Browsing by Author "Wickramasekera, Ian E."
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Item Open Access Dissociation : Volume 10, No. 1, p. 011-020 : A case study: electromyographic correlates in the hypnotic recall of a repressed memory(Ridgeview Institute and the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, 1997-03) Wickramasekera, Ian E.; Wickramasekera, Ian Edward, IIThis is a controlled case study of a 22-year-old female with a four year history of episodic nausea, vomiting, tachycardia and social anxiety resistant to medical and psychiatric therapy. Systematic desensitization for social phobia with psychophysiological monitoring (electromyogram, skin temperature, skin conductance level (SCL), and heart rate) was associated with a decline in somatic symptoms, muscle tension (EMG), and subjective distress. At the tenth session, an EMG spike sustained for at least 33 minutes was associated with a forgotten traumatic dream from the previous night. Hypnotic recall of the traumatic dream during therapy was associated with an immediate collapse of the EMG spike and an abrupt increase in subjective distress. The dream contained recall of a repressed memory of a possible sexual exposure to HIV five years previously. This case study may illustrate the utility of psychophysiological monitoring (PPM) in the psychotherapy of somatoform disorders. It may also illustrate the value of electrophysiological and autonomic measures to identify repressed traumatic somatized memories and to demonstrate objectively the distinction between implicit and explicit memory.Item Open Access Dissociation : Vol. 7, No. 3, p. 153-166 : Somatic to psychological symptoms and information transfer from implicit to explicit memory: a controlled case study with predictions from the high risk model of threat perception(Ridgeview Institute and the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, 1994-09) Wickramasekera, Ian E.This is a case study of a patient presenting a variety of somatic symptoms in the absence of any identifiable pathophysiology or psychopathology. Testing with the High Risk Model of Threat Perception (HRMTP), autonomic monitoring and psychophysiological psychotherapy are associated with the retrieval and transfer of unconscious or implicit memories of sexual abuse (independently supported by court records) into explicit or conscious memory. This transfer of "repressed" memory appears to be associated with several powerful and theoretically salient consequences. First, an abrupt correlated remission of multiple somatic symptoms. Second, a correlated large increase in baseline negative affectivity, and third, large correlated changes in involuntary measures of physiological reactivity (e.g., heart rate, EDR, etc.) documented on 4 pre post stress profiles. This inverse relationship between somatic and psychological symptoms plus the marked autonomic shift from a relatively parasympathetically dominant to a highly sympathetically reactive status raises profound theoretical questions regarding the nature and stability of the psychophysiological mechanisms implicated in the transduction of information and memory from physiological to psychological systems. Based on observations in this case study, several experimentally falsifiable predictive hypotheses derived from the HRMTP are presented.