I was asked an interesting question today while talking about Agatha Christie. I only recently became interested in her (very unfortunately, as it turns out) because of the recent Doctor Who episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp.” In this episode, it is revealed that Agatha Christie’s disappearance is a result of her connection with an alien who is, essentially, a giant wasp. This connection causes her amnesia when the wasp drowns, and the Doctor leaves her at the hotel a few days in the future.

Naturally, I wondered about her real disappearance and so I did some minor research into the issue, and found out that she really did disappear. Her husband had been having an affair with Nancy Neele (and her mother had recently passed away) and she disappeared and was found days later staying at the Harrogate Hotel by the name of Teresa Neele. She claimed to have suffered amnesia and could not account for the events which took place between her disappearance and her reappearance. Some have speculated whether or not this was a publicity stunt or an actual nervous break-down which induced a fugue state.

So, talking about that today, I was asked about fugue states: how do they come about?

My initial answer was that they come about when the mind suffers an overload, usually due to trauma, and the fugue state may act as a sort of protection against the raging emotions and the profound effects they elicit.

The DSM defines a fugue state as:

• Sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one’s customary place of work, with inability to recall one’s past,
• Confusion about personal identity, or the assumption of a new identity, or
• Significant distress or impairment.

I have some qualms with the DSM as I think it only really serves to give people labels which may impair proper treatment. That does not mean I do not think it cannot be a valuable resource, because it can. For one thing, it is a great collection of psychological terms and conditions and what may constitute various disorders. However, I think it has the potential to do a great deal of harm, and has probably helped to misdiagnose people as something which they are not. But, I digress.

I thought about fugue states some more, especially since I was prompted by further questioning such as “Why a fugue state and not something else?” I stick to my initial answer on this: a dissociative fugue state can result from the introduction of a traumatic event with which the mind has a hard time processing and resolving. However, after more thought, this seemed somewhat inadequate. Some people go into fugue states and others do not – therefore, there must be some other factor that makes some people more prone to fugue states than others. But what are they?

That list has the potential to be very, very huge. There are a multitude of things, and no one thing can be said to be the sole identifier of someone who will have a fugue state in response to some sort of traumatic crisis. Some of these are:

• Developmental aspects: How was the person raised? What was their environment like? Their parents?
• Temperament: surely, there must be some temperamental styles which are more conducive to producing fugue states than others. I think a study in this has the potential to be fruitful, but also hard because you cannot force people into a fugue state or traumatize them. I am fairly certain the IRB would have seriously strong objections to that. For that reason, a qualitative analysis would probably be the best start. Most of the articles I searched concerned diagnosing, though my search cannot be said to be completely thorough.
• Medical history is also a factor. For instance, does the person have a history of psychiatric disorders or not? While not necessarily conclusive, I think this could help – but any person using this would have to be extremely careful to not make stereotypical judgments.
• Cognitive and biological: Genes: genomes and epigenomes. The make up of the brain. How the person organizes the world, and how they have learned to respond to trauma.

This list is by no means conclusive. It only lists some of my more immediate thoughts on the matter. But this questioning and researching has definitely got me interested. And not only in fugue states, but in Agatha Christie as well. Fugues states are definitely an odd response, but not entirely impossible to understand. For that reason, I think Agathie Christie (and any other person who went into a fugue state) would be an interesting psychobiographical study. Perhaps I will find myself doing one on her later in my life. Right now, I’m absorbed in Isaac Asimov.

Senior theses for college can be a royal pain – and I full on expect this one to be as well. Over these past few months, I’d compiled a list of people I thought would be interesting to like at from a psychological perspective. I had to have some sort of initial investment in the person to begin with, so my list was quickly trimmed down to about 5 people: Isaac Asimov, Robert Frost, Shell Silverstein, J.R.R Tolkien, and Agatha Christie. I think there might have been others, but I cannot remember the names, and I do not have my list readily available.

One thing I immediately noticed, though, was that I had chosen writers. I don’t know why I didn’t add any other type of person to my list (though I did do a psychobiographical proposal on Galileo – but in a sense, he, too, was a writer). Putting that aside, I mulled over my list before, on impulse, I decided that I would go with Asimov. I think I was partially influenced by my recent reading of the Robot series. So, right after I impulsively decided that I wanted to write about Asimov, I purchased his three autobiographies. I got his, “I, Asimov: a memoir” first, and am already about half-way through.

I knew that I liked Asimov’s style of writing – I loved the books that I had read, and am planning on diving into the Foundation Series next. But I still thought that his autobiographies would be dry and rote. They are not. I already have an index of some of my favorite passages and little stories. I’m full on enjoying reading his autobiographies, which in turn is making me more excited to delve into the psychobiography process. This is good. Asimov was an incredibly funny man. I don’t think I’ll have any problems working on this project and giving a presentation about it next spring. Rather, I plan on having a lot of fun.

I think this attitude will also help me to avoid senioritis because I’m actually excited to work on my thesis. w00t!

