Rebecca Seligman is a medical and psychological anthropologist at Northwestern University. Seligman received her PhD from Emory in 2004. Her current research looks 
into both the mental and physical health of Mexican Americans, specifically between diabetes and depression. Her work on dissociative experience and cultural neuroscience, with Laurence Kirmayer, was published in 2008. Kirmayer is a MD of transcultural psychiatrist and currently a professor of psychiatry at McGill University.
All dissociation falls into one of three classifications: a neurological reaction brought on by stress or trauma; social performance or ritual; and fluctuations in everyday consciousness, which generally go unnoticed. It is often thought that even though these three forms of dissociation are caused by three different things, the psychophysiological mechanisms that induce these altered states are the same. Unfortunately, we don't know enough about the underlying functions of dissociation to draw any conclusions. Through our desire to learn more about dissociation, two different approaches or paradigms have been developed.
The first is a psychiatric paradigm which is derived from clinical research on stress and trauma induced dissociation. Psychiatric dissociation is referred to as "adaptive" and it postulates that dissociation is a biological function and a natural mechanism of our subconscious triggered by emotional feedback. Fugue states, amnesia and identity disturbances are examples of neurological issues psychologists focus on when referring to dissociation. Many researchers in the psychiatric paradigm believe stress and trauma reactions were evolutionary precursors to dissociation. Dissociation allowed our early ancestors to enter a trance state to reduce anxiety and stress during traumatic events, similar to trance states experienced by many animals before death. The trauma survivors go into what's referred to as "dissociatiave coping" which minimizes or even eliminates memories of traumatic experiences that could be triggered by almost anything and cause extreme emotional reactions. When we don’t completely dissociate post-traumatic stress disorder can frequently develop.
The second discipline is the anthropological paradigm which was built on research of social dissociation which is generally confined to religious and spiritual practices or healing ceremonies. This social idea is known as "discursive" (as opposed to this blog which some might call "distyping"). From the anthropological aspect discursive dissociation is a social behavior that requires people to become immersed in cultural practices designed to distance them from preconceived thoughts and notions. Social dissociation cultures frequently use spirit possession as a way to show status or power, and advance socially. Standards, customs, and rituals vary so drastically from culture to culture that few anthropologists attempt to define dissociation as a whole, but rather attempt to understand it within the constraints of a specific cultural group.
The two paradigms seem to share few similarities on the surface, which has created what Seligman and Kirmayer refer to as a "false dichotomy". The problem with this is that many people feel compelled to side with one of the two disciplines. Due to this many people either feel dissociation is adaptive and all dissociative symptoms are due to neurological mechanisms responding to emotional stimuli, OR dissociation is purely a social byproduct and it allows people to communicate feelings, establish communal hierarchy and follow cultural expectations. But like most things in the world, the process of dissociation is not black and white. Seligman and Kirmayer suggest that significant progress in each respective fields could be achieved if the two sides worked together. Many aspects of both the psychiatric and anthropological definitions are not mutually exclusive, in fact Seligman and Kirmayer say we need an integrative view of dissociation if we want to fully understand the meaning and mechanics.
The psychiatric-adaptive discipline is the most widely held view point and is considered the dominant paradigm, encompassing all stress and trauma related dissociation. Most of this dissociation is normal and we’ve probably all experienced it, maybe without even realizing it. But a small amount of this is considered pathological dissociation which covers fugue states and amnesia like mentioned before, but also includes PTSD and many other stress and trauma related disorders. These can affect everyday perception, cognition and attention, as well as disorganize and compartmentalize memories. Depersonalization and derealization are also serious problems of dissociative coping. The prior causes you to feel like you’re only watching your life but someone else is controling it (which sounds absolutely horrifying), and the latter makes you question if you, your friends, the world and everything else around you even exists. These ailments are predominant in Euro-American countries where trance states and social dissociation are rare, yet people are always told to “talk about your feelings”. In the Eastern world (and many still developing areas across the globe) dissociation, meditation, and social performances are common. In these areas stress and trauma related disorders are rarely reported or observed dissociative researchers. A great example of this was a study done by Wikan in 1990. The Balinese have been taught to avoid extreme emotion, and use dissociation as a coping method for stress almost daily. They maintain a smooth demeanor and show little emotion to not disturb spirits and upset the Gods. The Balinese believe that if emotion is displayed at the death of a loved one the spirit will be harmed in passing and may never find its final resting place. During these times they partake in religious and performance dissociation practices, and have been recorded with lower levels of stress during this time as well.
