Dissociation, Forced Normalization and Epileptosis

Overview

Forced normalization is a phenomenon which occurs in so-called epileptic psychosis. It involvescomplimentarity of epileptic and psychotic symptoms. It leads, in connection with electroconvulsive therapy which represents a similar phenomenon and also in connection with somnambulismand the demonstration so-called Jouvet’s cat, to the level of automatism which characterizecertain types of psychological and etological manifestations of the organism which are typical forcertain innate patterns of behaviour. These automatisms are also the basis for the development ofpathological dissociative processes which develop as a consequence of a strong competitive dissociated neural configurations. These configurations are mental representations which correspond to psychic contents and on the other hand they represent the physiological basis foretological or behavioural manifestations. Dissociation is thus conceived as psycho-organic process of competition which leads to a determinist chaos. As a consequence of he chaos manifestation of neural attractors occurs. These attractors may be manifested on the psychological level asa new original idea or inspiration or can lead to a pathological state as for example an epilepticparoxysm. At the neurophysiological level it represents a neural configuration and from electroencephalographic point of view it leads to the synchronized lowering of excitatory neural thresholds on many synapses. This lowering of thresholds leads to hypersynchronized EEG activity (aburst). In case of the relationship of epilepsy and psychosis these phenomena probably is thebasic mechanisms for explaining of many forms of symptoms and theirs complementarity whichleads to the suggesting of the diagnostic category called epileptosis.

Key words:
forced normalization, dissociation, epileptic psychoses, neuron configuration.