Session 12 | Peritraumatic dissociation and Brainspotting as an intervention possibility

This activity offers (1) a brief review on the concepts of dissociation in the field of trauma and its relation with posttraumatic disorders. (2) It presents a proposal of peritraumatic dissociation starting from the description of patients (qualitative study). (3) It justifies, from this proposal and its possible neurophysiological bases, the use of Brainspotting as a possibility of therapeutic intervention. (4) Illustrates the topic with brief clinical vignettes. Peritraumatic dissociation has been considered an important element for the development of posttraumatic disorders, but there is no consensus about its concept. To better understand the peritraumatic dissociation, we examined interviews of 8 patients who suffered urban violence, up to 1 month after the traumatic event. The changes reported were encoded in (A) their impressions concerning the inner world (the mind / body unit), (B) the objects and external environment, (C) and third-party impressions. Peritraumatic dissociation has been elaborated as an inability of synthesis between stimuli emerging from the inner and outer environment, including space-time flow, even with integral cognitive-perceptual tools. This synthesis gives the consciousness the quality of coherence and meaning for the totality of perception, enabling existence, and is related to the thalamus-cortical system. Brainspotting is a possible intervention for the resolution of trauma and the restoration of this synthesis through electrophysiologically coherent thalamic-cortical processing.