According to Seligman borrowing ideas and knowledge from the opposite paradigm could have significant benefits, and should always be looked into. Take the Balinese in the story above for example; a social dissociative culture that developed stress reducing methods has had many psychiatric practitioners observe and research their culture and habits in the same fashion an anthropologist normally would. Similarly, many anthropologists could benefit from psychiatric work when modeling based on hypnosis to compare to the cognitive functioning of a research group. Developing future understandings of cognitive mechanisms and evolutional background will create an atmosphere in which social and psychological ideas will be more interchangeable, but the two paradigms working together may be the only way that happens and we truly understand dissociation.
Its interesting to think that dissociation is part of our biological make-up, but that does make sense. And to think that maybe even simple things like daydreaming helps us to cope with our anxiety or stressful situations. The study of religious dissociation and spirit possessions reminds me of the article about the zar women and their possessions. According to some anthropologists it spirit possession is a way to show status or power. Which could explain our question of why the zar women have these possessions, to show off their status in the community.
I definitely agree with what Seligman and Kirmayer’s beliefs on dissociation. Why can’t it be a mixture of biological and also as a learned behavior. It seems that these Eastern cultures have picked up on the benefits of behavioral dissociation. From what we have previously studied it appears that those who partake in these trance or possession activities leave the experience with less stress or anxiety. It looks like these groups are using the biological dissociation to heighten their social dissociation experiences.
You mentioned at the end of the blog that Seligman beliefs that psychiatric practitioners could take some the Balinese’s practices into consideration. I do agree that these practices could be helpful to psychologists, but I do want to point out that they have been using hypnosis and other stress relieving dissociation on patients for many years now. In fact, I’d say that their usage of hypnosis is probably one of the most accepted trance-induced states in the Western world. I believe it has lost some of its popularity among psychologists, but it is still used. Which I find interesting because it is similar to the religious practices, expect the spirit possessions of course. It appears that psychologist have discovered a way to use the social and biological dissociation in order to help their patients. Which goes back to the studying both types of dissociation as integrated and not just two separate things.
As I’ve discovered in this class, I have a low capacity for dissociation, and an extremely high capacity for immersion and personal consciousness. Which explains why I am always so stressed out. (I should really, really look into yoga or some sort of meditation practice before I crack.) So I really don’t know that I have a lot of experience with the discursive variation of dissociation; or maybe I do, and I’m just missing the point here.
But I do, however, have some experience with the psychiatric-adaptive or “coping” dissociation, which, as a highly conscious individual, really freaks me out sometimes. Several years ago I got very sick (eventually diagnosed as Myalgic Encephalomeyelitis, or “Post-Viral Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome,” both of which are a terribly inconvenient mouthful), and to this day there are huge chunks of time where I simply can’t recall existing. The second semester of 8th grade (which was spent at home with a tutor, since I wasn’t able go to school) is mostly a blur to me, with sporadic memories of doctors’ appointments and particularly eventful “bad days,” popping out of the gray fog of exhaustion and amnesia. And even though I had improved well enough to go back to school for freshman year of high school, my memory of that time is even worse, as depression naturally followed the chronic illness and pain. Whole months are missing from my memory intermittently over the following couple of years until I “beat” the depression my junior year.
