Rossi R, Attolini L, Berti A, Maberino C

Language: Spanish
References: 9
Page: 67-73
PDF size: 361.58 Kb.

ABSTRACT

The authors compare the biography written by Cade on Agatha Christie’s temporary disappearance to an episode of dissociation of consciousness experienced by a young man during the demonstration against G8 meeting.
Between the 4th and the 14th of December 1926, Agatha Christie suddenly disappears from her house in Berkshire, after her mother’s death and her husband’s confession of having a lover. The police finds the writer only one week later at a hotel in a spa of Yorkshire where she has registered under a false name.
This year 1926 is really very important for Mrs. Christie. Actually she escapes from her middle-class life to the provincial silence of Yorkshire and later she begins to spend most of her time in travels. In the Middle East she meets an archaeologist and after marrying him she starts joining him in expeditions.
But also her fictions’ characters change: they are no longer middle-class people as described in Orient Express, instead they become the heroes of thrillers, set in Egypt (let’s think about Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia, Death comes as the end). The different settings of the books and what happens in the real life of Agatha Christie lead us think about a regressive fugue, directed towards reducing anguish derived from dissatisfaction. We can also see her desire to go back to a pre-natal condition just to humble herself.
A similar situation experienced by Francesco is described by the authors. He is a young man who has seen an analyst for a few months and a previous latent tendency to homosexuality is invading and alarming him.
During the riots occurred against the G8 meeting Francesco is in the crowd in the centre of Genova. Suddenly, the psychic control operated by the crowd fails and he doesn’t know why he is there and makes for the analyst’s office for an unespected session. It is Saturday and trough he usually goes for a session on Monday the analyst makes no comment and accepts to take him. Francesco tells a dream in which a gorilla appears and scares him; he associates it with an ugly and bearded woman, a circus freak. In a very simplistic way we can say that the anguish caused by the brawls during the G8 meeting determined the amnestic fuge, but we must consider the dream. This dream reveals the real distress occurred when the crowd dispersed: a hairy gorilla that reminds him of a terribile mother who leaves ruthlessly.
An interpretation of this picture is intended to be given by the authors. Of course the central problem is the hysterical mechanism. In front of a unbearable conflict Ego consciousness is altered. If the relationship with other people is the central problem the relational attitude should be altered in order to cancel it. So, we can make the body ill, or in a more complex way we can alter the motor function, the sensitive or the sensory one.
At his highest level the most complicated relational function is involved: the Ego consciousness with its four dimensions described by Jaspers (spatial unity, temporal unity, affective continuity and a feeling of one’s boundaries).
In this spectrum we can find psychogenic amnesia and dissociation of consciousness, both involving the relational function, from memory to lies, to theatrical techniques.
The two cases presented are the starting point to some observations on the correlations between hysteria, acute psychoses and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. All these disorders are joined by Ego consciousness dissociation and destructuration mechanisms, even if at different hierarchical levels.
The alteration of communication though is not enough and we must consider a new mechanism, more than hysterical one, to create a new spatial condition and look elsewhere to solve the conflict.
Finally the authors try to elaborate a therapeutical model by reconstructing the internal fiction.

REFERENCES

1. BERTI A: I disturbi dissociativi. En Pancheri P (compilador): Errori Terapeutici in Psichiatria. Scientific Press, Milán, 2000.

2. BERTI A, MABERINO C: I fuggitivi. Rivista di Psichiatria v. 38, no. 3 mayo-junio 2002.

3. CADE J: Agatha Christie and eleven missing days. Meter Owen Pubblishers, Londres, 1998.

4. ERCOLI E: Bibliografia di Agatha Christie. La Nuova Italia, Florencia, 1978.

5. FREUD S: I disturbi visivi psicogeni nell’interpretazione psicoanalitica. OSF, Bollati Boringhieri, Turín, 1972.

6. JASPERS K: Psicopatologia generale. Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore, Roma, 1964.

7. ROSSI R: Il problema dell’isteria. En Cassano GB, Pancheri P, Pavan L, y cols. (comp.) Trattato Italiano di Psichiatria. Masson, Milán, 1999.

8. SHAPIRO D: Stili Nevrotici. Astrolabio, Roma, 1969.

9. VAN DER KOLK BA: Psychological Trauma. American Psychiatric Press, Washington, 1987.