Have you ever driven home and when you got there you weren't sure how it happened? You didn't remember driving the entire time. Your hands were at the wheel, but your "mind" was somewhere else.
If it was your home and you recognized it, and the people in it, then that is not relevant here at all.
You're equivocating between the colloquial use of "dissociate" (as in "marathon runners practice dissociation and association") and the clinical term as it is used in this context for a disturbing disorder which has nothing to do with driving a memorized route on "auto pilot".
And, by the way, you'd still hit the brakes if a kid jumped out onto the road chasing a ball. It's just multitasking.
Simliarly, a piano player isn't "dissociating" just because he or she isn't thinking about which finger goes to which key at all times.
The kind of dissociation you may experience driving a car (being on auto-pilot) is definitely not as extreme as DID, but they share the same foundation. This is our current understanding of how it works. If you don't believe me you'll have to take it up with the professionals in the field.
Comparing zoning out with DID is like comparing a hill to a mountain. However, I understand where you're coming from. I don't know how to explain it briefly. The mind works in parallel, way more than we think. So it can focus on two things at once, but "you" may not be part of both at all times. You'd have to let go of the idea that "you" (the person that typed that message) control or are even aware of everything that goes on in your mind. You're just an inhabitant (part) of your mind, and you don't control your mind. (This probably doesn't make much sense; sorry.)
Much of what you say is correct on the first pass, and is better than that of the typical citizen, however, some important details are missing. It seems like you are actually interested in the subject and would benefit from learning in depth about the subjects.
The mind does indeed work in parallel, but you cannot focus on 2 things at once. I think you are referring to reflexes, which are subtlety different than cerebellar functioning and 'automatic' movements. You are very much in control of your own mind, how else would you define what a mind is? However, you are correct in thinking that certain neural processes are outside of our control and that our mind is conditioned by experience to perceive things in a schema.
Really though, the book I linked is great for you, as it seems you have an interest in the subject and want to learn more.
"You are very much in control of your own mind, how else would you define what a mind is?"
Immediately after I read this I tried to think about it. After only a few seconds I closed my eyes in the fashion we close our eyes when thinking about a concept "hurts" (I am very tired, been on the front of the laptop screen pretty much the whole day). Which led me to consider "tiredness": I can define what it is but I can definitely not control it - it happens or it doesn't. Care to elaborate a bit more on your thought?
The way to figure out that you are your mind and are in control of it is to look at people who cannot do so. Are feelings a part of your mind? Are intrusive thoughts your fault or your brains? When you do something that you do not want to, who is doing that? Is that you?
The mind body problem is not really a problem, we are our bodies and minds at the same time. Any patient with an aphasia or neural defect will tell you they just cannot think in a way that they used to. Stoke victims are the same, or people that grew up mute and deaf and now use sign language. The mind is so very complicated, quite the understatement.
In the end, you are your mind, there can be not other definition, you are the person in it, who it is. Therefore, you are in control, or you lack the control to use it, you are the driver of the car and the car itself.
This is too strong a response. You and nobody else has a 1:1 memory map of an intense experience. It can takes weeks if not months (plural) to remember everything that happened to you in the last month. That is because basically your brain samples space time and segments in in your memory in a non-linear fashion. This is why people have flashbacks. When people recall linear events, they only recal prioritized samples. (eg, highlights, takeaways). It's universally understood that this sampling is also highly biased. That is why we have the concept of "type 2 fun". You can google this but the gist of it is that lots of things that are insufferable during the event form warm and fuzzy memories afterward upon recall. There is also the related case histories of people who compartmentalize basically into a black hole, where the thoughts never come back to consciousness or only after some extraordinary event (therapy, or otherwise). Certain types of trauma survivors fall in to this category.
Clinical use of disassociation is somthing involving this process and its important to understand it as part of a continuum.
If you don't remember events due to not paying attention (being "tuned out") that is simply not the same as not remembering who you are or who your boyfriend is.
In the former case, you don't remember the events because you were neglecting to commit them to memory. In the latter case, you have the memory, but it is temporarily inaccessible --- and comes back.
Memories that you did not form because you were tuned out never come back because they don't exist. For example, you will never recall the words of the bore whom you tuned out at last night's party. You nodded your head but were completely occupied with thinking about something else.
There are (clinically) lots of times people don't pay attention and 'tune things out' due to hyper-viigilance.
That process leads to somewhat fractured long-term memory. Basically your brain starts to use short-term memory for something like l2 cach and starts writing stuff that would have gone first into short-term memory and then archived elswhere with a "bibliography" note, directly into deep memory at 1:1 without any simple summary of the memory.
This is how you get people with intensely detailed memory "stacks" without a fully operational "card-catalog" of what is actually in the libary.
The key point is these steps are somewhat plastic.
> And, by the way, you'd still hit the brakes if a kid jumped out onto the road chasing a ball. It's just multitasking.
It isn't multi-tasking, that's just our autonomic nervous system learning to drive a car and goes further than hitting brakes - driving a car becomes all automatic, with gestures that include switching gears, stopping at red lights and so on. It's the same system that's responsible for breathing - you don't need to remember to breath, right? And it's what we call reflex.
Humans are actually bad at multi-tasking. It's cooperative multitasking at best, requiring expensive context switches, which is really the reason for why many of us can't do software development while talking on the phone or while having other distractions around us. For some reason women seem to be better at multitasking, not sure how that works.
Also, as a funny personal experience ... I'm fully on auto-pilot when I drive, which is why I've found myself several times driving to work on the weekend and my work place wasn't my destination :-)
> Simliarly, a piano player isn't "dissociating" just because he or she isn't thinking about which finger goes to which key at all times.
The piano player example is apples to oranges with driving on auto-pilot example. In the auto-pilot example, you are responding to external stimulus (even without a kid jumping into the road), in the piano player example, he/she is using "muscle memory."
Also, the piano player doesn't get to the end of the piece and forget ever playing the piece.
In improvisation in an ensemble (e.g. jazz), you respond to external stimulus. Also, in improvisation, you can sometimes lose yourself and not even know what your fingers are doing at times. You will not remember exactly what you played even moments later. I sometimes noodle on my guitar while reading.
