Edinburgh Research Archive logo

Edinburgh Research Archive

University of Edinburgh homecrest
View Item 
  •   ERA Home
  • Health in Social Science, School of
  • Health in Social Science thesis collection
  • View Item
  •   ERA Home
  • Health in Social Science, School of
  • Health in Social Science thesis collection
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Trauma and dissociation in psychosis

View/Open
TarsiaM_2004redux.pdf (26.47Mb)
Date
2004
Author
Tarsia, Massimo
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
 
 
In this thesis we attempt to address the complex issue of the relationship between trauma, dissociation, and psychosis. We start by providing a brief presentation of the background to this thesis, which is followed by an outline of the main clinical aspects and theories of psychosis. Subsequently, a broad evolutionary overview of trauma is given within which existing influential cognitive theories of PTSD are placed. Current models of dissociation are then reviewed and related to the view of trauma and traumatic stress reactions previously outlined, before providing an evaluative synthesis of the theoretical approaches and convergent conceptualisations of trauma, dissociation, and psychosis in order to disentangle some of the plausible processes underlying their relationship.
 
It was hypothesised that dissociation, occurring as a result of trauma (experience of psychosis), plays a key role in the formation and maintenance of psychotic symptoms, chiefly hallucinations and delusions. We used methods from experimental psychopathology to investigate the potential role played by dissociative processes in the disruption of the cognitive processes of attention and memory for trauma-related, positive and neutral information in two groups of participants: 30 individuals with psychosis and 30 matched controls. In particular, we used self-report measures of symptomatology, recovery style, trauma-related symptoms, and dissociation, and 1 employed two experimental tasks. The first was specifically devised to assess attentional processes: a Directed Forgetting Stroop Task (DFST) performed under conditions of divided attention. The second task was a Word-Stem Completion Task (WSCT) on which we applied the process dissociation procedure (PDP; Jacoby, 1991) in order to estimate the relative contribution to dissociation of implicit and explicit memory.
 
As expected, our findings revealed that compared to controls the experimental group processed information preferentially in an implicit manner, and that this effect was predicted by levels of dissociation and trauma-related distress. Although enhanced unconscious memory was not specific to trauma-related material, it significantly contributed to the level of positive symptomatology when mediated by stress levels. In contrast, the contribution of recovery style in the maintenance of psychotic symptoms was not supported, although this may reflect a limitation of the self-report measures employed in our study. Contrary to what was hypothesised, we did not find a standard directed forgetting effect in our memory task or an advantage (less interference due to dissociation) in our task of divided attention.
 
Results are discussed in the light of the theoretical background, previous experimental literature, methodological limitations, and current models of trauma and dissociation
 
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29392
Collections
  • Health in Social Science thesis collection

Library & University Collections HomeUniversity of Edinburgh Information Services Home
Privacy & Cookies | Takedown Policy | Accessibility | Contact
Privacy & Cookies
Takedown Policy
Accessibility
Contact
feed RSS Feeds

RSS Feed not available for this page

 

 

All of ERACommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsPublication TypeSponsorSupervisorsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsPublication TypeSponsorSupervisors
LoginRegister

Library & University Collections HomeUniversity of Edinburgh Information Services Home
Privacy & Cookies | Takedown Policy | Accessibility | Contact
Privacy & Cookies
Takedown Policy
Accessibility
Contact
feed RSS Feeds

RSS Feed not available for this page