ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with observational, experiential, and clinical phenomena in humans which for obvious reasons do not lend themselves to cellular or molecular analysis. The presentations and concepts of dissociated or automatic behaviors have changed dramatically — ranging from demon possession, witchcraft, shamanism, hysteria, various psychiatric conditions, and frank malingering to the current notion of psychobiologic phenomena. The clinical concept of states of being has changed dramatically over the past few decades. It was formerly thought that human existence encompassed only two states: wakefulness and sleep, with sleep being considered as simply the passive absence of wakefulness. The single common feature of most automatisms or dissociations is lack of conscious awareness. Narcolepsy is the prototypic dissociated state arising from the background of wakefulness and may best be thought of as a disorder of “state boundary control”.