I didn’t realize the extent of the “coping” dissociation I had experienced until my family moved back to the house I lived in for freshman year (in Colorado) after I graduated high school and I realized: I have almost no memories of living in this house at all. I lived in this house only 3 years ago, and I can’t for the life of me even remember where I did my homework. It was such an eerie feeling. I couldn’t even move back into my old bedroom because I found it so disconcerting that I could only associate it with void. And dangit, now I’m not looking forward to going home at the end of the semester… Anyway, that’s my story with adaptive dissociation.
I enjoyed reading about these topics and I think it makes a lot of sense. I initially leaned towards the the idea that dissociation was a cultural thing, but now I definitely can see that it's a mixture of many influences. We touched on this topic a little bit in class when discussing multiple personality disorder--if the culture in which someone experiences trauma is not structured to handle or support it, dissociation is the next best option. To me that seems to be the biggest evidence that the two theories must work together.
I wish we could go back and study the dissociation patterns and influences of people throughout the traumatic events of history: the Holocaust, World Wars, natural disasters around the globe. I think we would find nuances in the dissociative behaviors between different cultures but also find continuity in people's biological need to dissociate.
I find it fascinating that depersonalization and derealization are more common in Euro-American countries. These cultures are ones that encourage self-reflection, talking about your feelings, and having a personal journey, but they don't encourage as much discursive dissociation. I find it telling that people then begin to feel like they are outside looking in on their lives. The statements about PTSD are also interesting; in the culture of war, soldiers are asked NOT to dissociate. They must be present, ready, engaged throughout all of the traumatic events. PTSD then becomes a prime example of what happens when the biological mechanism of dissociation is removed.
I am lucky enough to have only experienced the fluctuations in everyday consciousness that are not a direct result of a trauma. However, those fluctuations are extreme for me because I have a high proclivity for dissociation. I will frequently find myself wondering where the past three hours have gone, or when I turned my brain off. This happens unless I specifically designate time to "zone out" with drawing or TV or dance. So maybe another component of dissociation is conscious choice, and how that ties into these two paradigms may be worth studying as well.
I found it really interesting that the two branches do not usually work together to conduct research. Is this because one is viewed as being more "legit" scientifically? Is the psychiatric paradigm viewed more favorably in the west because it is based on clinical research while the anthropolgical paradigm focuses on observations of religious and spiritual practices?
I also found this subject to be interesting to me personally because I believe I developed some disassociative coping mechanisms to get me over depression issues in high school. While I don't think I ever went into any fugue states or had amnesia, music became a way for me to escape reality for a little while, allowing me to enter one of the "trance states" mentioned in the blog that allowed our ancestors to cope. After a while I started going to see more and more shows where I would completely lose myself in the music and the people around me. This makes me think that going to see bands like Phish represents the anthropological paradigm. I immersed myself in the culture of the lot scene, music, knowledge of the band, etc. For me, I think the Phish scene is fundamentally similar to the religious and spiritual practices mentioned in regards to the anthropological paradigm. I think it would be really interesting to see how those two paradigms were both present in my life.
It is amazing that the human mind has the ability to block out, distort and recreate certain experiences.
I found this article interesting because it disproved a view I've always held about hypnotism, dissociation and depersonalization. I always assumed that these experiences were the result of already paved neural pathways slowing down or temporarily shutting down. However, I learned that these are actually products of the brain accessing other neural regions that already existed but were previously inactive. I would love to be hypnotized…just to experience it for myself. Watching it from an audience, the first logical thought is that the people under hypnosis are just acting and the whole performance is choreographed. This was my explanation for it until a family friend told me of her dissociative experience while being hypnotized. She definitely was not part of any “act” and did not remember much of what happened at all. She also said that that night she experienced the best sleep of her life (a huge reason why I would love to be hypnotized). I actually get such terrible sleep at night that I tried to enter a dissociative state one night with a YouTube video. I had a test in the morning and seriously needed a solid eight hours. Unfortunately, I failed miserably. Even the soothing sounds coming from the video couldn’t drown out the voice in my head that perpetually reminds me of the things I need to get done the next day. But I’ve recently stumbled into a new way to enter a relaxing dissociative state thanks to my roommate’s dad who kindly shared his Netflix password with us. I’ve found that getting enveloped into the stories and plots of other people’s (characters) lives is the only way to break free from the neural pathway that continuously focuses on mine. Though it somewhat goes against the idea that watching TV before bed actually increases brain activity and therefore can keep you awake, I actually fall asleep faster now.
