Dissociation: What is it?

To ‘dissociate’ means to unconsciously separate or split part of one’s psychological experience away from the rest, often after a traumatic experience. Dissociated memories are parts of or entire experiences, leaving us with sensory fragments of the trauma and loss of related feelings. The injury of trauma (derived from the Greek for “wound”) is emotional and also sensory: sights, sounds, touch, and smell can be parts of what is remembered and what is dissociated. There is often a human perpetration … (cont’d)