Hypnotic abreaction releases chaotic patterns of electrodermal activity during dissociation.

Chaotic transitions emerge in a wide variety of cognitive phenomena and may possibly be linked to specific changes during development of mental disorders. There are several hypotheses that link the dissociation to critical chaotic shifts with the resulting self-organization of behavioral patterns during critical periods. In 2 patients, hypnotic revivification of dissociated trauma along with measurement of bilateral electrodermal activity (EDA) for therapeutic and research purposes was performed. Nonlinear data analysis of EDA records shows a difference between degree of chaos in hypnotic relaxed state before revivification of the trauma and dissociated state after reliving the traumatic memory. Results suggest that the dissociated state after revivification of the trauma is significantly more chaotic than the state during the hypnotic relaxation before the event. Findings of this study suggest a possible role of neural chaos in the processing of the dissociated traumatic memory during hypnotic revivification.