On a side note, I think the reason that the Balinese find dissociation practices an effective method for coping with a loved one is partly because it allows them to participate in a role (provide aid) to someone they can no longer actually help. It gives them a sense of stress relief knowing that they have done everything in their power to ensure the safety of someone they can no longer protect. This was just a thought because dissociation is a powerful way to deal with many types of trauma and therefore is stress relieving on its own in some way.
This was definitely a cool topic and one I would love to know more about.
Since I did score highest on the stress test we took for our group activity, I thought I would elaborate on what I was telling the class regarding my personal means of disassociation. I typically am not this stressed, and spend a lot of my time in disassociation, but am in rare form you would say. This is the most stressful month that I have ever had and last Thursday I was at the height of it. I couldn’t turn my brain off.
I was not able to disassociate, because to do so meant to fail and I tend to be competitive, so I was extremely strung out. I have yet to learn how to healthily disassociate, so therefore I go through spells where I do not at all, then I reach burn out and disassociate permanently for a while. Now that a lot of my duties are fulfilled, well at least the most pressing ones, I have reached the point of burn out and have disassociated. This is why I am so late catching up on this blog post 🙂
To disassociate for me in this context means that my ADD is going haywire and I am basically forcing my hand to type right now. I have fulfilled my basic obligations but struggle with finding the mental capacity to focus or have motivation of any sort. Due to this I appreciate what this article lays out way more than I ever would at a time where I wasn’t in this mental state.
If I were to disassociate normally, I would possibly not have these issues of lack of motivation and focus. I can see how using this can positively affect my mental state. My mom has been telling me for years to do this, but I haven’t fully grasped it yet. I am going to put some of this theory to test myself. I totally buy into the idea that when I daydream or go out of my own head that I have lower anxiety levels. I think we all have a limited capacity to what our brains can handle, and therefore to disassociate is to be human.
I am always inclined to say that almost everything has some kind of evolutionary / biological origin. This topic especially leads me to believe dissociation is a biological adaptation as it can relieve stress. I do, however, think that the way in which we practice dissociation might be more of a cultural thing. For instance, you discuss the Balinese using religious dissociation practices but little dissociation during the day. That is clearly a culture practice. In western cultures we are far more often to dissociate using daydreams or plain old zoning out.
Dissociation is an extremely useful tool. In reading everyone else’s comments I noticed that several of you all* mentioned having more extreme dissociative experiences during periods of depression or other sickness. I also cannot remember many of the details of seventh grade for that very reason. Honestly, I am a little glad I can’t, otherwise I would probably relive terrible moments from that year as I do with many other awful incidents!
I frequently force myself to practice dissociation before going to sleep. If I am having a truly stressful week I will often end up with racing thoughts which prevent me from actually falling asleep and during my alarm snooze cycle. There was one morning where I had “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” roaring in my head- it honestly felt like my brain was yell-singing at me. I have gotten a little better at controlling this, probably thanks to yoga practice. I try to focus on my breathing or relaxing each muscle in my body individually. However, these methods only work prior to my brain taking over, after that all I can do is take a Xanax and watch Parks and Recreation which is probably just assisted dissociation. How can I not feel relaxed when I know Leslie Knope is going to be the next President?
