Stout: characteristics, varieties, and brewing history

¶ … Woke Up Tuesday it Was Friday," there is a considerable amount of difference between relatively normal, typical distraction and full-fledged disassociation. Distraction, for the most part, is a relatively temporal occurrence, which both begins and ends fairly readily and is usually due to some tangible, known cause -- such as a loud noise, the changing of tunes on the radio, or some other fairly understandable occurrence. Disassociation is much more prolonged and, for the most part, enigmatic. Via disassociation, a person can miss entire periods of his or her life, such as a significant portion of a work week -- hence the title of this particular article. One of the most confounding characteristics about disassociation, and which is certainly contrasted with common distraction, is that disassociation is significantly more subtle. There is not always a normal, readily understood source of disassociation that can be easily perceived and identified via some sensory perception. Most of the time, people who have to cope with disassociation do so without having any idea as to what causes it, or when it began, or for how long it will last. The degree of disassociation is a lot more intense than everyday distraction.

Out of the patients that Stout discusses, the one that is the most effective about her idea of consciousness would have to be poor Julia. In particular, the concluding example in which Julia's appendicitis is detailed is exceedingly poignant and exemplifies just how powerful disassociation can be. Both Julia's doctor and the author were both fairly flabbergasted that her mind was able to disassociate itself from the physical pain of her body -- pain that was caused by her appendix all but rupturing -- in the days leading up to her passing out at work and eventually having her appendix removed. Stout used this example to explain that Julia was so used to dealing with pain -- both real and imaginary -- that it was a common reaction of her body to disassociate itself from it, while still continuing to function in the professional manner befitting of her job, as if there were no such pain. This dissociative process was so powerful that Julia was able to endure what her physician referred to as agony, in a state in which she was blissfully unaware of the excruciating suffering she was feeling. The ramifications of this incident, of course, illustrate what Stout was stating about the consciousness' human ability to adapt and survive. Because Julia had endured so much suffering during her childhood by tuning out or disassociating herself from it, that reflex became her automatic reaction to situations in which there was actual, real danger -- all of which merely underscores how little of her life Julia had been present for.