While I enjoyed the last episode of series 4 of Doctor Who, I am somewhat saddened as next year BBC is taking a kind of hiatus and only doing specials. This is, of course, for David Tennant so he can do other acting and take a bit of a break – but I am going to miss it next spring. However, this might also be beneficial, as next spring, I should be focusing not on Doctor Who, but on my senior thesis and my upcoming presentation.

I did thoroughly enjoy the last episode, and I felt they wrapped a lot of things up very nicely. I had a lot of those, “OMG” moments where everything just suddenly fits together and the entire series made a whole lot more sense.

SPOILER ALERT:

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Sorry for my extreme lack of posting. The end of the semester became quite hectic and was full of late nights, long days, really long papers, and lots of scurrying on my behalf. Despite all that, classes got out about a month ago – and for at least the first half of that month, I have no excuse. My laptop’s video card went out about 2 1/2 weeks ago, and I am awaiting HP for it to be fixed. This, so far, has been a long process. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the techie I talked to when explaining my problems.

I don’t know about others, but I have a somewhat negative view whenever something of mine stops working and I have to talk to a techie. For one thing, they have to go through their rigmarole to ensure that they are dealing with someone who is having a genuine hardware / software failure. I understand this – but at the same time, I can’t help but feel impatient when techie-dude asks his set of standard questions.

Fortunately for me, the techie I talked to listened. That actually surprised me as, according to my previous experiences, the techies wouldn’t begin listening until every standard solution had been tried. This techie did try one solution in order to ensure that I wasn’t being silly when I was talking about how I first noticed the problem with video-out. When that didn’t work, and I explained further that my laptop would power-cycle because the video card wasn’t booting (among all of the other things I tried before contacting him) he decided that it was indeed a hardware failure.

So now, until my laptop is fixed, I am left computer-less most of the day until my boyfriend gets home and I can steal his away from him. The disconcerting thing is that we have generally the same laptop – but with completely different settings and layouts. So whenever I use his, I keep thinking that it is mine (since it feels and looks like mine) but then only a few things will actually respond “normally.”

Then I started thinking about “normal.” What is normal? (What are cows?) The simplest explanation I could come up with is that it is a schema each of us has for how things should be. And, between individuals, there is obviously going to be some variation – sometimes this variation can be quite a lot. But one thing that I’ve realized (I don’t know if anyone else really has, so please speak up if you have – even if you haven’t) is that the more things are the same between individuals, the more the minor differences stand out and seem all the more jarring. As with my boyfriend’s laptop, I keep expecting certain things to be in certain places, a specific set of settings, and so on. When these do not line up, it seems especially jarring to me – because his laptop is nearly identical to mine: same screen size, same make, etc. The only physical differences is that his laptop has a web-cam at the top, something which is easy to ignore since it is small and built into the machine.

However, when I use a different machine, I don’t balk at the differences. After all, it looks different, so I’m not expecting it to be anything like mine. Therefore, when something doesn’t match up, it’s more of an annoyance which makes me wish I had my machine – but it’s not jarring. I don’t immediately think about how it isn’t my machine because it clearly is nothing like mine. Therefore, the differences are not jarring. In other words, the differences are expected because I do not forget that this isn’t my machine.

That’s when schemas become really apparent to me. And where I find merit in Script Theory. I find it to be fairly simple and easy to understand. It’s something that is easily recognizable once you know how to look for it. I believe it also has the potential for explaining habits and why forming new ones and breaking old ones takes concerted effort – especially as one grows older.

For more information / an interesting read, see also:
Cognitive Dissonance,
A list of Cognitive Biases, and
Stereotype Inevitability

I think Freud would have something to say against the Vulcan’s logic concerning emotions. According to the Vulcan philosophy, love is the most dangerous of all the emotions because it produces an emotional storm of jealousy and grief, among others. The way to deal with this is to learn to suppress all emotions, to keep the under control, otherwise they will consume you.

According to Freudian theory, suppression and repression cause a lot of problems with the individual doing the suppressing and repressing. Those emotions have an energy, and when they are not allowed an outlet–they seek ways to become apparent. In essence, the emotions that are repressed negotiate a compromise with the ego to come out in some hidden form. Freud discovered this with hysterical symptoms.

Hysteria is when there is a physical ailment without a physical cause. Freud concluded that these ailments were caused by something psychological. For example, someone experiences severe wrist and hand pain; they cannot move it. But, from a doctor’s perspective, there is no reason why the hand should be unable to move. Freud found underlying causes to this type of ailment, and he called it hysteria. Something like this hand thing, Freud would probably have attributed to masturbation.

Of course, it should be noted that hysteria is not the only way that these suppressed emotions become manifest. They can manifest in a variety of different ways: projection and sublimation are two other ways.

Back to the Vulcans – they are different from humans. However, they are born with emotions and later learn to suppress them. Their emotions are very intense. Perhaps, for them, it has become necessary to suppress emotions. Natural Vulcan emotions are erratic and volatile, according to Tuvoc. Were they humans, however, the story would be different. Too bad they aren’t real–because a case study of Vulcans would be really fascinating. I’m sure Freud would agree with me.