I usually end up dissociating during yoga practice as well. I never really thought about it this way before, but I guess my mind screaming at me, “Ow, can we stop please? Seriously this is awful. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SOFTEN MY WRISTS. No, there is no way we can hold a plank or alligator or monkey for another second” is definitely opening up a new neural pathway compared to my usual train of thought. Although I definitely, absolutely hate yoga, I feel pretty good afterwards-- except that I do often attribute this to the relief of the practice being over.
To wrap up this comment, I just have a little question- is there a correlation between immersive tendencies and dissociative tendencies?
*Can I say y’all? Are you deducting points for that Dr. Lynn?
immersion is, according to Snodgrass's thinking, a less intense form of dissociation. really a semantic issue. and, no, grammar here is less important than expressing yourself at proper length
It's somewhat scary and fascinating at the same time that our brains have so much power that we are often not even aware of. It's really kind of a loving image that our brain will take control to protect us from emotional pain. Painful memories can be locked away or changed, hopefully for the best. As you said, Europeans and Americans have been taught to be more open about their feelings. While western psychology mostly agrees that treating feelings this way is healthier than bottling them up, I think that the Bali people also have a good way of dealing with emotional distress. I feel like some of the best realizations and most comforting feelings I've had happened either in the gym or the shower. Maybe speaking to a therapist or talking about your feelings is the answer that western psychologists offer, but there is something to be said about personal coping methods. I believe that there are too many people living a semiconscious life ruled by Xanax and Prozac when many of their problems could be solved through natural processes. I think that this is probably why runners and athletes experience natural highs and enter a sort of trance or 'the zone'. The problem with our western medicine is that it cures the symptoms without addressing the problem. While I know this article wasn't really directed at medicinal approaches to psychological issues, I feel pretty strongly that doctors would rather just write a prescription and walk away than take the time to solve the problem. It's sad, but our medical technology has separated us from dealing with problems in the ways our ancestors would. America is over-medicated and undereducated.
Well since I did score highest on our stress test, I guess it’s good to make my follow up blog about how my stress level has been doing the remainder of the semester. I learned from this topic that I really need to learn how to disassociate on a regular basis rather than just in the form of extreme burnout. This realization has greatly lowered my stress level and even made me a tid bit nicer. Like I mentioned in my previous comment, engaging in activities such as 2048 has helped me think of other things.
I also just wanted to make another comment about disassociation, since it is like my favorite thing now. I wanted to talk about its role in crisis situations. After the anniversary of the April 27th, 2011 tornados, a lot of my friends were traumatized, and some still talk about it openly, but I know a few who have completely disassociated and blocked it out of their memory. This is true in other situations such as the holocaust, as some people deny it even happened. My point is, to what extreme is disassociation no longer positive. Is disassociating from traumatic events like these healthy? What would be a healthy level of disassociation for events like these?
Follow up:
During Annemarie’s presentation I think we took a survey and one of the questions was how often do you forget that you’ve done something or look over something and not remember doing it. Apparently my previous comment would fall under that. While finishing up all of these blog posts I continued to avoid this one. I still don’t entirely understand what this article/blog post was getting at, so I did not want to comment on it. But it turns out I had already done it! Hooray!
While I do remember writing this now, I had absolutely no recollection of doing it until I was looking through my other comments trying to find which ones I hadn’t yet completed. This might be the best thing to happen to me during finals week, that and the gorgeous portfolio which was a gift from the Honors College with my cords! Anyway, clearly I was using dissociation while writing my first comment because I did not enjoy writing about the topic. But, as I said in my first comment, I use dissociation all the time. More times than I originally thought, it seems!
So I guess my biggest question now is how does one keep a look out for when they are dissociating without also ruining the process?
