Legal-Ethical Level of Understanding Dissociative Pathology

A Moral-Ethical exploration.

Structured Abstract

• Background: The prevailing scientific and legal interpretations of complex trauma-related disorders, such as addiction and functional neurological symptoms, rely heavily on quantitative methodologies that prioritize objective, measurable data over subjective, qualitative experience.¹ This reductionist approach often mislabels core dissociative survival mechanisms—like “Absence Seizures” (AS) and Fading Memory Disorder (FMD)—as “pseudo,” “disease,” or “moral failings,” demonstrating a fundamental epistemological conflict.
• Hypothesis: The scientific fragmentation and quantitative interpretation of trauma-related dissociation are fundamentally fear-based, reflecting the unconscious bias of the observer toward stability, control, and institutional dogma. This fear drives legal and educational systems to maintain a collective denial system regarding the ubiquity of trauma and the adaptive function of dissociation (Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM). The legal profession perpetuates psychological ignorance by demanding adherence to reductive diagnostic codes, while government education departments are complicit by failing to mandate trauma literacy curricula that validate the qualitative wisdom and survival imperative of the embodied unconscious.
• Conclusions: The medical and legal categorization of phenomena like Pseudoseizures, AS, and FMD represents an ethical failure of governing systems that prioritize institutional control (fear) over the innate healing intelligence (love) of the organism. The Addiction as Dissociation Model) framework, which grounds science in Recovering Common Sense (qualitative wisdom), is necessary to align institutional responsibility with the profound truth that the physical body is the psychological unconscious, demanding a shift toward transdiagnostic, dissociation-affirmative public policy and education.

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1. Introduction: The Fragmentation of Truth

The ongoing debate in addictionology—oscillating between the poles of a “choice” and a “disease”—underscores a core deficiency in Western thought: the systematic fragmentation of human experience into separate, non-communicating domains.¹ The work of the Wounded Healers Institute (WHI) establishes that addiction is a conditional bond to a trauma-related dissociative state, where the physical body operates as the psychological unconscious. This reality, derived from phenomenological (qualitative) inquiry, directly conflicts with the prevailing quantitative paradigm that seeks control through reductionist categorization.

This paper explores how this epistemological conflict is actively weaponized by the legal and education professions, maintaining a broad societal ignorance regarding trauma and dissociation. We argue that the quantitative framework’s emphasis on fear-based control minimizes the qualitative wisdom communicated by the embodied unconscious, leading to adverse public and individual consequences. Phenomena like “Pseudoseizures”, “Absence Seizures” (AS) and Fading Memory Disorder (FMD) serve as clinical examples of this miscategorization, revealing a systemic failure to grasp the profound intelligence behind the body’s survival responses.

2. The Quantitative Imperative: Fear, Control, and the Appeal to Ignorance

The quantitative worldview in science is characterized by the need for objective, measurable metrics (e.g., fMRI scans, diagnostic criteria, statistics). While essential for certain forms of scientific advancement, this approach is hypothesized to be fundamentally fear-based because what is unknown can be known by those who know or have been in a similar situation prior.

This fear stems from the anxiety of the unpredictable and the chaotic nature of the traumatic unconscious. To manage this fear, the quantitative observer constructs rigid categories that dismiss any data point falling outside the measurable norm. This is the implicit bias of the quantitative mind: to categorize the overwhelming emotional truth of trauma as something orderly and controllable.

2.1. The Legal Profession: Perpetuating Ignorance via Definitional Rigidity

The legal profession, the institutional embodiment of the quantitative worldview, is inherently reliant on deductive reasoning and quantifiable evidence (e.g., forensic reports, DSM-5 diagnoses) to establish precedent, guilt, and competency. This requirement forces legal reliance on the reductive medical model, which maintains the psychological ignorance of the general public.

1. Enshrining the “Pseudo” Misdiagnosis: Dissociative phenomena that lack structural, quantifiable markers (e.g., brain lesions) are dismissed. Dissociative Seizures (often misdiagnosed as epilepsy or AS) are frequently labeled as Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures (PNES)—a term that reduces a complex trauma-driven survival response to a “pseudo” event that is “not real.” This labeling reflects the scientific observer’s fear of the unknown and represents an appeal to ignorance (the absence of structural evidence is assumed to be evidence of fabrication or non-existence), rather than an acceptance of a functional neurological collapse of the thalamocortical circuitry due to trauma and chronic stress.
2. Maintaining the Stigma of Choice and Disease: By adhering to the DSM-5, the legal system implicitly reinforces the fragmented view of addiction as either a moral failure (choice) or an isolated brain defect (disease).¹ This prevents the legal system from recognizing the ADM’s core truth: that the client’s “loss of control” is an unconscious survival choice driven by the body’s instinct to regulate stress via dissociation, rendering punitive laws based on conscious choice ethically null and void.¹ The law, in its pursuit of objective justice, becomes an agent of collective dissociation, avoiding the trauma embedded in its jurisdiction. Furthermore, since the ACES Study asks about parents being in prison as a trauma and that 50% of people in prison have substance use disorders, then how they are identifying and caring for it is relevant.

