychotherapists deal with treatment of Dissociative Fugue.

"I found Joe to be a large, healthy, bright, articulate engineer He was extremely tense and high strung and appeared to be a hard-driving Type-A personality (Friedman & Rosenman, 1997). ... He also responded that he had little memory before his adolescent years, as his wife indicated. So, I concluded that he used dissociation as a way to cope with early life experiences. ..."

The patient finally stopped going to therapy saying it interfered with his work.

"He was finally able to confront what had been stressing him before the fugue state. He described the boss as a "control freak. " A month before the event, coworkers said that he had threatened bodily harm to their boss. He ran out of the office yelling, "I'm going to rip his f----- head off!" No one made an attempt to stop him. He, figured out that he had threatened his boss on Monday morning and that it shook both of them so badly that they both changed. His coworkers had noticed "personality changes" in Joe and in his boss. They credited Joe with a change that had improved the situation for all of them. "

This conclusion reveals that psychotherapists believe psycho-social stress is the cause of Dissociative Fugue disorders.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4087/is_200304/ai_n9207968

Multiple Identity Disorder (DID)

Written by an abuse victim this is a history of the disorder.

http://www.m-a-h.net/library/did-general/article-history.htm

Bryn Mawr College

"Automatisme Ambulatoire, also known as hysterical fugue, dissociative fugue or simply fugue, is a mental disorder wherein the afflicted individual is prone to taking unexpected trips in a state of unconsciousness such that she is unable to recall where she has been, or how she ended up in a particular place. These individuals, sometimes called "fuguers," are able to travel great distances unaware of their actions, and yet function in such a way that people they encounter never suspect their mental state."

"Eyewitnesses report that someone in the midst of a dissociative fugue appears to behave normally "apart from [an] inability to recall their past or personal information". ...However, when a fuguer "comes to" he often behaves as though he has just been awoken from a deep sleep, that is, he appears dazed and disoriented. In addition, such an individual is unable to recall how she arrived at her destination, or why."

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro05/web2/ggriffin.html

Pubmed article

Les Alienes voyageurs: how fugue became a medical entity. I Hacking Historical Article

Hist Psychiatry. 1996 Sep;7(27 pt 3):425-49.

"Dissociative fugue was first treated as a distinct psychiatric illness in Bordeaux in 1887, and was taken up by Charcot as automatisme ambulatoire in 1888."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11618352&dopt=Abstract

The Brain From Top to Bottom

Amnesia is the focus of this McGill University page.

http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_07/a_07_p/a_07_p_oub/a_07_p_oub.htm

Memory and learning charted - -  http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_07/a_07_p/a_07_p_oub/a_07_p_oub.htm

Encyclopedia excerpt Dissociation

http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/Articles/dissociation.htm

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Subliminal Distraction -- definition

Subliminal Distraction arises from the fact that sensor cells that normally provide sight and hearing do not stop sending neural impulses to your brain when you dissociate slightly to force concentration on a single issue, daydream,  or even when you are in portions of sleep. Those unconsciously, subliminally, perceived neural impulses are said to be a subliminal distraction.

Most students have no problem understanding that sounds subliminally heard in a busy office are a subliminal distraction but are not aware of visual Subliminal Distraction. Of course sleep is eliminated for visual Subliminal Distraction. This is an eyes-open issue.

Humans evolved as hunter gathers and we have a retained vision driven warning system. A small slice of your vision field functions subliminally to detect threat movement in your far peripheral vision. It is a "conflict of your physiology of sight" that while you can ignore the startle and vision reflex to be able to continue working in a busy location, you can't stop seeing anything in your vision field. The subliminal operation of this system prevents your being aware your brain is still detecting threat movement and still attempting to break your concentration with a startle and vision reflex. That action is also known as Subliminal Distraction within the Design field.

Perform the psychology exercise on the Demonstration page. It is written for a sixth grade reader. That exercise allows you to experience the habitation to extinction of the notice you take of movement in peripheral vision. 

This history is an abbreviated list with links to the VPN site pages with explanations and links to sources used. Some of this material is in the text above. This section has a list of events in chronological order.

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