Looking back on the data we collected during our belongings study and my own personal experiences, religious dissociation does appear to relieve stress. Those who participated in our interviews seemed to be less stress and most attributed this to either attending religious services or prayer. Personally I agree with these statements, no matter how much of a stressful day I’ve had I always feel better after praying or attending a church service. I had always attributed this feeling of calm from the atmosphere and putting my worries into someone else’s hands. But I had never considered dissociation as having a role in minimizing stress. Due to discursive dissociation I was able to become so immersed in a church service I became separated from my stressful day. The nature of my church and Canterbury’s services are very ritualistic with a lot of movement and repetition of words. Requiring thought and concentration, which allows someone to be easily become dissociated with the tedious events of everyday life. As I stated in my original comment I agree with Seligman and Kirmayer’s argument that dissociation is both biological and a learned behavior. The body uses trance-like states to heal itself, and as humans have proved over and over again we can adapt biological occurrences into a social context. I think that anthropologist and psychologist would benefit greatly by collaborating in studying dissociation.
Immediately when I began to re-read this post, I was reminded of our group research in which we touched on the relationship between obesity and commitment to the church at Cornerstone. The links between mental and physical health are fascinating to study and I enjoyed having a small glimpse of that. It makes a lot of sense that dissociation could be triggered by emotional overload, just based on the things we saw in the church services. There was so much emotional stimulation of every kind that it overwhelmed some individuals and caused them to become incoherent, break down crying, etc. The church service wasn’t traumatic by any means, but the emotional overload was there. The second paradigm stating that social dissociation cultures use it as a way to show status or power seems very congruent with what we discussed about zar spirit possession rituals. Whereas this type of action would label someone crazy in a culture like ours, in the Sudanese culture it allows women to assert themselves in a way that men can’t or won’t. I think that in our culture we allow such rituals to a certain degree that we can still remain comfortable with; it seems that as long as you’re possessed by the typical “spirit” or “holy ghost” then your dissociative actions are normal, but if it’s anything else you will be feared or questioned.
The Balinese practice of concealing emotion (watch out, I might start singing Frozen) fascinates me as well—I can’t imagine a culture-wide expectation of stoicism. But if overall their stress levels are lower during times we consider highly traumatic, and they have some outlet of emotion via dissociation rituals, perhaps they’re onto something.
There is a common theme among the groups who take part in dissociate rituals. Most of these people are either oppressed or in an impoverished society where western medicine is not widely available. Yet their utilization of the human brain's natural abilities can be just as effective, depending on the severity of the illness. It makes me happy that psychiatric practitioners are taking measures to implement these techniques into western medicinal practices because I've always been an advocate of trying everything naturally possible before turning to a prescription drug (as in for mental illness). Now I realize that mental illnesses can be severe and detrimental to a person's life, and those people are not part of my argument. But it seems nowadays like it's just too easy to go to the psychiatrist, complain about something and get a script for some pretty heavy duty drugs. I know a good bit of people who are on medication that not only I, but they agree that they probably should not be on. So many parents are giving their children amphetamines just because they are doing poorly or behaving badly in school. I don't want to step on any toes that might completely disagree with me but as we've seen in these articles, there are so many alternatives to this that our bodies can utilize naturally. Now I got a little off topic, and I'm not saying parents should toss their children into a Zar ceremony, but I just find it amazing how the Balinese, the Sudanese and other similar cultures are able to cope with stress through these dissociation rituals.
When we did our activity in the beginning of the semester (I think it was the second presentation) where we drew without lifting our pen showed us the idea of immersion. When we zone out in class or just stop paying attention mid conversation and totally blank out until someone says your name, that is dissociation, and we can see this happen through the animal kingdom. Some animals just freeze up when they’re being hunted partly as a survival mechanism. Humans’ level of dissociation is probably a coping mechanism for excessive stress due to the burdens of cognition. When people can harness this dissociative capability it results in stress relief and overall positive stuff, but hearing Hannah’s terrifying experience with adaptive dissociation puts things into perspective. Her case took it to the extreme where being taken out of a situation for that long and knowing you were there could be very damaging. I remember reading something in my psychology textbook connecting increased patterns of dissociation (zoning out) to increased occurrences of Déjà vu. And also studies linking excessive Déjà vu in youth and young adulthood being linked to early onset Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. This dissociation could be an adaptive trait, but it could also be a problem tagged along to cognition. Even if there are many positive effects of dissociation on the social level, personal health is also an important factor. I would love to see a study on the relation between frequencies of dissociation in a much more broad sense of the term and mental health later in life (or the other way around, lower levels of dissociative capability and its effect on mental health).