2.2. The Educational System: The Failure to Empower Citizens

Government agencies responsible for public education (e.g., the U.S. Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services) are essential to the psychological well-being of the citizenry, particularly in the domain of mental health literacy. The WHI framework contends that these departments bear responsibility for the general public’s profound ignorance regarding addiction and dissociation, particularly on the subject of D.A.R.E. and psychedelics.

1. Negligence in Essential Curriculum: While some government funding supports localized trauma-informed school initiatives, there is a critical absence of mandated curriculum focused on fundamental human function: dissociation, trauma memory, and the innate wisdom of the body (The Body as the Unconscious). By failing to educate citizens on the basics of trauma-related dissociation and its function as a survival response, the education system ensures the public remains psychologically illiterate regarding their own emotional and biological processes.
2. Lack of Validation for Policies: Government agencies and legal bodies often make choices, create policies, and enact laws without providing citizens with the necessary philosophical or empirical justification (curriculum or research) to confirm, justify, or validate their actions, leading to unquestioned institutional authority. The fear-based, quantitative structure relies on the public’s ignorance of qualitative wisdom to uphold its power structure (e.g., maintaining the status quo of industrialized psychiatry and pharmacological control over the EPS).

3. The Qualitative Response: Wisdom, Love, and the Path to Common Sense

The qualitative approach, championed by the PWH framework, is rooted in love, defined here as the acceptance of the organism’s inherent worth and its relentless, instinctual drive toward life and healing (the SEEKING system). This qualitative wisdom is expressed through the conscious pursuit of Recovering Common Sense.

3.1. Validating the Wisdom of the Body

Qualitative wisdom mandates that phenomena like AS and FMD must be viewed through a trauma-informed lens:

• Absence Seizures (AS) / Dissociative Seizures: Not a deficit, but a profound, involuntary act of survival-driven dissociation—the body forces a physiological shutdown (via the EOS) to prevent systemic overwhelm. The qualitative observer understands this as the body making the most compassionate, loving choice possible in a terrifying circumstance.
• Fading Memory Disorder (FMD): Not merely an error of aging, but a strategic fragmentation of explicit memory that maintains the emotional survival blueprint. The unconscious body prioritizes the high-level emotional content necessary for future self-preservation while shedding peripheral, detailed memory that is too painful or resource-intensive to hold in consciousness.

The qualitative view observes that the compulsive pursuit of relief in addiction—which the quantitative mind labels “pleasure-seeking” or “moral failing”—is actually the body pursuing safety and healing through a conditioned dissociative bond.¹

3.2. Moral-Ethical Resolution: Reclaiming the Law through Wisdom

The PWH framework offers a resolution to the epistemological conflict by mandating that professionals and institutions operate with an ethical stance that transcends mere compliance:

1. Recovering Law: This means challenging and overturning laws and policies rooted in the quantitative bias of ignorance, particularly those that punish trauma-driven behaviors. The ADM provides the rationale to establish a precedent that prioritizes a citizen’s well-being over punitive measures derived from faulty definitions of “choice” or “disease.”¹
2. Recovering Religion/Spirituality: This process involves reclaiming the validity of the dissociative experience itself as a source of spiritual and emotional truth (Logos), separating the embodied, healing experience (Spirituality) from external, rigid, institutional control (Religion). The emotional experiences generated by dissociation—often labeled “insane,” “disordered,” or “crazy” by the fear-based quantitative system—are recognized as the true, qualitative language of the embodied unconscious demanding attention and integration.

4. Conclusions

The continued minimization of qualitative wisdom by quantitative systems, particularly within the legal and educational infrastructures, sustains an moral-ethical blind spot that prevents the resolution of pervasive psychological and physical illness. By dismissing the lived experience of trauma and dissociation as “pseudo” or “absent,” these systems exhibit their own fear-based implicit bias, resulting in laws and policies that are fundamentally disconnected from the human organism’s needs and design.

Moving forward requires a trans-epistemological synthesis: using quantitative measures to validate the qualitative truth of the unconscious body. By centering education on trauma literacy and grounding law in the qualitative wisdom, society can begin to dismantle the dissociation that perpetuates ignorance and replace fear-based control with love-based compassion and integrated healing.

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References

O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/

O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/

O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/

*This is for informational and educational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.