Hukommelsesmekanismer og traumatiske erindringer: Et kritisk blik på PTSD-diagnosen

Abstract

The relation between trauma and memory is complex, but highly relevant today, where people all around the world experience terrible suffering in many different ways and more people than ever are diagnosed with PTSD. This bachelor thesis examines the traumatic memory from a cognitive neuroscientific and a psychoanalytic perspective. The aim is to make a critical assessment of two of the criteria for PTSD; criterium A in DSM-5 and ICD-10 concerning exposure to an event that can be acknowledges as “traumatic” from the objective particularities of a situation, and criterium E in ICD-10, which defines that the traumatic symptoms and the clinical syndrome of PTSD have to develop within six months after the potentially traumatic event.
The scope of our investigation is limited to the implicit memory mechanisms in the cognitive neuroscientific perspective and to the primary processes in the ‘Id’ as the component of the psyche that is completely unconscious in the psychoanalytic perspective.

From the analysis of the different memory mechanisms from the cognitive neuroscience and the psychoanalysis it is concluded that the two perspectives can be united in one critic of the two criteria. In relation to the bridging of the two theoretical traditions the project contains a reflection of the theoretical and methodological differences and similarities.
Overall, it is found that the criteria A can be criticized for not taking the subjectivity of the individual into account in the consideration of what makes a situation traumatic. It is argued that the traumatic memory can be constructed by fantasy or it can be the case that traumatic symptoms can be present even though there is no access to the ‘real’ potentially traumatic situation. With the possibility for an individual to have only implicit memory of a traumatic situation, it is argued that it can be difficult to fulfill criterion A, which might exclude some individuals from getting treatment.
As regards to criterium E, it is argued, from the two theoretical perspectives in this project, that it makes no sense to define a latency period for PTSD symptoms due to the fact that the traumatic memory cannot be conceptualized in the view of linear time.

Bedømmelse: 12