I have a new appreciation for this article after my group's research with Cornerstone Full Gospel. The church mostly made up of poor people and health problems were rampant in the congregation. When we went to their services (particularly the healing prayer), we saw that people would get so lost in the worship that they entered a different state, potentially separated from their problems. In one service, we saw a woman sing "My God is Awesome" with such intensity that she literally sang herself to exhaustion and tears. Throughout the performance, she was running around the stage and it looked like she was giving everything she had. Her exhaustion and release at the end of the performance made me think of some of the rituals we talked about earlier in the year. Though the song didn't last for hours, the emotion was so intense that she looked totally free after it was over. I've never been one to get really into religious performance, but I felt something when I watched these people. Going to church as a kid always stressed me out and annoyed me, but their worship was so intense that it was impossible not to be involved.
I think one of the most important parts about our study was the health and wealth (or lack there of) that the congregation as a whole had. I think the reason I've never really been that involved in worship like them is because I've always had so much. The people at cornerstone don't really have that much, and I feel like that is one of the main reasons that they worship so intensely. Their lives are stressful, and losing themselves to worship every week helps them feel better.
I'm still not sure how I feel in services like that, but it was visible that these people felt relief from the stress of their everyday lives through intense worship.
Re-reading this post has me trying to contextualize some of my experiences with depression and my methods of coping once again. It also has me wondering whether adaptive dissociation could be a viable option for treating forms of depression. I know that there were certain factors going on in my life that were leading to the way I was feeling and that my brain chemistry was most likely not out of whack, so I did not want to start on some medication that probably wasn't going to work anyway. Now that I have let some of the ideas that I initially read and responded to sink in for a while, I really think that dissociation from negatives can be a healthy reaction to life situations. The tricky part about relying on this system as a coping mechanism is to not completely turn away from the realities of the world that cause the dissociation to begin with. Some of the World of Warcraft gamers mentioned in Annemarie's article are a perfect example of how adaptive dissociation is like walking a tight rope. While many initially become enthralled with the game as a means of escaping real life stresses, many become so immersed that the real life stresses that caused them to start playing the game grow into even bigger problems. For some cases of depression that stem from circumstances and other difficulties, adaptive dissociation can be a huge benefit as long as there is an effort to resolve the issues in some way. In other cases, traditional medicine is probably a better option.
Follow-up comment:
I'm pretty sure I'm already beginning to experience a form of dissociation concerning this past semester. During the school year, as with every school year, it becomes a struggle to get through assignment-to-assignment, paper-to-paper, test-to-test, and weekend-to-weekend. For about a month now (nay, probably longer), I've been so "ready" for the semester to be over, for a break, because I have been absolutely swamped. It has been a very stressful semester. However, now that I have finished my finals, I am already starting to forget how busy and stressed I was only a few days ago. I'm sure in a few weeks I'll have completely forgotten about why I complained so much, and even start to miss the schedule and wish I'd spent more time on that one assignment. For the time being, I can recognize that "more time" did not actually exist, and that I was very relieved at the time to be done with it. But dissociation and selective memory seems to invariably take over at the end of every semester.
I think this is why adults often speak fondly of their high school days and even refer to them as "the best years of your life." Any one in high school can tell you, it's not that great. But the more removed you become from a situation, the more your mind filters out the negative memories of the experience. I think this is probably a healthy function for its own sake.