Is This Real Life?

English 101:EB

2 March 2010

Final Draft

Is This Real Life?

In Martha Stout’s essay, “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday,” she uncovers the thought process behind the act of disassociation by delving into the past and also through the use of hypnosis. As a clinical psychologist, Stout came to define the term disassociation through the lives of her patients. Disassociation occurs when the mind travels to another place due to either a past or current trauma or stress. It allows one part of human consciousness, the part that contains a person’s memories, feelings, and sense of identity, to get put aside and another part, the imaginative part that allows a person to escape from reality, to take over. This state that a person can undergo is, at times, beneficial but can lead to fatal outcomes. In Daniel Gilbert’s essay, “Immune to Reality,” he explores how each person’s psychological immune system plays a major role in allowing him or her to cope with traumatic situations that come up in daily life. The psychological immune system is the mind’s cognitive mechanisms that work subconsciously to make the existing state of affairs more bearable. It does this by allowing the brain to make excuses for negative events, which, in turn, help the troubled individual feel better. Gilbert’s conclusions challenge the way people think and are causing some people to reshape the way they approach situations. In Oliver Sacks’ essay, “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See,” he delves into the minds of the blind to explain how the loss of such a vital sense causes people to turn to alternative forms of vision or other senses. Sacks introduces a plethora of individuals to express how malleable humans can truly be. Coping mechanisms are activated when trauma strikes to help dim down the event but, if activated repeatedly, can lead to negative outcomes. Stout, Gilbert, and Sacks all show, although in different scenarios, how the effects of people’s coping methods take a toll on...