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. Trauma 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 element – rape, child physical and sexual abuse, bullying, and so on – a sense of victimization is possible as is profound helplessness. It is often the case that victims knew witnesses did nothing to help or stop the trauma. A dissociative psychological process leaves the person with only fragments of their trauma remembered, a sight, a smell, sounds, while the rest may be stored in somatic memory.
As a psychological defense mechanism, dissociation protects the person from remembering a full traumatic experience since it is by nature too much to handle and live with at the time. The dissociated memory for the trauma becomes not-me. Perhaps it is even a “bad” thing the person has done, or has seen a parent or a partner do that cannot be explained. The memory and feelings are now outside of conscious awareness or access; it does not become part of the self moving forward hence the term “not-me.” The person is disadvantaged by dissociation since they don’t know their trauma enough, and how it continues to affect their life unconsciously. They live without accessing the dissociated affect with a sense that they haven’t moved forward. Flashbacks in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an example of this.
An important task of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy is to help patients integrate not-me dissociated experiences. Patients may come to therapy communicating “this trauma did not happen to me.” Psychological implications of the trauma, such as that bad things happen that we do not deserve, or that we are not to blame for trauma, take time to realize after the patient integrates/remembers more than they could at first. Another way of saying this is that over time dissociated material is integrated with already conscious life memories via a psychotherapeutic process. Through talking about trauma with an experienced therapist, more coherent narratives emerge and dissociated fragments of traumas are spoken and remembered. The patient starts to accept what happened to them, and to their defenses, and to who they are as a person. Trauma cannot be forgotten while it can be lived with.
In sum, dissociation has a protective function against the overwhelming and disturbing traumas many people experience in their lifetimes. Eventually, its costs may be too high for you. Through psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, you can regain access to your memory of traumatic experiences, and to dissociated affects. You can become more aware of unconscious feelings and gain better insight into the possibilities for improving your interpersonal relationships that are affected by trauma. Ultimately you can really learn about yourself. For trauma-based psychological disorders such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Dissociative Disorders, and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I have a great deal of expertise as a clinician. Please contact me if you are interested in assessment or psychotherapy.
