This category of mental phenomena is conditioned by the activity of mirror neurons and the mechanism of eidethism of the SPA, the ability of memory to imprint individual perceptions or whole situational events, including the feelings, thoughts and behavior of the person himself.
We have singled out several variants of flashbacks – “echo-gestalts”:
• sensory;
• convulsive;
• somatic;
• painful;
• cognitive.
Sensory echo-stressor (sensory flashback). Traumatic dominant (constellation) occurs immediately, without a period of formation. A traumatic event is retained in memory in the form of pictures, situations or fragments of those situations that took place in reality. This phenomenon comes up unprompted. Considering the holographic concept of the memory and psyche, it is clear that “a fragment of man’s life” reflecting a traumatic event retains the spatial and temporal characteristics of the trauma moment and the whole complex of sensations and emotions. Most probably all this happens through the mechanisms of eidetic memory. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) makes it possible to determine which information channel is preferable for this or that person.
Based on NLP data it is possible to pre-determine the kinds of flashbacks that can develop in a particular individual in cases of traumatic stress. This “mould” (gestalt) of reality has a capacity to break into the current everyday life, pushing aside the current moment, and so a person starts to live, go through and act in accordance with the echo-reality. Having come up through the mechanism of association, this flashback possesses strength of the real event changing the clarity of consciousness into a psychogenic fuzzy consciousness, making a person lose his bearings in the real situation. This is the analog of hallucinatory illusory experience of epileptic twilight disorder of consciousness (mental equivalent). The individual can hear, see, smell the traumatic “echo-reality” in all variations of features, which is manifested in the common stressor response. As distinct from epileptic twilight, the content of traumatic twilight disorder of consciousness is stereotypic, it repeats in every detail the traumatic reality. The psychic equivalent involuntarily emerging from the memory, can change the mood, behavior that become inadequate to the reality, but adequate to the content of traumatic experience.
Examples.
1. Patient K. used to drop to the floor and crawl to a wall every time she heard a buzz of a flying plane. Squeezing herself in a corner or under a table she stayed there until the buzz ended. Her face showed fear; she was trembling, sometimes grappling her head and lamenting: “Again bombing, again bombing…”
These conditions emerged six months after the fears experienced during “Grad” bombings in Karabakh and moving to Yerevan.
2. Patient M., a survivor of the Spitak earthquake, each time during high wind used to run out of her apartment down the stairs screaming: “Earthquake!!!”. She lived on the 9th floor. In this state no one could stop her or make her change her mind.
3. Patient T. lost his 9-yearold son in the earthquake. 12 months later he applied to the Center “Stress” on account of his condition that scared him and made him think he was going mad. He said that almost every day he heard his dead son talk to him. Walking along the street, “… clearly saw the son either walking or playing in the street or running to meet me”.
The described phenomenon is not merely a symptom. Its appearance makes it possible to understand the mechanism of transformation of the external signal into an act of consciousness, the mental phenomenon. Flashback is a reflection of the event or its fragment by mirror neurons. The parameter of a physical object – seen, heard, having become the content of consciousness, is transformed into a mental phenomenon. Echo-phenomenon is an intermediate link between the world of physical phenomena and mental world (between physics and psyche, matter and consciousness). It is a key to understanding the transformation of the external world energy into the internal one. Mirror neurons perform this first level.
Picture 1. Flashbacks as described by one of the patients.
Picture 2. Flashbacks as described by the patient.
Picture 3. Flashbacks as described by the patient.
Convulsive “flashback”. An epileptiform convulsive fit may occur in a psychotraumatic situation, especially if it is accompanied with oxygen deficit. Actually, the fit results from hypoxia. The state of “asphyxia” is accompanied with a characteristic facial expression and a specific pantomimic mask. A man who lacks air starts to “grab” air with hands, face is strained, neck reaches out, mouth opened, breathing outwardly reminds breathing of a fish thrown out on the shore and strenuously grabbing the air with the mouth open. Epileptoform “echo-stressor”, if it happens in situations with air deficiency, is accompanied by similar movements.
Examples:
4. Once the Epileptological Center sent a young man to the “Stress Center. He complained of epileptiform convulsive fits occurring once in 2–3 months for over 8 years. A careful examination in the Epileptological Center failed to yield any objective paraclinical data. Since the fits were rare and over time the tendency of their frequency was not observed, and the clinical picture did not change, the parents decided not to give the boy anticonvulsant drugs, for fear of their undesirable side effects. No epileptic symptoms were discovered. The father was a witness of fits and was able to describe in detail the onset of the fit, focusing my attention on the grasping movements of the hands, “as if lacking air” – added he. Some leading questions helped father to remember the occasion that happened with his son when he was taught swimming in the pool. On the second day of swimming lessons, not knowing how to swim, the child was dipped head and ears into water. The boy experienced strong fear and refused to attend the pool. Several months passed between that event and subsequent fits. The relatives forgot about it. The patient himself confirmed that the fit usually occurred in stuffy rooms. It happened twice in a vehicle packed with people, once it recurred when he saw the sea for the first time.
5. Three years after the earthquake, mother of a 12-year-old girl consulted the “Stress” Center on the occasion of convulsive fits in her daughter. Mother said that she and her daughter remained under the ruins for 10 hours. It was there that the first convulsive fit occurred to the girl. The subsequent examination revealed no data in favor of the organic origin of the fits. A fit starts with short breath, the girl grasps her throat, trying to catch her breath. The girl herself said she always felt short of breath before the fit.
Both examples mentioned are similar in their stereotype clinic, lack of dynamics and mechanisms of occurrence. In both cases, the parents decided not to give the anticonvulsants thus retaining their original form not burdening the clinic with side-effects of medications.
Somatic “flashback”. The memory retains not only “a piece of the objective-emotional world” in the form of a sensory “echo-stressor”, in the same way it can register any bodily symptom